cunning legal stuff & GTA from danny bourne on 1999-02-19 (Glorantha Digest Vol 06)

From: danny bourne <d.bourne_at_dial.pipex.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 05:02:07 -0800

Q & A copyright
Copyright stuff's tricky. With interviews, the copyright of that interview belongs to the person who made/paid for the interview if they consent to being recorded. (Thus if you phone Greg, record it and you pay the phone bill, then you own the copyright of that interview). So all the Con transcripts copyrights belong to whoever recorded them. However, it gets a bit murky when it comes to the contents of any interview (it's never been a problem that's cropped up for me in TV). Generally for interviews, it's taken as being that the person waives their rights to the content of that interview (otherwise you couldn't make a tv programme 'cos you couldn't use the interviews). Now I don't know what that means with Q&A's and FAQ's, but I would assume that any such page would/should have a permission to use/copy for personal use. Be a bit counterproductive to have them, otherwise. Don't know if that helps at all.

>
>Couldn't they just give a 100% discount on any product,
>discount valid only once per year, discount non-transferable,
>discount limited to products put out under the "Issaries"
>product line, and have it be just as legal?

It can be done. All Issaries has to do is give product as presents. So anybody who donates $1500, on his/her birthday, gets free all that year's releases or whatever. Or they can be put down as review copies etc.

My personal take on the donations is sort of based on the utilitarianism method. If I have $1500 spare (which I don't anyway, so it's all academic) would I (a) get most utility out of giving it to GTA and keeping Glorantha alive OR (b) spend it on something else and see the end of Glorantha as a RPG concern. Any sweeteners the GTA gives will increase option (a) as opposed to (b). My concerns would be would this have any effect on Chaosium (as I play Coc & Elric! also) in terms of people working on various projects and what would happen if GTA is a huge success and makes a decent profit. I would hope that the people who gave up their cash in the first instance would get some reward from that as a thank you for making the whole thing possible in the first place.