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[Dacke]

Copyright laws hold back cultural development. But the way to create a better world, with less copyright, is to use and create free culture. If you want to get art for free, make sure to use things that are made to be free and make sure to make your game free as well.

[Chromanoid]

Exactly. By respecting the way people publish/license their work there is no need for draconian laws. Intangible goods are often seen as of low value, because they are easy to copy. But people forget how hard it is to create them. Respect creations and their creators

[Dacke]

Those laws were originally created to encourage creativity. Today they prevent remixing, which otherwise would become huge boost to culture. Intellectual property is a construction created by society in the hopes of promoting certain things, like entrepreneurship and creativity. (Compare to physical ownership which is not just an arbitrary agreement, since theft results in the loosing of stuff.)

The laws currently allows creators to limit use in some ways (like reuse and non-private copying) but not in others (like private copying, sharing of existing copies, reuse after your death). The laws aren't about respect for the creators but a societal agreement. Personally I think the current agreement prevents creation more than it helps. But as it is an agreement it can hopefully change over time. Mostly through the creation of a huge sphere of free culture, much like the sphere of free software.

For now, the best thing you can do to make the world a more sharing place is to use shared stuff and share your own stuff. So basically: when creating your own things, respect the laws - especially if you don't agree with them.

[Paul Eres]

the 'nothing is lost' argument had never made any sense to me. counterfeiting money doesn't result in the loss of money either, but it's still illegal to just print your own money and spend it. you gain, nobody else loses directly, except that it slightly, just slightly, devalues the value of all real money, since if the sum total of the money supply is increased, all money on average is then worth slightly less

using someone's work without permission is like counterfeiting someone's currency without permission, it makes the value of, say, licensing the material to people for money valueless, since if you get something for free (the use of their work, even if it's a remix) that others had to pay for, it makes it worth less for the owner and for the people who paid the license fees, since the people who paid feel cheated that they had to pay a license fee and you didn't, and the person who sells the license feels cheated that someone is getting something for free that he's selling. so it's an indirect loss to everyone else involved (except that one person) when someone doesn't play by the rules, much like you get with counterfeiting money

@Chromanoid oh, i thought magicka was a magic the gathering clone, seems it's more of a straighter rpg than i thought. still, there are plenty of high-quality card games; i remember playing a pretty good facebook one (although i don't remember its name offhand, but it was posted on this forum in the feedback section like half a year ago or something)

[Dacke]

Something is lost and something is won. It is a matter of establishing the correct balance between the two. In the current balance we can already do things that could be seen as "losses" for the creator, like how you can resell copies you have bought of things. This is included in the societal agreement and is as such seen as natural, even though it is just as much of a "loss". While other things that are not part of the tradition are seen as inherently wrong, even though they are just agreed upon to be forbidden for (originally) utilitaristic reasons. Today the limitations set by such laws work to inhibit culture more than in encourages it, so if we want to honour the original intentions of the laws a change would be in order.

[biomechanic]

Hippies like yourself already have a niche within current copyright law in the form of Creative Commons licenses, but the works of art that use CC, even the most permissive of those - Attribution - are still getting stolen.

In the case of CC BY just crediting the author would make the whole thing right, but the thieves won't even do that. Why? Because if you make a work of art you want people to know it is yours. And maybe you used someone else's work, but the result is yours and yours only and you're not going to dilute it by saying otherwise. And if the base artwork was licensed under CC SA you'd be required to make yours the same, and everyone would be able to use your work as they please - but you can't have that, it's your creation after all...

Also: remixing is good?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiLuiwo0pNk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNQtXzIuY_U

[Chromanoid]

remixing can be outstanding http://www.youtube.com/user/kutiman
for code there are several open source licenses, why should art be treated different?
as you said even free BY works get stolen. also there is often some kind of ignorance when it comes to using free works. GDC11: How the Box 2D hero caught Rovio out may be an interesting example regarding this.

[Christian Knudsen]

There is no requirement to credit Box2D, so Rovio didn't get "caught out".

[Chromanoid]

That is true. The headline might be a bit misleading. But imo donating, contributing or giving credit is a matter of good manners when you earn so much money with something free. Imo it shows how people forget that these free projects dont grow on trees or fall from the sky - they are made by people. IMO this is one of the threats to "free culture".

[Christian Knudsen]

That we can certainly agree on!

[Deviator]

Ok, it seems that majority of forum members have "lawful good" alignment.
It gives alarming signs that risk to be closed or get some money penalty is rather high and constant.

Idea to give users ability to attach their own pictures is interesting but i think it won't live, people are lazy...

Xion's idea of exploitation free slave labor is more viable, besides it called "win win" strategy, wich is widly used in MTG - they write the authors name on a cards.
If assume that start deck will need about 200 cards (50 representable ones + other crap) then next mega problem is emailing with at least 100-200 artists and they of course are artistic nature...

In that particular moment I think that maybe need to go to digital aritsts forums, which I was unable to find yet... and find out how generous they are 

[Dacke]

There are plenty of free images to use out there. Many images have a CC-0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license or expired copyright. Take a few minutes to read up on what that means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses

Just a tiny sample of pages who share images under free licenses:
http://opengameart.org/
http://commons.wikimedia.org
http://www.freeimages.co.uk/ (just a random hit when searching the web)

Here is a free and open card game. You are free to reuse the art from that game:
http://wtactics.org/

From sources like these you can find images like:

[bateleur]

Note that you need to be careful about "free image" sites in general because they might be wrong about the images being free. The images on http://opengameart.org/ are checked by the site staff before approval, so are probably OK, but few sites are so careful.

[Dacke]

Makes sense that you have to do some research on the source, thank you for pointing that out.