Advantages of copyright – The most obvious advantage of copyright is its main purpose, the protection of your work being stolen by others. When work is taken by others and passed off as their own, we call it plagiarism. Copyright law was designed to give creators the security they desired so that others could not take their work and use it for their own purposes. This means that if i was to create a character for a videogame then i could protect my idea from being taken by another developer. This also means that i can’t take a popular character such as Mario and claim it as my own.

Another example of a benefit to copyright is that you can share your work with who you want and benefit accordingly. This means that if i was to design something and place it under copyright protection then i could essentially allow other benefactors to use it and earn money in their work. For example, if a company wanted to add Mario into their game they would first need to contact the company who owns the rights to Mario and ask for permission. This allows the company responsible for Mario to negotiate a deal in which they claim a certain portion of profits.

Disadvantages of copyright – One of the biggest disadvantages of copyright would be that it makes it harder to promote your work if you’re new to an industry. For example, if you are a musician, it can be hard to share your music as others wouldn’t want to share your songs for fear of copyright. Many websites that share content have had copyright issues in the past. YouTube being one of the worst for copyright issues. For a while on YouTubes platform, audio from games weren’t allowed to be shared which resulted in streamers suffering major loss to channel growth and income as their videos were being removed without their knowledge due to copyright strikes. An interesting website I discovered whilst researching highlights most of these issues.

http://copyrightkills.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/copyright-advantages-and-disadvantages.html

Is it possible to make anything new? This question itself seems a little pointless when talking on a broader spectrum. As every day every single living person creates something new, memories, bonds and even items. Narrowing it to game design in particular the answer would still be the same. Every year millions of individuals create brand new ideas, characters, environments and mechanics. Every single thing that has even been invented has had some sort of inspiration because everything we imagine is drawn from what we have perceived throughout life. Whether that be simply noticing the shape of an object and using that as material, or the sound of your environment around you. If you thought of it then it will be created in your image. No one perceives an idea the same as another. Its one of the many things that seperate us and make us unique. So yes, its as possible to make something new as it is to copy an idea.