David Shepheard wrote:
>I've looked at the d20 Exchange and it isn't set up for additional licenses.
 
It wasn't.
 
 
It was changed two (three?) days ago.
 
~Jimmy Domsalla
qtgg.icehex.net
----- 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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