Let’s keep the discussion on track.
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lol don’t tempt me, I have too many WIP’s I need to finish up already. My problem is I have an excess of ideas, and not enough hours in the day to write them. This idea is totally free to anyone who’d like it though. (I’d totally read it if someone wants to write it 
)
There is almost certainly an issue with the licencing to get games using abandonwear onto HG. The author would likely have to specifically state the CC they have released any material from the WIP under, and then you’d probably still need to clear it with COG. I remember when I wrote a group game with a few others on here, even when one of the authors did not want to receive any payments, we still needed all the signed off paperwork from them that they were ok with it, before HG would agree to host the game. If anyone had have not submitted their paperwork, we’d likely have to have removed anything they’d had a hand in writing from the game to be in the clear which as you can imagine is not ideal.
What @Eiwynn said 
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People if you want continue a Wip, just make fan fiction credit the original and just imagine your story.
But the simple fact grabbing the project of other except direct specific consent is wrong at so many levels. Hosted is a publisher, and operates in the real world with laws. it is not amateur matter it sells to consumers.
My take is that as long as you aren’t directly copying it, there’s no harm at all in two stories having similar premises. Especially when it comes to some WIPs that I have literally never seen attempted again – Team Zero, How the Cards Fall, Switch, Ansible Station (recently went down, but I doubt we will ever see another like it), Monsters of New Haven High, et cetera et cetera.
All of these are brilliant ideas, and best of all, all of these ideas are capable of being done well in more than one way. And the WIPs I’ve made, too – brilliant ideas, which will probably never see the light of day thanks to my depression and absolutely destroyed attention span. Seriously, if anything I have written or talked about has inspired anyone, they should be more than free to do so.
Should you copy a story word for word? No, but I doubt there are a lot of people in the world who would advocate foe that anyway. But I’m not territorial about ideas. If HP Lovecraft was the only one who was allowed to write cosmic horror, the Cthulhu Mythos would be far smaller (and worse). If JRR Tolkien was the only one able to write about elves and dwarves, crumbling kingdoms and marauding armies of monsters, then fantasy as we know it would never have existed.
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Is this official? I thought it was just on hiatus?
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All those are out of copyright law context as they are legendary and folklore material who is out of Copyright material in the entire world and is universally public domain.
You can copyright your expecific version but anyone else can create another Troll or another fairy.
You can’t copyright a premise either. No one owns the exclusive rights to the concept of a chosen one story set in a wizarding school, or a martial arts high fantasy set in an elementally-themed world, or the idea of a mentally ill rich guy dressing up in a fancy costume and beating up other mentally ill rich people. And even if you could, the argument I’m making is, no one should.
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Well. It’s not an issue that has an easy answer. And I believe it’s something more “ethical” than “legal”.
And even so, it’s complicated and it depends on people personal views.
Because let’s say. Someone does a WIP with an interesting premise, but ends dropping it.
Basically trying to copy word by word that WIP and then keep writing, this is where I believe I draw a line. Cause it’s basically using an author work for your own benefit.
But let’s say you like the premise the Author was writing about. And since it got abandoned, you are going to write your own story, using that premise.
That’s fair in my book. Cause you are writing your own story, but getting inspired by a prompt or a premise.
I believe that if an author were to complain, it would be quite pretentious from them. Cause premises are prompts are more concepts that actual work. It would be like Rowling trying to sue people because their novels are about british magic schools.
There’s always the situation when two authors are doing a work using the same premise. I believe its fair play, since they work will have that difference.
But as I said, its a pretty subjective issue.
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It is not copyrighted but still you can’t go and steal the work in progress of other people. Same you cant go inside their house and stole the statue unfinished they are making.
Work in progress is also protected. You can’t go stolen people work during its development.
Try to stolen from Nintendo office their secret art for a possible game and see what happens.
What you create is yours, it is inside IP and it is protected by law.
Imagine you work for years in lore and plot for your golden project, your dream to be published a project you have thousands and thousands words just in lore dumps.
You made a demo people seems to love but real life happens and you cant actually update the game on a year or two even if you keep working on your dreamed game and characters in your Pc.
You return after those two years to find a random person has. taken your entire plot changing Characters names a little and changing the title of your game.
Tell me about what is moral or not, You have destroyed that person dreams forever
What is protecting a work in progress? Please, do enligthen me.
Legally speaking I mean. I would love to know.
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The United States copyright law protects “original works of authorship” fixed in a tangible medium,[1] including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Copyright law includes the following types of works:
And yes, it includes games and literary works.
If not everyone would enter Sanderson office or George Martin and steal his work saying they abandoned it from several months.
WIP authors Own their material. It is not free for grabbing.
Inspiration is okay. as enter in fair use as it is TRANSFORMATIVE It becomes a new work on it is own. Same thing with satire and parody always their art is meaningful.
Edit Copyright Act has allowed art to grow and nurture same as science. The fear of losing your entire life project because someone has usurped the unfinished manuscript and put their name on it.
Cervantes almost lost the Quixote because a random thief decided to. continue it himself before cervantes could continue the second part of the history.
He had to change his plot plans to destroy the usurpers chances.
Thankfully, no auhor now Like Sanderson. has to fear that some random decide Lol I want to make the new part and making me filthy rich with others World
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And it’s not just American law that protects drafts and WIPs, either. Here’s Swiss law, for example:
As long as your creation has “individual character” and is in any form perceivable by the senses – i.e. outside your brain, e.g. on an internet forum – it’s your intellectual property. You don’t have to “officially” publish it or declare it complete for all time or sell it or earn money from it in any way to have copyright in it (though some of those factors would generally be considerations when it came to legal penalties for copyright violation).
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Exactly. EU is adamant about it too. But I used the USA as it is the one directly actionable due to Hosted and or Cog home place.
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This thread suddenly reminded me of what happened to my friend last month.
They got an anon with a weirdly worded ask about something-something blah-blah-blah and what we can make out of it is “i’m going to take your work because the writing and story is great and claim as my own” with some veiled personal attacks. All wrapped around with pretty little words like “as a friend”, “sincere thanks” and “provide some proceeds”.
What utter garbage.
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It is common people tend to believe the pre industry notion of what has not being published yet it can be steal as it doesn’t exist comertialy.
That thought is incompatible with modern industry. As nobody would be free to learn about technology of industry as they would stealing from you that and make profit from your work. That created the secrecy of guilds where share information of art know how outside the guild was punishable by horrible death.
Humanity has suffered from it so much. Look at Stradivarius all those art, all lost for the entire eternity because the only family that know how to make it died in a generation in a stupid war and a stupid plague.
Look at Bizantine invention, like the Greek fire all lost in time forever because the fear of stealing made it disappear when the few artisans died.
Now anyone can enter web and see how designs of machines are learning from it freely allowing our tech advance. You can’t steal from the author that creation so that allows you to learn and be inspired by it.
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To get my amateur historian glasses on, Greek fire was actually lost because my it was a closely guarded state secret, the same as the blueprints to a missile would be today. In addition, though we don’t have the exact recipe, it’s highly likely that it came from a petroleum base, which would explain a lot about it being impossible to put out except by letting its fuel run out, burning in water, etc. The real reason that we lost the recipe, though, was that nobody ever bothered to really sit down and get it hammered out because cannons made it slide into being obsolete.
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If they were a trademark style system will had the schematics after being des classified information. What shows the big advantage of share information about the know how to keep tech going
I think part of what makes this such a tricky question is that it really comes down to the details of the story.
Using everyone’s favorite punching bag as an example, Wayhaven. I think it would be completely possible to write a story about a small town detective meeting up with an attractive government sponsored team of vampires that didn’t infringe on anyone’s intellectual property. So long as the details of the story and it’s flow were different.
Conversely a story about a big city FBI agent hooking up with corporate sponsored werewolves could absolutely infringe on Wayhaven territory.
I think we’ve all seen those stories that look like someone just used a word replacement program on someone else’s story. But there is a gray area between that and honest inspiration that can be tricky to navigate.
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I also think it’s important for people to remember that sub-genre’s and tropes exist. So are you inspired by a specific work, or did you discover a sub-genre/trope you like through a specific work? That’s an important thing to figure out
Ex: If I discovered the sub-genre “small town supernatural mystery” through Wayhaven and decided I wanted to write one too, it wouldn’t be stealing. But there isn’t an established trope about a genetic evolution that protects the person against supernatural creatures and provides said creatures with a power up through the persons blood. That would be stealing a very specific idea
Ex: a dystopian is a genre. A dystopian society where people are split into groups is a sub-genre. A dystopian where a person from each group must fight to the death in order to be placed in the most prosperous group is copyright infringement
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