Re: Re: Copyright issues regarding fan computer assistant program for board game.

On Aug 22, 2005, at 1:00 PM, Steve Walmsley wrote:

>> 1. One of the rights of a copyright holder is to control the
>> making of
>>>
>> copies. Another is the making of derivative works. One sort of
>> derivative
>> work is doing essentially the same thing, but in a different
>> medium. If you
>> copy or make a derivative work of something that is copyrightable,
>> then you
>> would be violating the copyright holder's exclusive right to
>> control the
>> making of derivative works.
>
> Not sure if the program is classed as a derivative work. If you
> wrote down a
> cake recipe and then I made the cake, is the cake a derivative work?
> Similarly, if you created a list of rules for generating a star
> system then
> I wrote a program that created a star system without ever showing
> the user
> the rules involved, is that a derivative work?

Without getting into the technical areas of derivative works, the cake is a derivative work -- but the recipe is not copyrightable.

If you create a computer program to make art, then we get into some curious problems. I think the best analysis is that the computer program is just another tool in that setting -- a copyrightable one and a bit different from a physical paint brush, but for authorship purposes, a tool nonetheless. And so the copyright would belong to the one wielding the tool -- even if that only requires one to push a button.
>
>> 2. Even though rules cannot themselves be copyrighted, games
>> can be and
>>
> are copyrighted. The extent of the copyright is hard to determine,
> however.
> It is a compilation of elements and it has something that is
> expressive and
> not just method or rules. But just what is that? This is why it
> becomes
> hard to answer one of these sorts of questions even if we have all
> of the
> facts (I'm not familiar with either the game or the computer
> program and so
> cannot render any sort of judgment on the extent of copyright or
> infringement on mere descriptions.
>
> I found the following web page as the US Copyright office
> http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html which seems to suggest that
> the
> rules text and pictures are copyright but not the methods and
> processes
> described by those rules. If I create something that carries out the
> function of the rules but does not display the rules, is that
> copyright?
> Also an interesting page on the subject at:
> http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/supplements.html
>
>
>> 3. The exact look of a board game can be copyrighted. The
>> layout can
>>
> be copyrighted. The exact text of a set of rules might be able to be
> copyrighted, but one runs into the merger problem -- a limited
> number of
> ways to express the particular rules. How many ways can one say
> "the first
> player roles the dice and then moves that number of squares"? (OK,
> the
> answer is infinite, but we merge things where there are limited
> effective
> and efficient ways to say the thing.) Translating a copyrighted
> text into
> another language, including a computer language, is a violation of
> the right
> to control derivative works.
>
> The board for Starfire is a blank hex map. The program does not
> display a
> board or any rules text.

But the display is not the issue. Is the computer program itself a copy or derivative work of something protected by copyright? That is the question. And it is not capable of answer in an online forum like this, if, indeed, it would be answerable at all other than by a court.

Steve

-- 
Prof. Steven D. Jamar                               vox:  202-806-8017
Howard University School of Law                     fax:  202-806-8567
2900 Van Ness Street NW                   mailto:sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu
Washington, DC  20008   http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/

"It is by education I learn to do by choice, what other men do by the  
constraint of fear."

Aristotle