The information you disagree with was quoted from bitlaw, and was provided by the Minneapolis law firm of Beck & Tysver.

Here is a related quote from the US Copyright Office:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pd...

"If a work is created by an independent contractor (that is, someone who is not an employee under the general common law of agency), then the work is a specially ordered or commissioned work, and part 2 of the statutory definition applies. Such a work can be a work made for hire only if both of the following conditions are met: (1) it comes within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2 of the definition and (2) there is a written agreement between the parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire."

If you believe the US Copyright Office are wrong, you'll have to take that up with them.

From the same link:

"To help determine who is an employee, the Supreme Court in CCNV v. Reid identified certain factors that characterize an “employer-employee” relationship as defined by agency law:

1 Control by the employer over the work (e.g., the employer may determine how the work is done, has the work done at the employer’s location, and provides equipment or other means to create work)

2 Control by employer over the employee (e.g., the employer controls the employee’s schedule in creating work, has the right to have the employee perform other assignments, determines the method of payment, and/or has the right to hire the employee’s assistants)

3 Status and conduct of employer (e.g., the employer is in business to produce such works, provides the employee with benefits, and/or withholds tax from the employee’s payment)"

It also states "These factors are not exhaustive", however "The closer an employment relationship comes to regular, salaried employment, the more likely it is that a work created within the scope of that employment would be a work made for hire."

If none of those factors exist, you're going to have a hard time claiming that they're an employee. But believe me, that's a good thing. You don't want your builders demanding backpaid minimum wage…

Close. The creator of the derivative work only owns the additions they've made. If you base a mud on an existing copyright protected work, the owner of that copyright can require you to sign over the parts you own as a condition of remaining open. Or they can require you to remove all the additions and stick strictly to canon, which I think would pretty much describe pernmush.
Authors return submissions unread for several reasons. 1) Fan submissions typically suck. 2) The characters, or some other details, are inconsistant with what the author had already established. 3) The author has already written the story and this fan has only proven that they've been paying attention to the clues. 4) Getting sued sucks. The last reason is the one you hear about, because most authors don't like being mean to their fans. By returning it unread, they don't have to hurt anyone's feelings. As a side benefit, they aren't as likely to be sued. (It can still happen, but this filters the nuts a bit finer.)

The bottom line is that if you run a mud based on someone else's world without permission, you're on borrowed time.

Obviously, yes, as described under 17 USC 103 (b).



Well now you're explicitly talking about the transfer of copyright. Yes, the original author (or indeed anyone else) can request that. Even on a generic fantasy mud, with completely original areas, the owner could demand that the builder sign over their copyright upon submission.

The builder could of course refuse, and if the area was a derivative then the copyright holder of the original work could reject their rights. Neither party could then use the area as-is - although the builder could remove references to the copyrighted material and then use it.



As long as the area is a derivative, the copyright holder can require pretty much anything they like. The builder then has the choice of either (1) complying with those requirements, or (2) changing their area so that it's no longer a derivative.

Unlike changing another codebase, where it's always going to be a derivative, an area in this case is likely to be a completely original work that is only a 'derivative' because it includes references to copyrighted material, and thus is only a derivative while it contains those references.

Changing a single area is usually easy enough, and not a big loss when it's not. Changing your whole mud, not so much. Especially since being based on such-and-such is your main draw. It is likely that the dozens of Star Wars muds would disappear if faced with this situation.

The more time you've invested, the more effort it'll be, certainly. Gemstone III had much the same problem when their licence with Iron Crown Enterprises expired.

In those cases… grep ;)

Renaming things may not be enough. Case in point: Nora Roberts' lawsuit against Janet Daily, who had lifted whole passages from her, only changing the names.

True there, if the mud has ripped entire passages from books they're up a creek. It's one thing to have fan-fiction, quite another to plaguerise works.

I'm talking about areas with same named creatures, ie say Drizz't in a FR mud, or Sauron in a Tolkien mud etc. Not ones that take chapter 3 from Wheel of Time or the likes ;)

Agreed - as I said before, I was really talking about the sort of area which is "a completely original work that is only a 'derivative' because it includes references to copyrighted material".

Once again, you did not answer my question. Which bar association are you a member of.

Yes, I understand quite well that BitLaw is maintained by a law firm. However, it is NOT law, in fact their own disclaimer states clearly that you should NOT use it for legal advice, and that you SHOULD consult a lawyer. Since I did consult a lawyer, and it was HIS opinion that what I did was legal. I'd like to know where your bar association membership lies.

Once again, I will post the disclaimer here, so you could perhaps take a moment to read what Beck & Tysver's opinion of using their site for legal advice is:





Now, this is the 6th time I've stated this… There was a written agreement between myself and the builders. The fact that after 5 times you continue to ignore this reminds me of a child plugging their ears to avoid hearing what they don't want to. The agreement made between myself and the said builders was reviewed by a member of the NM state bar association.

Once again, which bar association are you a member of?

Actually at no time did you say there was a "written agreement".

You originally stated: It's my personal view that builders are volunteer workers for the MUD. As such, any and all work they provide belongs to the mud specifically.

I then responded: Unless your builder is an employee (as defined under the common law of agency) or has explicitly signed away their rights (for example, via a work-for-hire agreement) then they are the copyright holder.

You then replied: Having just read both of those sites, I would have to disagree.

You then continued to disagree, continually changing your argument and making absurd claims which were clearly ignorant of the law. For example you claimed, and I quote:

"I work as a contractor. My clients do not control my work hours. They do not control who I associate with, or subcontract with. They do not provide me with tax with-holdings. They do not provide my work area.

They do however, have full rights to the work I produce for them."

To which I responded, with a quote from the US Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pd...):

"If a work is created by an independent contractor (that is, someone who is not an employee under the general common law of agency), then the work is a specially ordered or commissioned work, and part 2 of the statutory de?nition applies. Such a work can be a work made for hire only if both of the following conditions are met: (1) it comes within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2 of the de?nition and (2) there is a written agreement between the parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire."

And how do you respond to having your argument proven invalid? Do you admit that you're wrong? No, of course not. Instead you try to claim that the information I quoted is invalid because I'm not a lawyer (even though it was quoted from the US Copyright Office), and then change your argument again, this time suddenly claiming that you'd really had a "written agreement" (as per my previous quote) all along.

You claim you've spoken to a lawyer? Well, I say you're lying. You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about, you're completely unable to understand basic legal concepts even when provided with the links (heck, you can't even spell copyright half the time). And all you've done is adapt your arguments and then claim that's what you were really saying all along, then try to attack my credability when I provide links to legal sources which prove how wrong you are.

If a lawyer was consulted, and advice was given, then I would have to agree that said advice trumps anything you'll find on the web, even if it is provided by the US Copyright Office. Even the government's own website isn't supposed to be construed as legal advice. Though there may not be a disclaimer in place saying so. Any sane person with a true legal situation to resolve should be speaking to an attorney and not relying on websites to provide legal advice.

Now unless you've spoken to Justice's lawyer, how do you know that what he's telling you isn't what the lawyer told him? You are relying on legal postings on websites to argue your case. Not the advice of an attorney.

There are always people who say "my lawyer said this" or "my lawyer said that", often in response to other such claims. I could say that I've spoken to 20 lawyers and they all told me that Justice is wrong - but what would it prove?

There is no way to know whether someone really spoke to a lawyer, or if they did, what that lawyer really said and within what context. The only way to have any sort of reasonable discussion on these forums is to cite links to official legal sources that everyone can read up on and verify.

For your own mud, sure, speak to a lawyer. But for discussions we need verifyable facts. Otherwise some smartass will just respond to every post with "My lawyer says I'm right".

I think the main point here though is that the sites we link back and forth to aren't considered solid advice. They're only opinions on how the site's operators feel the law works. This is why the responsible ones carry disclaimers saying what they post does not constitute legal advice and that you should consult an attorney for your specific situation.

