Blizzard Sued By Game Guide Creator

Gamespot reports on a suit brought by a game guide creator against Warcraft-maker Blizzard Entertainment. The two parties will be going to court because of an attempt by Blizzard to quash a guide the plaintiff created for the World of Warcraft MMORPG. Offered electronically through eBay, the company claims that the guide creator is infringing on their IP. From the article: "Kopp's complaint argues that his book does not infringe on any of the companies' copyrights for several reasons: The book presents a disclaimer on its first page about its 'unauthorized' nature, contains no copyrighted text or storylines from the game, and makes "fair use" of selected screenshots under copyright law, the complaint said."

Comments

Re:More reasons for repudiating copyright and IP

[KDR_11k]

If you went to Target and bought a bottle of Soda with the word 'Coke' on it, and it had coffee in it (actually, see Coke Blak, heh), or had a knockoff cola, you'd stop shopping at Target. Leave the quality control to the middle man between you and Coke -- that's their job to make sure you're happy.

But you wouldn't know which store is Target, either. Or visit some other place, you couldn't rely on the names at all to help you identify anything, you could go into Target and find a grocery store or a bar or a brothel. You wouldn't know which "Coke" they are selling until you try it, you could not carry over any previous experience with any product. All that just for some idea that "names should belong to noone".

If you can do a job cheaper, the market will prosper. I don't believe in derivative profits being forced by law -- I believe the market sets many precedents why people will buy the original over the knockoff (see "generic products" for details).

Problem is when you add media to the deal. With media the good sold is information, not the physical medium. But there would be no protection on the information and we have technology to duplicate the information without loss of quality. Concrete example: Take CDs. Data on a CD can take months or years and thousands or millions of dollars to produce but the actual medium only costs pennies these days. As you know, it's trivial to just take a CD and make an exact duplicate of it. A leech could sell tons of CDs for 1$ a piece by simply copying content he did not create. The original creator cannot offer any advantage to the buyer (except for the feeling of supporting the creator but few care about that) that the copiers cannot offer. So the creator would have to compete with the leeches on price directly but the leech has no development costs to cover. As a result the leech has a competitive advantage over the creator.

A market for data simply cannot exist without some restriction on just going out and copying it. And while you may argue that it's better to create art for the love of it instead of for money, you cannot deny that it would lower the productivity of artists simply because they would have to spend time they would spend on creating art on earning the money to live. Oh, and of course because they can't use the same budget current for-profit art uses. While some argue that Hollywood movies are unnecessary I still think that it would mean a loss of variety and artistic freedom. It's not like anyone's preventing you from making your own art in your free time, that possibility always remains. But without copyright the freedom to use expensive elements in your art would be greatly reduced, simply because you can't afford it.