On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 11:36 PM, Ben Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Does anyone know enough about "real world" copyright law to tell if a > publication like the AWJ, which includes no verbatim text from other > players, but only discusses in-game events in depth, would infringe on > anything sticky?
IANAL, but the AWJ doesn't seem to come even close to "derivative work" status, and that would be about the only way to violate someone's copyright without actually copying anything. Under American copyright law, even if the AWJ was doing substantial quoting of messages it would almost certain fall under the Fair Use exemptions. Of course, a good way to fix this sort of issue would be to adopt a rule stating that participants agree to license their messages under, say, GFDL or CC-BY to cover future postings, then get licenses from as many current and former participants as possible for past messages to make a good part of the archives usable. Not that I think putting bits of Agora under the laws of a jurisdiction other than Agora itself is a great idea. We'd probably see some case appealed out of the equity courts and into a real world court before long.
