Copyrights & Copirates

[David Johansen]

I cried when Frodo baptized Rocksteady and Bebop.

Honestly, I'm pretty sick of franchises and over merchandising. Maybe I'm just old but I'm sure ready for some new stories.

 

[TJS]

I cried when Frodo baptized Rocksteady and Bebop.

Honestly, I'm pretty sick of franchises and over merchandising. Maybe I'm just old but I'm sure ready for some new stories.

Yeah it's kind of sad that Andor is getting lots of praise all over the place, yet I can't work up any enthusiasm to watch it at this point precisely because it's still more Star Wars.

 

[Vile Traveller]

Someone will own the factories and the robots and you bet your ass they'll make money on them and people will generally be poorer not richer as a result.

And folks said something similar when the mechanized reaper and combine were introduced in the late 19th century. We figured it out then and will do so this time.

We did indeed figure it out: we created the ever-growing wealth gap.

 

[David Johansen]

And folks said something similar when the mechanized reaper and combine were introduced in the late 19th century. We figured it out then and will do so this time.

When I was a kid there were still family farms and farmers were generally not rich. Now you have to be rich to farm and conglomerates have taken over most of it. If that's 'figuring it out' you must be one of the people who've never had to go hungry and thought it was universal.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Maybe I'm just old but I'm sure ready for some new stories.

We should just go back to solving the problem the way we always did!

1) Bamboozle 100 clueless money-men into investing in story projects they don't understand. Make sure they never talk to any of the veterans who long ago realized the ROI odds might as well be a roulette table.

2) Throw their money at 10,000 artists who will march into the firing line of our culture like the delusional fodder they are. Watch 9999 of them fail ignominiously, then forget about them.

3) Treasure the 1 true success to emerge from the 10,000 attempts. Hype it, merchandize it, fan-theorize about it, fan-fic it, get the T-shirt, make it a generational touchstone.

4) Let the passage of time cull the middling successes from public consciousness. In time we will all have a distorted recollection of how good the decade was for storytelling. This is important because we will need another legion of money-men and artists to sacrifice for the future stories. They need to believe successful stories were the norm in the mythic 70s/80s/90s/etc so they don't get demoralized and pursue real jobs.

Right now the problem is we're stuck on step (1). The money-men have wised up and become risk-averse. They prefer milking emaciated franchises for guaranteed results. I also think our artists and their handlers have become too righteous about gosh-darned everything.

The solution? Train our artists and handlers to be better con artists! It's time to get back to basics: swindle those money-men, feed them false data and razzle-dazzle them like Scott Rosenberg did with Cowboys and Aliens*!

Creatives, don't feel guilty! Your karma will even out when you're one of the 9999 chumps still waiting tables in LA, or when you overdose in Baltimore a decade after the prestige from your one true success starts to run out, or when you become one of the out-of-touch money-men you used to dupe.

* https://bleedingcool.com/comics/recent-updates/the-great-cowboys-aliens-scam-has-unexpected-result/

 

[Toadmaster]

Right now the problem is we're stuck on step (1). The money-men have wised up and become risk-averse. They prefer milking emaciated franchises for guaranteed results. I also think our artists and their handlers have become too righteous about gosh-darned everything.

Actually I don't think that is right. The money men are now only interested in making a quick fortune, not just a profit. Forget about funding a film for 15 million that will likely return 40 million, what good is a measly 25 million dollar profit. Everything is $300-400 million blockbusters, its like they will only play at the high bid craps table.

 

[TJS]

Actually I don't think that is right. The money men are now only interested in making a quick fortune, not just a profit. Forget about funding a film for 15 million that will likely return 40 million, what good is a measly 25 million dollar profit. Everything is $300-400 million blockbusters, its like they will only play at the high bid craps table.

I think a lot of that probably has to do with distribution and amalgamation.

 

[deflagratio]

Actually I don't think that is right. The money men are now only interested in making a quick fortune, not just a profit. Forget about funding a film for 15 million that will likely return 40 million, what good is a measly 25 million dollar profit. Everything is $300-400 million blockbusters, its like they will only play at the high bid craps table.

Here's the thing, they are still making those $15-$30 million dollar movies. They even release them in theaters. And they maybe break even or only make a small amount of profit. Why are you putting it on the risky investment when you know that even bad Star Wars will double your money. It's not solely the money man's fault that mid budget is dead.

 

[SmallbutVicious]

Since this is the Roleplaying Games forum, I'm not really sure what the issue is here so far as it relates to games.

First off, game mechanics cannot be copyrighted. They can be patented provided they are novel enough, so you can't just copy some game designer's amazingly clever new idea from last week. But if we're talking about games from the 80s or 90s that WotC holds the copyright to, any patents that may have existed have expired. There is nothing preventing you from stealing all of the game's mechanics as long as don't copy the text directly; and rename anything that's trademarked.

