On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Rogers Cadenhead wrote:
> At 03:29 PM 9/27/00 -0700, "Ryan S. Dancey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >It doesn't give anyone any rights; it just gives them a little piece of mind
> >about doing something that's totally illegal.
>
> Give me a break. There's nothing illegal about the material produced in
> compliance with the online policy. If I produced a work relying on the policy
> and Wizards sued me, Exhibit A in the court case would be the policy, which
> spells out exactly how I can permissably create and publish derivative works
> based on your copyrights and trademarks. How could Wizards possibly argue
> that I'm infringing on your rights if my work followed your own published
> guidelines for online, not-for-profit derivative work?
I'm not Ryan, nor for that matter am I either a lawyer or a WoTC staff
member.
However, if I _were_ a member of the WoTC and I wanted to get rid of
FanBoy web sites, given the existent on-line policy, I would
1) Remove the current policy from the web site
2) Replace it with a "As of $DATE the former TSR online policy will be
rescinded (where $DATE is say, 90 days from time of removal of policy).
3) At D+15 days in to the removal, hire a herd of temps, show them how to
use a search engine (and given that google kicks back over 90000 hits for
"Dungeons and Dragons" this had better be a large herd) and start sending
e-mails saying "We are changing our policy. Please fix your web site"
4) At D+120 search again, and send out real "land shark" e-mails to sites
that did not change their site.
5) At D+180 start with the lawsuits.
Of course, document the crap out of each and every step.
They could do this, you know. Nothing except their fear of what it would
do to their customer base to stop them.
They, of course, would have to be insane to do this, but is it legal and
possible.
Of course they have not released the D20SRD as yet, but once that _does_
get released, assuming it does, they could _not_ do that to a d20 site.
--
http://www.spellbooksoftware.com
If guns are outlawed can we use swords?
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