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Why IP Law is a Bad Idea

Game development is creative, chaotic, and collaborative. Yet, we're expected to cram all that energy into the rigid box of "intellectual property" — a system that was built for 18th-century book printers, not modern interactive art.

This document explores why traditional IP law doesn't serve game developers well, how it actively slows down creativity, and what healthier, community-driven alternatives look like.

For Game Developers

1. IP Was Made for Monopoly, Not Creativity

The idea behind copyright and patents was to incentivize creation by giving creators temporary monopolies over their work. In reality, those monopolies mainly benefit whoever has the most lawyers — not the most ideas.

Small devs rarely have the money to enforce their "rights."
Big studios use IP to fence off ideas and crush competition.
Instead of collaboration, everyone's scared of "getting sued."

Games thrive on shared knowledge — engines, mods, shaders, design patterns — not on locked-down assets and NDAs.

2. Copying Is Not Stealing — It's How Games Evolve

In game dev, everyone copies. We copy mechanics, UI ideas, code snippets, shader tricks, level design techniques, marketing strategies — and that's a good thing. It's how the medium grows.

"Stealing" a game's idea doesn't erase the original. It just adds to the creative pool. IP law pretends ideas are scarce, when in reality they multiply through sharing.

The biggest innovations in games — from Doom mods to Minecraft clones to open-source engines — happened because people borrowed, remixed, and built on top of each other's work.

3. IP Law Rewards the Wrong Things

What IP protects isn't creativity — it's ownership. You can't copyright gameplay. You can copyright art and code, but not fun.

The result? Companies copyright logos and characters, then milk them endlessly while shutting down fan games, mods, and ROM communities that actually keep their worlds alive.

Meanwhile, indie devs waste energy worrying about being "copied" instead of improving their craft. Truth is: if someone copies your idea and does it better — that's on you to evolve, not on the cops to fix.

4. Fighting Pirates Is a Losing Battle

Piracy is often framed as theft, but in practice it's free marketing. People pirate for all kinds of reasons — price, accessibility, curiosity — and many of them later become genuine fans and paying supporters.

Treating pirates as enemies only alienates the most enthusiastic part of your audience.

Games that embrace accessibility and goodwill (like Dwarf Fortress or Stardew Valley's community mods) often do better in the long run than those hiding behind DRM walls.

5. The Real Problem: Fear and Scarcity Thinking

Most of IP law is rooted in fear:

"If I don't control this, I'll lose everything."
"If people copy me, I'll never make money."

But creativity doesn't work like that anymore. Visibility, community trust, and openness create far more long-term value than artificial scarcity ever could. People support devs they respect, not those who threaten them with takedowns.

6. The Better Way: Open Sharing, Collaboration, and Community

There's a healthier model — one that's already working in open-source and indie circles.

Permissive open licenses (like MIT, BSD, or Creative Commons Attribution) let others use and build on your work — even commercially — as long as they give credit.
Community norms replace legal threats. You protect your work with transparency, reputation, and honesty, not lawsuits.
Collaboration beats control. When others remix or expand on your ideas, everyone benefits. Their success reflects back on you.

Openness doesn't mean losing control — it means gaining reach, goodwill, and evolution.

7. What This Means for Game Devs

Rethinking IP isn't about giving up money or recognition. It's about shifting focus:

From ownership → to impact
From fear → to trust
From control → to collaboration

You can still sell your game, run a Patreon, or make a living. But you'll do it through community goodwill and creative freedom — not through DMCA wars and legal paranoia.

            TL;DR
            IP law mostly protects corporations, not creators.
Copying drives innovation; monopolies slow it down.
Pirates aren't enemies — they're potential allies and fans.
Being open builds community, reputation, and long-term support.

        

The future of gamedev isn't locked behind copyright. It's open, shared, and built by creators who care more about making great games than about "owning" them.