All too often where muds are concerned, people speak of their specific situations as though that applies to everyone in general and this is where a lot of the misunderstandings and assumptions come from. When it comes to those specifics, we can either take the person at their word, or we can accuse them of lying and dismiss their entire argument on that basis.

as a former long time builder and possibly returning builder the ONLY rigths i ever demand in reguards to my area that me and all my fellow builders form back itn eh day demanded and i think deseverd was a permanent credit somewhere int eh mud ( not burried to never been seen but atleast listed inteh /credit command or something to that effect

allow me to also add that i of course as the build reserve teh right to reuse my work in any way i see fit in other ventures as well

I would think that most muds would (should?) have no problem giving the builders credit in the areas command or some other place that identifies the credit being given to the section for which it applies, but unless the mud doesn't have that sort of builder credit built into their areas command (or code base equivalent) I'd think that adding your name to the credits command, which generally gives credit to the coders and others who've impacted far more than an area (or even a few areas), seems a bit overkill. As for the right to reuse your work elsewhere, I see that as a part of your copyrights to begin with, but other admins may not and might even have you sign (physically or digitally) an agreement before they allow you to build for them which specifically addresses that.

I certainly hope that your building reflects/reflected better spelling and grammar than the above post did though. :sad:

I believe that unless you are asked to sign (explicitly or implicitly) something giving exclusive rights to the MUD, you have the right to use your production anywhere since it's yours. An "implicit signature" would be of the form: "if you build on this MUD, you are giving us the exclusive right to it". (It's a lot like if you develop something at a university using their computers etc., you have given them some amount of possession of whatever you did. E.g. Stanford got very rich when Google went public, because Google was initially developed as Stanford student research.)

As an admin, I'm not so much worried about the material being used elsewhere (without the code to run it, it's not too useful anyhow) but I am worried about the right to use it suddenly disappear from the MUD. So I would ask people to sign something along the lines of giving the MUD eternal right to use the material, but not exclusively.

Such an "implicit signature" is not sufficient for the transfer of exclusive rights. See here:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.htm...

"Any or all of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights or any subdivision of those rights may be transferred, but the transfer of exclusive rights is not valid unless that transfer is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent. Transfer of a right on a nonexclusive basis does not require a written agreement."



Some universities have that requirement, yes - it'll be in the paperwork that you signed before you started your classes.



Non-exclusive rights are more easily given, and also more likely to be given; after being burnt once (eg signing away their rights to areas produced for one of the many muds that vanish overnight) most builders will be extremely wary about repeating the same mistake on another mud.

If you don't want people using the same areas elsewhere, another approach is to grant people permission to create areas based on your (copyrighted) thematic story, but only when used within your mud - in effect, their areas will become derivatives of your work in the same way as (for example) the Shire area is derived from Lord of the Rings. Although they'll still own the copyright to their area, they'll be legally obliged to remove all references to your theme if they wish to use the area in another mud, thus ensuring that other muds won't be able to use an exact copy of the area.

I was speaking a little loosely and you're right to point that out. But, as is often the case with what I shall loosely term "intimidation" policies, the implicit signature is sometimes, unfortunately, enough to deter most people from enforcing their right. The difference between the law and what a community thinks the law is can also contribute. (And no, that is not a jab referring to our previous conversation.)


I didn't have to sign such paperwork; I had very little paperwork to sign in general, and I would have noticed a copyright form. (See below) Sure, some project classes had me sign such paperwork, especially the ones where we were likely to produce something with the potential to be more or less useful. That said, it is in the terms and conditions of using university resources: by using these computing resources, you agree to bla bla bla.

I note on the university's policy site that they give the form to faculty, staff, graduate students and post-docs who come to do research. I did my undergrad here and am wrapping up my MS, but am not a PhD student, so that could be why they did not have me sign such a form as a condition of joining the university. After all, a PhD student doing research is more likely to produce something, on university premises and that the school would be interested in, than an undergrad or master's student. (In fact, the main purpose of a PhD student is precisely to produce such research…)