Witherweaver: If you're distributing something for free that people are trying to charge money for, it is going to be very difficult for them to compete. Maybe you say that you like buying music you like to support the creators, but lots of people don't do that. Restarting Iso would definitely be a violation of intellectual property law and of DougZ's agreement with Donald and all that.
I understand this point, but I don't actually agree with it. I guess it's the same kind of question around Napster, and I didn't really buy that Napster was wrong either. It ultimately feels very non-capitalistic to me.
Of course restarting Iso itself isn't really the question.. as far as I know, DougZ had an agreement, and that is an agreement he should not back out of (morally). The question I was considering is someone creating their own site, with their own code that they write. I don't know what the intellectual property laws actually say. Many people are saying that making such a site is in violation of these laws, and if that's true than the issue is only academic. (Well, for me it's really only academic anyway.)
If you're distributing something for free that people are trying to charge money for, and what you're distributing for free is just as good or even better than what people are trying to charge money for, then I don't think they
should be competing. This seems to indicate that they are unable to compete, and they shouldn't be kept around just for that reason.
I do not think that a fully competent version of Goko would fail because of a free Dominion implementation. I think such a Goko would offer enough so that people would still pay for and use it. I think it's lack of functionality that is making Goko trend downards, and it's doing it without any free implementation against which it has to compete.
I think SCSN's idea of a private server that only people who have all the sets on goko could access might not be a bad one. In fact, this could be something we mention to RGG/goko when we contact them. And I really think that contacting RGG has to be the next step.
Is it actually legal?