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Recently I saw a post on the FlashKit forums that got me thinking about intellectual property. The basic premise is this: Some time ago one of the forum members, Kakihara, posted a game idea with an incomplete demo. The game concept was generally well received, but Kakihara never really followed the idea up. Recently he was browsing the web and found a game that seemed suspiciously like the one he had posted.
Okay, I'm going out on a limb here, but this post really addresses some issues that I find I have been mulling over a lot lately.
First of all, the issue of intellectual property. The world is rapidly advancing, and it seems like with each new advance people are trying to lock things down for personal gain as much as possible.
I remember there used to be a saying, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." But these days it seems like the saying should be changed to, "Litigation is the sincerest reply to mimicry."
It's a strange situation. As we create more and more labour saving devices, the value of our work actually decreases. Thus, more people move into the idea industry, which in turn saturates it and reults in lower value for ideas. To offset this, people generalize their ideas and lock them down more to allow for greater gain from a lesser commodity.
It has grown to the point where disputes over virtual goods are getting bloody. Take the recent case of the Chinese Gamer who was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing someone in a dispute over vitual goods. The item in question never existed, it's value is purely in the minds of the gamers.
It makes me wonder if perhaps there is a market for virtual insurance. Players pay me a certain amount of money every month, and if something happens to their account or their goods, we buy them a new account or a comparable item off eBay.
Crap, now that I've said that, someone is going to do it, and I'll have to sue them.
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