
Game Designers Workshop
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Dave Nilsen wrote the following policy explanation in August of
1994 (according to Loren Wiseman):

I'd like to take a few moments to explain some things so we can
avoid some needless heartburn and speculation. This involves the
nature of copyrights, letters of permission, and that awful
s-word: suing.

I hope that these issues are already pretty clear to most people
who will read this, and maybe this letter is unnecessary, but it
never hurts to communicate.

The same way that Stephen King gets paid when someone makes a
movie of one of his books, or Elton John gets paid when someone
plays one of his records, we need to get paid for what we do. If
musicians had to write songs and do concerts for free, or authors
or game companies had to spend months writing books for free, how
could we expect there to be any music or books or games?

Companies like GDW do not own physical objects like factories or
gold mines or fleets of aircraft, things that have inherent value
just sitting still. All that we own are our capacity to produce
new ideas and games, and our copyrights on the ideas and games
that we have already produced. Without copyrights, we would be
working for free, and then how could we pay our rent, our
utilities, our printers, our color separators, and, of course,
our employees.

The problem with copyrights is that their owners must actively
protect them if they are not to lose them. The law is pretty
clear that failure to protect copyrights and trademarks is
tantamount to voluntarily giving them up. Usually this involves
trusting other people to not attempt to infringe on them, and
nicely asking them not to if they try. However, if someone goes
ahead and infringes on your copyright anyway, the only thing that
you can do to protect it is to sue.

GDW is not now or ever looking to sue anyone, but our policy, and
the policy of any company, has to be that if we are forced to
protect our copyrights, we will do so by the only available
means, which is suing. Reserving the right to be able to defend
yourself if required is hardly a threatening or foreboding
posture.

Copyright law is becoming increasingly complicated by the
electronic revolution. We cannot afford to lose our ability to
make a living doing what we do by not being careful, especially
when a project looks like it takes our most valuable material and
charges straight into the thickest part of the hedge, so to
speak.

As far as letters of permission are concerned, we are not
refusing to give out any more, but we can hardly grant letters of
permission to do things that may lose us our copyrights. That
wouldn't make any sense at all.

David Nilsen
    GDW Chief of Design

