----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 10:51
PM
Subject: Re: [Ogf-l] PI Spell Names
----- Original Message -----
In a message dated 2/20/2004 2:38:07 AM Eastern Standard
Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
<<* A 2014 OGL publication has PI licences from 10
products, five of which are out of print.
* You want to reuse 1 spell,
that you know is OGC but because of those 10 licences you
will need to
track down all ten of those books to find out if you have to print any
of
those PI licences to use the spell.
>>
Why? If there are PI licenses, then you probably have to
specifically note which portions of the text are PI and belong to someone
else.
So, for example, let's say I come up with a superhero called
the "Great Guffaw". I PI his name and his background. I give
somebody a PI license. 20 iterations down the road a book comes out
under the OGL. If it has the "Great Guffaw" in it, it should probably
note that it is the PI of Lee Valentine, used with permission, derived from
"Lee's Book of Superheroes".
How would somebody not know that this
was my PI?!! And if the usage license is either still on the net or
published with that 20th iteration product, then everybody can see the
license to take advantage of it. If the license is no longer
available, then it is simply no different at all from any other PI -- you
can't reprint the PI.
The licence in the product we were discussing states only
that products that reproduce the PI are required to: "...bear a legal notice
that both 1) any such PI used is reserved Product Identity, not Open Game
Content, and 2) spell names are copyright 2001, Clark Peterson, all
rights reserved."
So it does not make you specifically note which portions of
text are PI and also could mislead people to believe that ALL spell names in
your product are copyrighted by Clark Peterson. I'm sure
Clark didn't intend to "steal" copyright of other people's spell names in
third party products but that is how section 2 seems to read to me. Perhaps it
would have been better if the licence read: "...spell names taken from
Relics & Rituals are copyright 2001, Clark Peterson, all rights
reserved."
If you ever need to look to other sources, even in a second
generation product, to figure out what is and is not OGC then the OGC and PI
declarations aren't clear enough for me. Clark and others have
suggested that reference to 3rd party sourcebooks should be acceptable forms
of PI / OGC declaration. The problem with that position is that it is
unworkable for products that go out of print, for products that never saw
wide distribution, etc; it's not a universalizable rule that is workable,
even if it's workable for some products in some situations.
I recall someone on this list saying that the whole point of
the OGL was to irreversably allow people to use your work FOREVER, so that
third party products would NEVER be affected if anyone went out of
business.
I think well-constructed licenses with
well-constructed citation requirements will not raise the issues you
fear.
<<If someone wanted to PI the term Kryptonite Dagger for
a Superman d20 product I would
probably support that, because we all
know that Kryptonite is part of the ethos of
Superman. But when someone
wants to PI a Shadow Weapon, that is a bit nuts.
>>
See the "white out" vs. "forbidden terms" discussions on PI in
the archives.
I don't REALLY need to see the archives as they would
not be usable in a court defence. Anyway in this case I wasn't saying that I
didn't undersand how PI works. I was saying that WANTING to claim a generic
sounding term as PI is a bit nuts.
Wether the "white out" or "forbidden terms" style of using
PI got decided on in a hypothetical court case, I'm saying there is no
point in OGCing something and then keeping back the name, when that name has
no apparant value to you. Why do it? What benifit do you get if people change
"Shadow Weapon" into "Shadows Weapon" or "Shadow Sword"?
And if you thought that "Shadows Weapon" was too close to
YOUR name and complained, wouldn't that just be a waste of resorces? What do
you get if you win? The other guy has to pulp a print run. But what happens if
the judge thinks you are extracting the p and rules against you? That
would undermine the whole idea of PI.
Is it not better to keep PI restricted to things that have
some sort of commercial value to your company? Is it not better to PI the
proper nouns in your book (and if you have a unque rule not OGC ANY of the
content of that rule)?
I think PI is a useful part of the OGL, but don't see any
point in using it to defend something in a product UNLESS that thing is a
valuble part of your campaign setting. And if I did think something was worth
PIing then I wouldn't want to release the rules that followed that name. That
is a little bit like giving away a pair of shoes with no laces in them and
saying if you put laces in them you can't keep them!
It only takes one person (either an idiot or someone with a
fanatical belief about freedom) to start jumping around shouting: "I'm
wearing your shoes with laces. What are you going to do about it?" for you to
be forced to either come down on that individual "because of the principle of
the thing" or risk publicly being seen to "not defend your rights". I believe
that others have said that not exercising those rights could cause you to
loose them. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong. What I am saying is
that in this case, Clark seems to be defending a name that to me has no value.
The true value in Shadow Weapon is the bit under the name: the OGC. Like most
of the spells in Relics & Rituals it is a very well written spell
(IMO). What it looks like to me is that Clark is:
1) Giving away some great rules as OGC.
2) Saying you can't use ANY names under the OGL
(whether they are Scarred Lands specific or general names).
