Currently studying IT at the University of Piraeus, Greece. I'm pretty interested in game development and FOSS, and hope to contribute to both. I'm not very good at programming, but I believe making games is an efficient and fun way to improve one's coding skills.

Report RSS Save MERP! And a note on strict IP

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A few days ago, the Middle-Earth RolePlaying (MERP) mod was sent a Cease & Desist by Warner Bros. Although the modders offered to remove the Ringbearer questline, or even just work privately on the mod (the latter would have been justified for WB in my mind), WB refused both, and demands the immediate C&D. You can read about the whole story on their site. TotalBiscuit made some good points in his video (third question). There's also a petition to save MERP, so if you want to help this mod, you can sign it here (at the time of writing it has 13,000+ signatures).
The above is just the latest of a number of mods/fangames to be shut down. It's something that has been happening for nearly as long as community mods exist (remember the great-looking Chrono Ressurection?). Why would they do that? Many people would argue that since the mods are free, the companies don't lose any money to a competitor.
Well, actually, they do - indirectly. While people don't spend their money on the mod, it's possible that they won't need another game of the same genre/universe. This is especially the case when the mods seem to be of a better quality than the games the company produces (and seeing the last two single-player experiences published by Warner Bros., Aragorn's Quest and War in the North, this seems to be the case). It's not something the companies should be proud of, but this happens when a game is made for short-term profit rather than out of respect to the original universe. Believe me, it shows in the long run. It's perfectly undestandable that IP holders want to protect their IP. It's like someone who spends years working on a painting, only to have it copied by another painter as soon as it finished, and the other painter sells millions while the original creator barely receives any credit.
Elven bow and daggers
But the fact that someone with an inferior product is able to shut down anyone who surpasses it, or just anyone using the product's IP, doesn't sound very right. This is not what IP is for. IP is made so that the creator of something has the authority over it, preventing other parties from messing with anything he/she created in a way that hurts the creaton. But now the situation at hand is that the IP holder - who by the way isn't the original creator of the universe, but that's an entirely different story - messes with the original content in a less respectful way than the modders do, and produces an inferior product at that; the opposite of what the IP laws are made for.
Art, science etc. is like a grid, where nothing is born new; everything has some sort of ancestor, and the grid as a whole advances only when the descendants become better than the previous generation. This is how every single achievement in human history has been made, by building upon something that was already there and surpassing it. This introduces a snowball effect: the more there is of something, the easier it is to create something new, and the higher the probability is that we will get something superior. Thus, creators should always strive to make art as a whole better. There are two ways to do that: Either make something good yourself, or let others improve upon your work. You're either the descendant or the ancestor, and most of the times you're both. What strict IP does is, practically, "sterilize" art, so that there are no direct descendants except the few who come only from one creator, namely the the holder of the IP. It's stopping the grid midway and continuing with only single, parallel threads. But parallel threads meet only in infinite, thus removing every combination with any other IP, which in turn reduces diversity. It's not only less diverse, it's also less robust. A single thread can be removed more easily if it isn't attached to another thread. The art that has shared nothing with anyone else will cease to exist if it is stopped, instead of living on as a part of something else. This is what strict IP does. Now, imagine every single IP holder doing just that. It would mean that we would only be able to work with holder-free IPs, those who have been created long enough ago for the IP to end. Which just sets us many years back on the grid, ignoring any progress which has been made in the last century or so. It'd cripple art, science and any other field. This could be the result of strict IP.
Concept - Rohan Fortress - Angatur
Please note that I'm only referring to "strict" IP. The problem at hand isn't the IP protection; this is something that's needed as well. The above mentioned painter won't have any incentive to draw more paintings, if he and his art aren't protected in some way. IP laws are necessary. But to what extent? And who decides over the extent? TotalBiscuit made a good case: "When you have power, the best thing to do is exercise it only when absolutely needed.", aka with great power comes great responsibility. Someone has to regulate how strict the IP will be. And the one who should be responsible for this isn't the state, but the creator, or in a broader sense, the IP holder. As a creator himself, he should be able to distinguish between safety and greed. This is, I think, the biggest responsibility of an IP holder. Not to enforce the IP wherever and whenever he/she can. But to watch over the IP he's holding and try to make the most out of it, whether it is him who advances it or any other person. This fine balance of defense and openness is what defines a good IP holder, and in this case, Warner Bros has a long way to go.

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