With a legal opinion, an open letter, and a signature campaign, the Game Designer Association (Spiele-Autoren-Zunft e.V., SAZ) counteracts in April 2013 the refusal of the Fachgruppe Spiel e.V. (Game Publisher Association in Germany) to acknowledge game designers the status as originators and to continue the discussions about contract matters with the SAZ as the game designers' representation.
More information about the matter you get here: http://www.spieleautorenzunft.de/game-designers-are-originators.html
Direct link to the petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-fachgruppe-spiel-and-its-member-p...
Please sign and tell your friends!
The problems between SAZ and the publishers in Germany are the following:
1. The deliberate creation of legal uncertainty - as opposed to the wording of the Copyright Act, and some judgments in this regard. The Copyright Act says, a work is automatically protected without any registration. The publisher's federation argues each work as to be approved by a court - that's bullshit.
2. The deliberate creation of a crisis of confidence between the individual authors and publishers who are members of the publisher's federation. The individual publishers close even provided from relevant copyright usage agreements with the authors and put their name on the box. These are thus virtually devalued legally? Whom should we believe?
3. Refusing recognition also aims to prevent that the SAZ, representing the game authors can negotiate with publishers and their federation fair compensation schemes - as provided in § 36 of the Copyright Act.
However, the SAZ is happy, that already nearly 2,400 supporters agreed to this petition. Thanks to all!