Re: Reworking pp games for stand alone publicatio n.

["Mark Andrew Biggar <mark.a.biggar@...>" <mark.a.biggar@...>]

--- In piecepack@yahoogroups.com, Michael Schoessow <mschoessow@s...>
wrote:
  
> I'm no legal expert on this but I think it means that the rules
can't be
> copied and published for profit without your permission, although
they could
> be re-written from scratch (i.e., just changing one or two phrases
a bit
> won't do it)  and then published for profit. Does anyone else have
better
> knowledge of this? Ron? Karol?

Note that your copywrite exists from the "moment you 
create a work in tangable form" whether or not you 
put a notice on it, but if you don't put a notice on 
it you can't enforce your rights in court.  Even a 
rewrite from scratch is a violation of copywrite law, 
it's what is called a "derived work", this also 
includes translations into other languages.  Now if 
you don't bother to register a work with the copywrite 
office, then if someone makes a copy or derived work 
without your permission, the copywrite law says that 
you can only recover actual damages and as your not
currently selling or planing to sell your Pp games you 
will have a hard time showing any damages in court.  
If you do register it (you have to pay a fee) then you 
can get punitive damages as well.  So the probable 
outcome of someone trying to publish and sell one of 
your Pp games without your permission is that you might
be able to get an injunction to stop them but are 
unlikely to get any money out of it.

Note that this is just my own understanding of the 
copywrite law, I'm not a lawyer and if you really need
to know about this you should see a real copywrite 
laywer.