[MUD-Dev] User-created content ownership

[Blane Bramble]

From: "Richard A. Bartle" <richard at mud.co.uk>

> I agree, but under your current licence it's at least
> theoretically possible that this could happen were you to put a
> server in the UK.

> A solution would be to declare joint copyright. They may own the
> work, but by using your software to insert it into your world, you
> are making a sufficient artistic contribution (by way of context)
> to entitle you to a piece of the work. If they don't want you to
> have joint copyright, they can't insert it in your game. Again,
> not being a lawyer, I could be missing something obvious here, but
> joint copyright enables you to do whatever you like to the work
> because you've just as much right to do it as the "original"
> author. Whether they could claim rights to change the work too
> (ie. claim access to the game code) is perhaps an issue, though.

In the book world, AFAIK, when you assign rights to a publisher they
effectively gain the copyright - in as much as the right to produce
copies of the book for sale is a copy right (for a limited length of
time), after which it reverts to the author - could not the
copyright owner assign publishing rights for as long as the player
is involved plus a sensible length of times (2 years?).

Blane.

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev