02-07-2021, 08:25 PM
Great to see you are keeping around, Dustin. Havard and I are, in the end, here today because you summoned us from the lonelinesses of our basements, back in '04/'05, to the old ZGG forum. Nobody has forgotten that. 
As to the copyright situation, I think the conversation on the topic has always been somewhat "backwards": Multiple people or "legal persons" sharing rights of use, copyright, or authorial rights is not a rarity - it's usually the norm. The question is whether they can work independently from one another without violating each other's respective rights, especially in the case of Arneson's works. It might not seem so, but from a legal point of view, this is super-interesting:
For example, could WotC really claim exclusive usage rights of Arneson's works related to the IPs they own? And how would Arneson's example translate to other authors like him if WotC couldn't make that claim? Linked to this is also the question about when a certain (legal) item stops being a derivative of its earlier model: Say, to name the simplest of examples, after which point would Havard's version of Blackmoor be fully owned by him despite the connection to material that is the IP of someone else?
We've had rulings on this stuff, and we've had the lobbying of Disney and similar companies, over the years - but until a ruling on Youtube fan videos from a few years ago, these questions were never really tested in court. I, for my part, would love to see such a test happen, especially in connection with D&D.
As to the copyright situation, I think the conversation on the topic has always been somewhat "backwards": Multiple people or "legal persons" sharing rights of use, copyright, or authorial rights is not a rarity - it's usually the norm. The question is whether they can work independently from one another without violating each other's respective rights, especially in the case of Arneson's works. It might not seem so, but from a legal point of view, this is super-interesting:
For example, could WotC really claim exclusive usage rights of Arneson's works related to the IPs they own? And how would Arneson's example translate to other authors like him if WotC couldn't make that claim? Linked to this is also the question about when a certain (legal) item stops being a derivative of its earlier model: Say, to name the simplest of examples, after which point would Havard's version of Blackmoor be fully owned by him despite the connection to material that is the IP of someone else?
We've had rulings on this stuff, and we've had the lobbying of Disney and similar companies, over the years - but until a ruling on Youtube fan videos from a few years ago, these questions were never really tested in court. I, for my part, would love to see such a test happen, especially in connection with D&D.