From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Actually, I have been thinking about what DM said in regard to Eric Noah's
> site.
He's taking the risk that he won't be sued. While I certainly couldn't
comment either way, I could speculate in the hypothetical that a web site
that was primarily "news" and not "game rules or materials that use game
rules" would likely be overlooked in a canvass of problem sites.
> All this is because the OGL and d20STL are agreed to the minute you use
(or
> download) any material covered by them.
You gain rights under the OGL when you receive a copy of Open Game Content.
You don't get anything in regards to the d20 System Trademark License. You
have to voluntarily accept its terms if you want to distribute content with
the d20 logo on it.
> It is the sort
> of subtle coercion that exists in the computer industry and which I think
the
> game industry (tabletop RPG I mean) should stay away from.
Hopefully, it won't be subtle. If it's subtle, players won't understand the
value to them, and they won't agressively lobby their favorite publishers to
get on the bus. The Open Gaming concept relies on a strong consumer demand
rather than a passive back-room deal to be successful.
> Copyrights and Trademarks should be enough.
>From the perspective of the publishers, Copyrights and Trademarks provide an
inpentertrable wall around their games that excludes any 3rd party publisher
who does not negotiate a very specific, and very expensive license. Thus,
you have 100 game systems from 100 companies that fragment the market and
degrade the value of the player network.
>From the perspective of certain civil libertarians active in the gaming
community, Copyrights and Trademarks provide nothing but a thin tissue of
restrictions that is easily bypassed. Somehow, this opinion rarely sees
itself expressed in a commercial product, and when it is, such products are
promptly lawyered into oblivion, often taking the publshing concern involved
with them.
Open Gaming provides a third, and much needed alternative that is legally
consistent, enforceable, reasonably understandable, and popular.
> The problem is the OGL restricts you (from what you could do anyway) in a
> manner that increases Wizards' potential success in suing you, but you
gain
> little.
As I've observed before, an "open" license never gives you anything. The
GPL doesn't give you anything. The OGL doesn't give you anything. The
value is not in the license, it's in the licensed content. The GPL licensed
content is pretty spectacular. The OGL content is newborn and remains
limited at this time.
> What benefit do you gain that you would not
> already have, if you complied with the law?
You can publish a commercial product without the reasonable concern that you
will face litigation as a result, meaining that you can raise capital to
finance your operations, and distributors and retailers can stock your
product without fearing a recall or court-ordered destruction at their
expense. This is not a "if WotC would only stop being a bully" problem -
the concern that you will be sued stems from the >collective< beliefs and
practices of the game publishing industry, not from any one company. You
can tilt at this windmill all day long complaining about how it's wrong,
illegal, immoral and unfair, and that won't make the problem go away.
The OGL makes the problem go away.
> Why shouldn't people be free to
> make things that work with a RPG system without special permissions?
Because the people who spend the money and the time to design those RPG
systems are provided under our laws with a certain set of rights designed to
allow them to extract value from their efforts and assert ownership and
control over their creations >WITHOUT GIVING YOU THE SAME CONSIDERATION<.
You can't make things that work with an RPG system without special
permission for the same reason that you can't show up and sleep on my couch
without special permission, and you can't drive my car without special
permission, and you can't run your ad on my radio station without special
permission. Because the law gives me ownership over certain parts of my
property (even if that property is intangible), and my ownership gives me
the right to exclude you if I wish.
> I wouldn't have a problem with the OGL at all if it simply dropped the
extra
> protections it tries to grant to PI and Trademarks.
You'd have a neutered, sterile document that nobody would use. You'd have
the exact same conditions you had before the advent of the OGL, where some
people published material using the GPL or the LGPL, but in general, there
was no commercial viability to those products or any consumer interest.
I much prefer a solution in practice than a solution in theory.
> Frankly, I don't see why
> the OGL has these restrictions except to facilitate the restrictions of
the
> d20 material and SRD.
Except of course that the SRD doesn't contain >ANY< Product Identity or
>ANY< Trademarks.
Ryan
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
