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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Use of derivatives by original author.

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: longdead <longdead AT gmail.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Use of derivatives by original author.
  • Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 14:41:40 -0500

Mark Havenner wrote:

If you were to allow others to use the work commercially you could
potentially increase your market. With "attribution" you and your
theoretical competitor are using the same brand and you both benefit from
that. Restricting contributors to non-commercial endeavors undermines the
point of open content.

There is no incentive for someone to contribute to your RPG if you are
simply going to snatch and republish it, taking their rights to do so
themselves. However, if you and theoretical competitors are both publishing
materials the market can grow and you can tap your materials into a market
you didn't have before. The economy of open content suggests that the more
people that use the same brand the larger the brand's market share becomes
and although you may not have received royalties from others using your
brand you can tap into that person's market whenever you like.

I would personally reconsider your outlook on this and as a RPG publisher
myself I know the open economy actually works.

Take a look at this article for more detail on the subject:

http://www.basilicus.org/wiki/index.php/Open_content#Why_Own_an_Idea.3F

On 9/25/05 11:36 AM, "longdead" <longdead AT gmail.com> wrote:


Well, I did want to allow them to use, modify and distribute non-commercially as much as they wanted. And I plan on allowing the non-commercial use of the book completely for free. As in I would host all the material for free and my website and allow unrestricted access. In fact, I would like to allow them to print up copies of my book and or website and hand them out for free if they wanted. I'm not looking to get rich off of other peoples work. While the mechanics of the game would be available under either a creative commons or an open gaming license, I was hoping for a way to release the game world setting and story, non-commercially, but if someone added something significant to the game world I would like to be able to reincorporate it into books, and not be restricted from selling printed copies of the books. Unless I'm mistaken this actually goes beyond what most of the roleplaying game books publishers allow. Especially since the entire book and any contributed content would be available for free on my website.

Matt Carr





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