Okay, so Open RPG Creative (ORC) is out and a lot of people want to know whether they should use it or another license… and sadly ORC doesn’t really provide a lot of guidance one how to do that – its jargon laden text reads like something written by a copyright lawyer for copyright lawyers… hang on…
…I am being told Brian Lewis of Azora Law, lead on the ORC project, is a copyright lawyer who works in a firm of copyright lawyers.
Well that explains a lot.
So, here’s your quick and dirty primer to understanding licenses and which is right for you.
In case you don’t know me, my background is I’m a law student in New Zealand. I’m a not a lawyer, I’m definitely not your lawyer and what follows is not personalized legal advice and doesn’t form and sort of client-lawyer privilege. Please do not rely on blog posts for your legal advice.
Qualifying for copyright, or “does it even?”
Thanks to a generation of grifters trying to sell you fake money to buy ugly images of apes, there is a lot of confusion about what constitutes intellectual property. Most recently, that’s been compounded by grifters trying to sell subscriptions to AI programs that make drawings of big titty anime girls no matter the prompt.
It’s made even more confusing in that lots of people talk about US laws like they’re universal (looking at you ORC), when in fact they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
For that reason the following primer is deliberately vague and doesn’t cite any particular tests, because the tests and the standards used will be determined by the jurisdictions involved.
Continue reading So you want to license…