3) Then saying hey here is a licence to use the names I
don't let you use under the OGL (including names that have commercial value to
the Scarred Lands).
Clark CAN do what he wants with his own stuff, but I don't
really understand his reasoning on this yet. Perhaps I should search the
archives for postings by Clark, as I would love to know WHY he feels this
way of doing things is benificial to him.
As I see it, taking ALL spell names back and then giving
them out again, just puts you in the same position but with two licences
instead of one. What *I* think of as the real PI in this product gets given
away under this licence (diluting the impact of a great product by allowing
proper nouns of God and characters into the public domain). Now if the payback
to Clark was that people printed an advert for his products or at least the
Relics & Rituals webpage, I might see a point to this licence. As it
is I can't make my mind up if I think Clark is being over generous with
his PI or over stingy by PIing things that are not
R&R in flavor.
I believe that at the moment some publishers are
specifically avoiding using things except the SRD to avoid being the person
who falls fowl of an (IMO unessesary) dispute about the name of a spell
or other OGC item that has a PI name and gets to be first into the law
courts. It is far easier to email one of your own staff and tell
them to: "knock up an in house version of the same thing".
The situation I would like to see in the future is for
more publishers to put up SRDs so that the d20
market wasn't so dependent on what WOTC was doing. With an Relics &
Rituals SRD, I shouldn't have to worry about PI as it should already be
stripped out. Then I don't even have to bother Clark to ask him something
like: "I want to use your 'Mask of Desire' do you mind if I call it a 'Mask of
Attraction'?"
With an SRD or at the very least a table of PI to OGC
names a designer could both make it unnesary for anyone to even ask AND more
importantly SPECIAL names and words could be specifically removed and replaced
with names that everyone knew that the OGC owner WAS happy with. In
special cases (like the "Awaken Lessar Titan Avatar" spell that I associate
HEAVILY with the Scarred Lands, an alternative version could be published in
an SRD that had the goodies in the special table removed and replaced with
something else, although I probably wouldn't have OGCed this particular
spell in the first place.)
<<IF showing the OGC with PI removed to someone and
having them say that should be called
"Shadow Weapon" is not on then
how about the alternative:
How about publishing the OGC with [PI
removed] in it on the website. What happens then
when EVERYONE else
copies the OGC and calls the spell "Shadow Weapon"? They haven't
seen
the original source so are not in breach of copyright. What can
the original publisher do?
>>
Again, see the archives. The question is a general one,
and has nothing to do, in some ways as to how generic a name is.
Theoretically the problem exists even with slightly rarer names. In
the archives questions were raised that involved the responsibilities of
publishers "downstream" from original sources. If PI lists are
"forbidden terms" list, then if you are one iteration removed from the PI
source, then even if you can find someone else to come up with the same
spell name you can't use it.
From my understanding people seem to be saying that no one
can agree on what the licence MEANS until there is a court case. So the
opinions in the archives, no matter how educated are irrelivant until there IS
a court case.
If people release OGC with PI names, then eventually someone
is going to accidentaly use a name that is too close to what the origional OGC
producer says is there PI. THEN we will find out if that person is actually
willing to try to get the second book pulped or set the thing
slide.
This discussion started with someone who was specifically
providing an OGC archive. I've looked at the d20 Exchange and it isn't set up
for additional licences. For that to be done the website would need to be
changed. The PI in that archive would have to be marked. That is additional
work for the website owner and I think he wanted to see what people
thought.
So I don't need to see the archives, as my thougths don't
appear there. I think the d20 Exchange is a pretty unique kind of product as
it is an online collection of OGC from as many books as possible. As no one
seems to have gotten a OGC library up and running yet (and the d20 Exchange is
not going to be a total library) I don't believe that the issues that effect
this new type of product will be written about there.
So what do YOU think Michael Cortez should do about OGC with
PIed names (both with and without a licence to print the PI)? I'd be very
interested in what YOU think about this.
Don't forget that Michael's aim is to do things in a way
that doesn't annoy publishers. Unlike me (a relative nobody in the RPG world)
he wants to run a website that works with publishers.
You already know that I would prefer a publisher to provide
either an SRD or a conversion table to list acceptable OGC replacements for
any PI inside OGC they publish. What do you think is the
best way to replace PI in a VERY generic sounding rule? How would you do
things if you were Michael and how would you do things if you were
Clark?
Anyway having (possibly unfairly) pointed my finger at Clark
over this I must say that I do think Clark has made a very
good attempt at providing a solution to people using names for his spells. I
love what he has done, I just don't agree with the way
that he has done it. Anyway he is a highly qualified d20 provider, so
even if I don't agree with his PI declaration, it doen't stop me from thinking
he is damn good at making RPG products.
[snip]
However on a more positive note I WOULD like to see PI licences used
for something else.
To allow people to use parts of a setting that
normally would not be available under the
OGL.
>>
Such licenses exist among some pro
publishers.
Got any examples? What do the licences give
away?
David Shepheard
;-)
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