nice resources

Well, a few legal pointers on Copyright protections.

Fizzer would do well to abide by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Safeharbors, found in 17 USC 512. As a brief overview, he should not actively police for copyright infringement, have DMCA Contact information posted on the website, and comply with take-down notices requested by copyright holders.

Provided that Fizzer is inside of the safe-harbor, he should be free of any financial liability of infringement.

However, it is very likely that Fizzer would prevail on most claims of infringement based on the trans-formative nature of converting a map to a game map. But this would require Fizzer to get dragged all the way through a court case, and the more likely outcome is a settlement would be extracted from the website.

And to address ps's comments, not sure what you mean by copyright promoting secrecy. The whole point of copyright protection is to allow a creator to display his creation and prevent others from infringing on his exclusive copyright rights. Further, why should someone be able to take the creative works of another? Copyright law is ingrained in the U.S. Constitution and has a longer history than free speech in America, which was incorporated later as an amendment.

Every civilized nation in the world offers copyright protection. Your insightful anti-copyright posts on the forum are not really all that helpful to the overall debate of the appropriate scope of copyright protections.

if you say so.

I believe that maps are owned by their creators, so they have an implicit copyright over them under US law.

Ha.

Way to stick by your position ps.

Quite frankly you write like you self interpreted and then neatly copy pasted some concepts of DMCA and copyright applications, with a strong conviction of being absolutely correct and a huge American infatuation.

Which to me means you are either:
a) uneducated on the matter, believing to be an expert;
b) a zealot;
c) a troll.

If you're uneducated, i don't see what else i can write to enlighten you (which i don't believe you are open to), except maybe pointing to Lessig (who does talk about these issues much more clearly then i ever will); if you're a zealot then i don't get why you're using pooh's imagery on this site; and if you're a troll i have better things to do with my time.

I'm no lawyer of IP, but i have been dealing with copyright as an author, curator, archivist and activist for over 12 years. My wordings are not always as clear as i would hope but i do know a thing or two on this subject matter.

Edited 2/26/2014 01:19:29

d) none of the above.

and no, I don't have to be absolutely correct to know that you're very wrong.

i must be wrong then, here is a bucket of honey.