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Actually Lee it doesn't say "you have to clearly
designate the open stuff" it says: "...You must clearly indicate which
*PORTIONS* of the work you are distributing are Open Game Content". (I've
stressed that not WotC)
IANAL but surely the legal definition of the word
"portions" can not differ that much from the English definition of the word. I
read portions as meaning some parts, and believe that this means that a
publisher using the OGL can say that one or more parts of his/her work is
OGC. And if some parts
*can* be defined as Open Game Content then other
portions must by definition be non-OGC. I won't even call
them "closed content" as that term is not in the licence. I'll just say
that anything not defined as OGC is not, in my opinion, offered for reuse under
the licence. And I wouldn't expect to have a right to reuse it (even
if it wasn't defined as PI) as you seem to be saying (unless I misunderstood
you).
I know that you are not the only person to say that
the OGL covers all the words in a document so there must be some sort of thing
that makes people have this view. As you know more about the law that I do
perhaps you could enlighten me to what sort of legal logic has changed
section 8's "portions" into "everything that is not defined as PI". Surely even
if US lawyers hold this opinion, it wouldn't be shared by lawyers in other
countries, so an opinion about this by a non-US lawyer would also be interesting
to me.
I would have thought that people wanting to use
content from a product, would only have the right to use things clearly
defined as Open Game Content and not anything that is not clearly defined as PI
as you seem to be implying. I don't think you will find many publishers that
would agree with that definition.
As for "zip codes" they have already been
defined (either by the US post office or maybe the US government I would have
thought). They are a subset of your address in the same way as "Open Game
Content" is a subset of a game supplement.
I'm not sure how the law works with zip codes over
there, but over here the copyright on UK postcodes is actually owned by the
Royal Mail and while individuals are able to use their
full addresses, including the postcode (in the same way as someone who buys
a d20 System book can use the non-OGC or PI content) the Royal
Mail can actually prevent publishers of business directories from
using postcodes (in the same way that the OGL doesn't allow use of PI or non-OGC
elements of publications with OGC in them).
The UK telephone company (British
Telecom) actually doesn't list postcodes in its directories because of
this Royal Mail "address crippling" so it is ironic that you chose
this example. Strangely both British companies used to be part of one company
called the GPO, and if the telephone system in the UK hadn't been
privatised, the full postcode would be listed in telephone directories today
(the situation in London is slightly different as the first half of
postcodes is already public domain but that isn't important here).
David Shepheard
Based on what lines of the license. The license explicitly says that OGC means the covered work is OGC except the parts that are PI. It then says you have to clearly designate the open stuff. If I said, "the 5 digits after your state abbreviation in your address are your zip code. You must highlight your zip code with a green highlighter." That doesn't mean if you don't highlight the zip code with a green highlighter that it's not your zip code. Lee
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