The Mana World Forums

Wow, I browsed through the forums looking for the words "rip" and "copyright" and found an alarming number of rips:

Ripped graphics...

http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 342#p47342
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 806#p38806
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 899#p33899
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 726#p36726
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 235#p28235
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 177#p12177

Even ripping ideas...

http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 968#p46968

And WTF? How misleading is this for a newbie who was taught not to rip:

http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?p=574#p574

If just one of these ideas or things had gotten into the game, TheManaWorld would be in huge legal trouble from any party. On top of that, we let these people get away with trying to fool us and get us into legal trouble?! Sure, some might not know about copyright laws, but it's still ridiculous that we let people get away with this with out any form of suspension or ban.

They usually just go away on their own. I don't see any extra measures necessary (we do usually note the ripping in the thread).

yaaay
i appear in a thread!!!! (ripped idea, ty a lot)

Just for clarification: There is nothing wrong with getting inspiration from other sources. This is common in fiction. When you would remove every fantasy novel from a library which uses a concept originating from Tolkiens work only a handfull of books would be left (and those would mostly be vampire novels whichs influences could be traced back to Bram Stoker). The same applies to most other genres of fiction.

But when you take ideas which are the hallmark of a single, well-known work of fiction, like the Naruto head badges, you either do it to parody this work of fiction or it is just lame. This is not a legal problem but rather an aesthetic one. Why is this example lame? Because I have never seen a single episode of Naruto in my life and I still know where it is from.

But what you can do is taking one or more ideas from fiction or real life, combine them with some of your own ideas, modify everything so that it works together nicely and thus create a new work which is innovative and can only be traced back to its influences when you are very familiar with them.