[MUD-Dev] Ebay bans character selling

[Travis Casey]

Tuesday, January 30, 2001, 4:34:08 PM, Willowreed at aol.com
<Willowreed at aol.com> wrote:

> In a message dated 1/30/2001 5:06:39 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
> frankc at maddog.com writes:

>> So if I name a character, describe the character, and mold the
>> character's abilities and skill

> but...what happens when you create a character, that is built to
> play in a specific game environment..is that character linked to
> that game? or is that character entirely your intellectual
> property....

> I guess what I am trying to say is....when someone writes a Cthulu
> story, do they own the rights to their story, or does it all come
> under the heading of HP Lovecraft's property rights?

> If everything is copyright protected, doesn't that sort of leave us
> all in the lurch?  Every game is based upon some ideas that are
> common...does that in itself cause a problem?

Copyrights don't protect ideas -- only expressions of ideas.  That's
why everyone and their brother can (and has, it seems) write Cthulhu
mythos -like stories without mentioning Cthulhu, etc.

The issues involved are complicated; there's not simply copyrights
themselves, but also trademarks can be involved, and so can aspects of
case law, such as character copyrights.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   


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