Practical Guide: How to Use a Permissive License for Your Game

Pick a simple license.
- For code: use the MIT License.
- For art, music, writing: use CC-BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution).
- If you want total public domain, use CC0 — that's the "do whatever you want" option.
Add a LICENSE file to your repo or game folder with the text of the license.
Credit visibly. Somewhere in the game or readme, write something like:
"Game originally created by [Team Name], released under the MIT License."
Encourage forks, not fakes. If someone builds on your work, that's fine — just ask they use a different name and don't impersonate the original.
Stay chill. The real power comes from community respect, not legal restriction. People who love what you made will remember your name and come back for more.

General Perspective

Economic and Innovation-Based Critiques

Monopoly Inefficiency

IP rights create artificial monopolies.
Monopolies raise prices, restrict access, and slow follow-on innovation.
Many critics argue that most innovation happens despite IP protection, not because of it.

Key thinkers: Michele Boldrin & David K. Levine (Against Intellectual Monopoly, 2008)
They argue that IP leads to rent-seeking, litigation, and stagnation rather than productive innovation.

Empirical Evidence on Weak Incentives

Studies suggest weak or mixed correlation between IP strength and innovation rates (e.g., in software and pharmaceuticals).
Alternative incentive systems — prizes, grants, first-mover advantage — can often yield more innovation without monopolies.

Example: The open-source software movement (Linux, Apache, etc.) thrives without traditional IP protection.

Patent Thickets & Litigation Costs

Overlapping patents ("thickets") stifle startups and block entry.
Large firms use patents strategically to suppress competition.
"Patent trolls" exploit litigation to extract settlements rather than create value.

Philosophical & Ethical Critiques

Information Wants to Be Free

Ideas are non-rivalrous: one person's use doesn't reduce another's.
Restricting access to ideas violates the natural abundance of knowledge.
Copying is not theft because nothing tangible is taken.

Stewart Brand's famous line: "Information wants to be free."

Lockean Property Theory Doesn't Fit

John Locke's theory justifies property because of scarcity and labor-mixing.
Ideas don't fit this model: copying doesn't deprive others of their use.
So IP doesn't meet the moral justification for property rights.

Critics: Tom Palmer, Stephan Kinsella ("Against Intellectual Property")

Freedom of Expression

IP restricts creativity and speech by limiting what people can say, remix, or build upon.
Copyright law especially limits artistic freedom (sampling, parody, transformative works).

Cultural and Social Critiques

Cultural Commons

Culture and knowledge grow through shared use and reinterpretation.
IP locks up the commons, slowing cultural evolution.
"Copying" is a fundamental part of learning, art, and science.

Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons): argues for flexible licenses to restore balance between creators and users.

Global Justice & Access

IP, especially in medicine and education, harms poor countries by making life-saving drugs and knowledge unaffordable.
TRIPS (WTO IP agreement) is often seen as neo-colonial: rich countries impose IP regimes that benefit their corporations.

Example: Generic drug production blocked by pharmaceutical patents during AIDS crisis.

Technological Critiques

Digital Reproducibility

The internet makes copying nearly costless and ubiquitous.
Trying to enforce IP in this environment is technologically unrealistic and socially costly.
Enforcement leads to surveillance, censorship, and overreach (e.g., DMCA takedowns).

Alternative Innovation Models

Open innovation, crowdfunding, and collaborative models (Wikipedia, open-source, scientific preprints) thrive without strict IP.
Suggests creativity doesn't depend on exclusive rights.

Radical or Abolitionist Perspectives

Anarchist / Libertarian view: IP is a state-granted privilege, not a true property right.
Leftist view: IP reinforces capitalist control over information, creativity, and medicine.
Pragmatist view: Abolish or drastically limit IP to promote innovation and equity.

Representative Works and Authors

Author / Work	Main Argument
Michele Boldrin & David K. Levine Against Intellectual Monopoly	IP hinders innovation and economic growth.
Stephan Kinsella "Against Intellectual Property"	IP violates libertarian property principles.
Lawrence Lessig Free Culture	Overreaching copyright suppresses creativity.
Yochai Benkler The Wealth of Networks	Commons-based peer production outperforms IP-driven models.
Cory Doctorow Information Doesn't Want to Be Free	IP harms artists and audiences in the digital age.
Thomas Jefferson Letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813	"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine."

Inspirations

Copyleft (Wikipedia)
MIT License (Wikipedia)

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