Piecepack games, porting, copyright, free culture (was: New game added to the wiki: Piecepack Isle)

[Ben Finney <ben+yahoogroups@...>]

"littlebrothertimmy"
<littlebrothertimmy@...> writes:

> I explicitly did not add anything about the rights, since the original
> game is still available.

Yes. The original game's copyright holder continues to hold their
copyright.

> The rules I made are not mine, so I have no rights over them. I just
> adapted the original rules, so this game can be played with the
> piecepack system.

Unfortunately, the current copyright regime in the world means that,
with very narrow and specific exceptions, all creative expression is
automatically subject to copyright, and just about any useful action
with the work is limited to the copyright holder.

Which, even if you didn't ask for it and don't really want it, is you in
this case.

> Does anyone know how to handle a situation like this? Am I allowed to
> have some kind of power over rules that aren't really mine (in the
> sense that I can say these rules can be coppied, modified, and/or
> redistributed)?

Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...> writes:

> Yes. The rules for the Good Portsmanship contest covered this.
>
> http://www.ludism.org/piecepack/pp7.html

In brief: Your re-statement of the Forbidden Island rules in your own
words is your own work, and you thereby hold copyright in it.

There are all sorts of ways you could *simultaneously* be bound by the
copyright of the Forbidden Island rules, or of any other creative works
you based yours on. But that's a separate issue: you definitely hold
copyright in your own expression.

Your work isn't free, even if it's on the internet, until you explicitly
license it to all recipients under free license terms, preferably by
stating that grant of license in the work itself.

It's unfortunate that many of the Piecepack game rules are under limited
license terms that are not free (and some that grant no license at all).
See <URL:http://freedomdefined.org/> for a discussion of freedoms
necessary to make a work free culture.

For Piecepack games, to encourage free culture, I recommend granting
license under the CC-By-SA-3.0 terms; if you want to be even more
lenient, the CC-By-3.0 or even the CC0 terms may suit you.

-- 
 &#92;                             “I'm a born-again atheist.” —Gore Vidal |
  `&#92;                                                                   |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney