Wow. More from the same guy: An MMORPG that allows users to customize their characters should be held liable when some of those players make characters that look like tradmarked Marvel superheroes.

Up to a point I think he is right, and City of Heros already has safegaurds in place to keep people from doing things like using the names of existing heros. And I assume they have something setup that lets you report somebody else for violation of rules, which would include copyrights.

But what Marvel wants goes far beyond that, to meet the standard that Marvel sets the MMORPG whould have to have somebody that reviewed every persons character art to see if it violated any copyright. And that is going to far.

As for his comment about Linus, I think the author fails to understand the subtle but real problem with software copyrights. Algorithms are types of math. And because of the fundamental interchangability of math, any two expressions of the same mathmatical idea are equivlent. Thus a patent on any expression of a mathmatical concept prevents any other expression of that same idea.

Jay