|
I've done some more reading on copyrights, and it would seem they can claim copyright to the area as part of the mud but not otherwise. That is, they are not allowed to move it to another mud, publish the code as snippets or anything in that sense - they can, however, keep the area open and revise it if needed. Once any part of a mud is opened, it is "published" as part of a collective work:
Under the present copyright statute, the copyright in a separate contribution to a published collective work such as a periodical is distinct from the copyright in the collective work as a whole. In the absence of an express transfer from the author of the individual article, the copyright owner in the collective work is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of using the contribution in the collective work and in subsequent revisions and later editions of the collective work.
Thus, there are two distinct copyrights. You can take your area and do anything you want with it (use it on another mud, for example), but you cannot take it out of the mud, because there it falls under the group copyright of the mud as a whole.
|