Alista is a guy??
Looks like I got it wrong as well. But it ends in a vowel! It must be a female name! It…
(insert sounds of retribution)[/quote]
its eubonics, you know Alista…like gangsta etc… 
On the subject of Project vs. Affilliate…
Projects, as part of NZLARPS proper, are therefore run by an Incorporated Organisation which means there are a number of legal benefits. EG, no personal financial liability, able to provide transport to/from the event for participants and still be covered by insurance, more clout with other organisations when asking for permission to run events or use venues. Examples of projects would be Mordavia and Og, completely run internally to NZLARPS.
Affilliates are separate organisations able to share the umbrella of NZLARPS. They have different mutual-benfit agreements, but all material and financial ownership and responsibility is theirs alone. However, being under the NZLARPS umbrella does allow you (within Auckland at any rate) to apply for local council and other organisation grants provided they are disbursed via NZLARPS itself as the Incorporated not-for-profit organisation. Examples of Affilliates would be The Medaeval Shop, Nightmare Circle, and (potentially) Quest.
Although it is true that, so far, we’re largely Auckland-centric, this is not by design of choice, merely due to being relatively young. If Quest joins then we’ll no longer be, and this gives a further stepping-store to hop out further from Auckland. If anyone in the Hamilton area wants to run a Project game (ie, funded and supported by NZLARPS) then they’ll get as much support and encouragement as someone in Auckland - probably more, as we really want to spread out into a ‘NZ’ socienty rather than an ‘Auckland’ one. Once we get the society trailer we’re trying to purchase then it will be easier for Hamilton groups to borrow equipment from the Auckland gear library.
I’m a girl? That explains a lot.
Yes, we have affiliated. Thanks everyone. We will be updating our site with NZLARPS events from time to time. If you want an event specifically advertised let us know.
Happy adventuring
[quote=“Steve Shipway”]…But it ends in a vowel! It must be a female name! It…
[/quote]
‘Dave’ ends in a vowel…
also ‘Mike’…
and, now that I come to it, so does ‘Steve’ 
Male names that end in vowel
Luke
George
Joshua
Joe
Willie
Lawrence
Bruce
Wayne
Steve
Eugene
Jessie
Clarence
Antonio
Dale
Lee
Kyle
Mario
Theodore
Jerome
Leo
Maurice
Clyde
Shane
Leslie
Andre
Claude
This is fun. Shall I keep going?
[quote=“Alista”]Male names that end in vowel
…
This is fun. Shall I keep going?[/quote]
Yeah, but all the ones with a silent E don’t count because they just indicate the length of the internal vowel. And you’ve only got one example name with a terminal A. 
Ah, me, I’m getting obsessed with trivialities again. Must get back to work…
Ira
Alva
Andrea
Otha
Asa
Hosea
If you go into the Hebrew tradition there are many i.e.
Abba
Abisha
Abrasha
Achazia
Achida
Achiya
Adaia
and so on
At the risk of sounding like a school-teacher, could this thread have a few more posts with discussion of intellectual property rights in it?
As in: now.
Didn’t White Wolf do something weird with trying to license its Mind’s Eye Theatre stuff last year?
Yes ma’am!
Intellectual Property (IP) is one of the most misunderstood areas of law around. Partially because it isn’t really one area of law, it is many. The most important areas being: patents, copyright and trademarks. The way that these are dealt with varies from country to country.
If you publish a game, you have certain rights, depending on how you go about it.
If we look at the Quest Waikato (QW) game as an example, the rule books are protected under NZ law. If someone got the document, printed it and started selling a copies of it without permission, they could be prosecuted. However, if they just grabbed all the good ideas and wrote their own rules based on it, that isn’t breach of copyright (unless a substantial part of their rule book is copied verbatim from the QW book).
If someone has taken a trademark out on “Quest Waikato” or if QW has a legal entity (for example an incorporated society or business) then someone else cannot claim to be QW. However, if they haven’t done that then pretty much anyone who has played could with some legitimacy claim to be QW.
Patents are unlikely to apply to a larp so I’ll skip them.
As an interesting aside, there is the concept of “copyleft”. People pretty much understand copyright as meaning you cannot copy something without permission. Copyleft is almost the reverse of it. In it’s essence it basically says; “you’re free to copy this work on the condition the author is credited and any future derived work retains this copyleft permission”. This allows authors (and particularly software authors) to release something into the public domain knowing that people can build on it but not then “lock it up”.
I think we used to be and incorporated society, but that has probably lapsed.
As I recall from my (single) year 4 lecture on IP, copyright protects the appearence of a document, rather than the actual content. Thus copyright allows you to actually steal large swathes of other people’s content so long as it is presented in a significantly different look (eg, change the font, line spacing ang insert your own images). However I think that if you then tried to commercialise this you would be on very shaky legal ground. Especially if the source you stole your content from can prove prior use.