There are no copyright restrictions that would prevent someone from releasing their own version of Star*Drive. You cannot be sued for using Alternity mechanics. You just need new names and new art - otherwise it's all generic scifi stuff.

Somebody mentioned that you couldn't make a Star Wars game because the Force is so essential, but that's nonsense. "There's some mysterious energy in the universe that lets some people do magic" is clearly an extremely generic and unoriginal concept; and nothing prevents you from copying it. Just don't call it The Force™ and don't call your space magicians Jedi.

When I was a kid, I bought Imperial Guard and Sisters of Battle stuff from Games Workshop. If you look at Games Workshop's publications now, the same stuff is marketed as Adepta Sororitas and Astra Militarum. These were names they already made up in the 90s, but you only saw those if you read the books. They didn't put them on the covers or the side of the box, preferring the simpler names that you could understand even if you weren't already a fan. The reason they switched to writing the faux-Latin on the box was because they learnt the hard way (in court) that you can't trademark 'Imperial Guard'. Sci-fi soldiers with power armour and laser cannons are generic concepts not eligible for copyright or trademark protection.

Anyone can make a fantasy space opera game with talking robots, evil empires, space magicians and funny looking aliens. So I'm not clear how copyright is limiting anyone's creativity.

 

[sharps54]

Here's the thing, they are still making those $15-$30 million dollar movies. They even release them in theaters. And they maybe break even or only make a small amount of profit. Why are you putting it on the risky investment when you know that even bad Star Wars will double your money. It's not solely the money man's fault that mid budget is dead.

Yep most horror movies are low budget which is why they are so profitable. Look at this year’s Barbarian, it cost 4.5 million and made 45 million in the box office not counting streaming, Bluray, and so on.

 

[Toadmaster]

Yep most horror movies are low budget which is why they are so profitable. Look at this year’s Barbarian, it cost 4.5 million and made 45 million in the box office not counting streaming, Bluray, and so on.

I guess some of those millions must go towards marketing, because I never hear of these cheaper movies. I just tend to find them 5 or 10 years after release and wonder where did you come from? I do live under a rock though, so that may be part of the issue.

 

[Andrew J. Luther]

I have two sets of feelings about copyright.

The first has to do with materials that are completely unavailable because the copyright owner is sitting on it and refuses to do anything with it. That bugs me, and I think that if I were in charge, I would look at how to implement a fair “use it or lose it” system. Stuff that hadn’t been republished in a certain amount of time would become public domain.

But for other stuff, I just don’t really get it. I don’t care that Tolkien’s copyrights prevent new Middle Earth stories, or that there’s some struggle with using Conan. I don’t want remixes of stuff, I want people to be creative and come up with new stuff.

Earlier this year, I read N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth books, and they were a fuck-ton better than any Star Wars novel I’ve ever read. I don’t want more Star Wars books! I want some other space opera that’s actually different from Star Wars.

As someone who writes novels (5 so far with a sixth coming in the new year), I have never given a shit about not being able to use some person’s settings or characters in my stories. That doesn’t interest me at all, and I think my stuff is better than it would have been if I had set it in Conan’s world.

I do understand the roleplaying game element, where a company no longer supports a game but fans can’t legally publish new material for it themselves. That’s one situation where I think we’re poorer for not having a legal option (if the game is not OGL’d). I don’t have a good solution for that, but I also don’t think scrapping or dramatically reducing copyright protections is the right move either.

Let the big corporations sit on their IPs and repackage them over and over. There are still a bunch of great movies, great books, great music and great games that come out each year, and that originality is what keeps me interested.

Remember when the OGL was released what happened to the RPG industry. No one wanted to publish anything but D20 games. Fuck, I shudder to think what would happen if Star Wars was suddenly in the public domain.

 

[SmallbutVicious]

I do understand the roleplaying game element, where a company no longer supports a game but fans can’t legally publish new material for it themselves. That’s one situation where I think we’re poorer for not having a legal option (if the game is not OGL’d).

But, like I said, nothing prevents fans from publishing new material. The game rules are public domain after 20 years. Elves, orcs, robots, aliens, magic and lasers are all public domain already. Just rename anything propietorial and you're good to go.

When Games Workshop stopped producing Warhammer Fantasy Battle after 8th edition, fans just created a 9th edition and changed all the trademarked names. At least, they did in the books. If you play '9th edition' with someone, you'll note that they still use the trademarked names they learnt as kids and ignore the *nudge nudge wink wink* replacements invented to avoid lawsuits. There are no copyright police at the table.

 

[dragoner]

I think copyright prevented me from using an IP that later on I was glad I didn't. Personally I don't have an issue with it, and if people really want to use it, it's often open, I mean it is like there are a thousand series books.