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"CopyCatz"
An article by Cathy of Magnolia Blossom
Cattery, June 2001
This article is going to raise a few eyebrows and probably earn me some hatemail.
Because I'm going to talk about copyright.
But not from the angle that you expect.
Lots of fights occur in the petz community,
and most of them start with:
"You copied me!"
A neat webpage design. Brindle and wheaten petz. Flare danes. Site names. Hexing spots on petz. Anyone who's spent a while in the petz community is nodding their head and can probably add to this list. All of these innovations resulted in vicious fights.
And the sad thing is, in most cases the accused has never heard of the work that they're said to have copied. There are hundreds... no, thousands, maybe millions... of petz fans in the world, and similar ideas can happen. Hexers discover the same in-game pattern and think, "hey, that would look great on a dane." Something inspires multiple people. For example, in the last year alone, I've seen at least three people come up with petz version of agility trials, four attempt new show point systems, three petz Survivor games... and those are just the ones I've seen, there are probably more! In addition to my Magnolia Blossom Cattery, there's been a Magnolia Kennelz/Cattery and a Magnolia Grove petz site. None of us had heard of one another until we noticed the familiar sounding links on a big link page.
Whether they've based their creation on someone else's work or not, when the people involved go at one another's throats grade-school level spats deteriorate into flame wars and even threats of legal action. The word "copyright" is thrown around a lot in such a fracas. But what does the copyright code actually say?
US Copyright Code, Title 17, Section 102: "Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. "
This covers a lot. Copyright protects everything that you create. Your website, your graphics, your hexed breedz, your petz, your words... You are the only one who can distribute them, use them, perform them, or whatever-verb-the-situation-requires them.. But the copyright code also says:
US Copyright Code, Title 17, Section 102: "(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
This means that I can keep you from taking the specific file that I made to use for your webpage's background, but I can't prohibit you from using a graphic as your webpage's background --- and thank goodness! How would we ever make any progress if that was the case? Anso would have made one petz fan page, and that would be it... none of us could make any petz webpages... ever... but copyright law doesn't work that way.
Of course, respect for one another should stop us from duplicating one another's ideas exactly. But nothing says that you can't improve upon a technique. The Dogz Kennel Club was created years after the Petz Kennel Club and is based on the same idea --- modeling real dogz showz in petz --- yet no one's lynching the DKC fans for being copycatz because they came up with another system. I created a petz themed skin for WinAmp, but if you can make a better one --- or one with a different color scheme --- then I encourage you to do so! We need to ask ourselves: is our goal progress, or egotistical self-glorification? What if the people who figured out how to hex had refused to share the idea? What if EPCPS had refused to let any other site use their show point system? The petz community as we know it wouldn't exist. Creators should be given credit for their ideas, but they should also be willing to share those ideas!
Don't come away from this thinking that I'm declaring open season on everything in the petz community. If someone wants something to remain unique, you should respect that, and you should contact the original creator whenever possible. My point is simply that we should all stop objecting when someone else adds to our ideas, or comes up with a similar idea independantly. We should support one another's natural creativity instead of letting vanity and jealousy turn our online community into a bloodbath.
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See www.petz.com for more about the Petz games! |
Want
to email cathy? Everything related to this site should go to evania@covingtoninnovations.com.
I can't check it very often, but I will make every effort to get back to you...
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