For example. Our second edition rules (Fantasy Adventurers and Dungeoneers Guild Players Guide) are held in the NZ National Library (and also locally in the Hamilton Public Library!). Through parallel evolution, there are some startling similarities in our exerience tables and those in 3rd edition AD&D, but if TRS ever got shirty with us, we can prove prior use!
Just out of interest, if I ordered a copy of the QW rules, paid my ten bucks plus postage, got 'em in the mail, scanned them and put them on exquire.org as a free printable PDF… what would you guys do?
[quote=“Exquire”]Just out of interest, if I ordered a copy of the QW rules, paid my ten bucks plus postage, got 'em in the mail, scanned them and put them on exquire.org as a free printable PDF… what would you guys do? [/quote]Whether they did anything about it or not, publishing someone else’s documents knowing that they don’t want you to is a highly antisocial and impolite thing to do.
I don’t know. Is it likey that you would knowingly break the copyright laws of New Zealand and print copyright material to which all rights are reserved?
Is it the policy of NZLARPS to protect the copyright and intellectual property of the writers of Live Role Play systems? This is a yes or no question
If the answer is “Yes” then we would probably complain to NZLARPS and let them sort it out.
If the answer is “no”, then I doubt that there is anyway that our affiliation to NZLARPS could continue.
OK, that answers my question. So if someone with ties to NZLARPS made your rulebook available without your “printing fee” then you’d sever ties to NZLARPS. Right. What do you think the value of the infringement would be, say for my initial “media switching” (to electronic) and then for each download? Would you put a “damage” value on the fact that I had made it available online whether it is downloaded or not?
Then here’s my next question. What interest do you have in restricting the distribution of the QW rules?
I’d rather not talk about “copyright law” because I don’t think it’s generally relevant, especially not here.
Not really at the heart of my question, but unless it’s something private I don’t think it’s that bad either. See this interview with Jonathan Letham on the subject.
Actually, that’s the bit I’m trying to understand. Why not?
(Quoted out of context so that it’s in context )
But if you asked nicely then I’m sure Alista would allow you to photocopy rules for distribution to interested parties.
I think the issue here is electronic distribution more than the distribution of the document itself.
I could be wrong but thats the issue as I see it.
Jared
Thanks Jared. But what’s the issue with electronic distribution…?
I don’t know. Is it likey that you would knowingly break the copyright laws of New Zealand and print copyright material to which all rights are reserved?
Is it the policy of NZLARPS to protect the copyright and intellectual property of the writers of Live Role Play systems? This is a yes or no question
If the answer is “Yes” then we would probably complain to NZLARPS and let them sort it out.
If the answer is “no”, then I doubt that there is anyway that our affiliation to NZLARPS could continue.[/quote]
I agree with Alista.
It’s in the interest of NZLARPS to help protect copyright of larps in NZ. Scanning a rulebook and publishing it online against the author’s wishes would without doubt be a violation of New Zealand copyright law. I would push for NZLARPS to advocate on the side of the copyright holders in such cases, regardless of who had violated the copyright.
I would not want to be associated with a larp society that didn’t help larp authors protect their creative rights either.
My only point earlier was to define what copyright law actually protects, in my understanding of the law. It doesn’t protect game mechanics (that would require a patent), but it does protect it does protect how the content is presented including descriptions of game mechanics, descriptions of setting, etc.
To answer your question Alista: NZLARPS doesn’t have a policy on this yet, but I for one believe that if the occasion arose the society would rise to your defense.
I would consider this straight-forward theft 
Being the person I am, not only would I see to it that you were barred from any of our future games, but I would do my utmost to spread word of your theft far and wide. I might not go so far as to make legal enquiries, it would depend how p***ed-off I was.
However, I am sure you are an upstanding, law abiding citizen, so that this issue would not arise. 
QW has a variety of reasons not to publish our rules electronically, but we are not prepared to disclose these at this time. Currently we are looking a “licencing” a distributer in Auckland.
Also be aware that you would only really get the character generation and development, and basic combat side of our rules; you would not get The GMs Guide, The Monster & NPC guide or The Big Book of Magic.
The QW ethos is easy in-game, complex OOG - this allows a diverse range of unique characters. in ~15 years of LRP, we have never had the issue of identical character development.
For the record, I agree with Ryan’s assertion that nzLARPS would almost certainly rise to the defence of a larp copyright holder. We’re trying to nurture something here, and if that requires assertion of copyright, so be it.
However, I can’t shake a nagging feeling I get from the general thrust of discussions about QW intellectual property. I might be reading between the lines here, but I detect what seems to be a very protective approach to the QW rules.
I’d like to probe this.
How would QW feel about a soft copy, highly detailed treatise of their rules ? In other words, a document that is as useful in explaining the rules as the $10 hard copy rules. Sure, it would draw specific facts from the hard copy, but it would be reworded, reordered and likely include other observations, making it an agreeably equivalent yet distinctly separate document.
I suppose what I am asking is whether the QW assertion of copyright amounts to an attempt at intellectual monopoly.