On Fri, 2 Nov 2001, Chad Stevens wrote: > If WotC paid someone to write it, it is WotC's stuff. I admit, however, I > do not know if all authors were paid for their work.
You'd need to actually see the contracts to know if this is true. Just because someone pays someone else to write for them does not mean that the copyright of said material automatically goes to the one who paid for the material. And a quick skimming of the Dragon Annual makes it obvious that WotC does not hold the copyright on many of the articles therein. > As far as WotC complying with the OGL, I have yet to see them include a copy > of the license, as required by said license, with everything that they have > produced as OGC. If they had to comply with the thing verbatim, then why > isn't the license at the end of every section of the SRD available for > download at the Open Gaming Foundaiton site? That information, as far as I > know, is the only OGC created by Wizards. There is certainly no need for the OGL to be included with every section of the SRD. The SRD is a complete work and therefore it is only necessary for a single printing of the license to cover the entire SRD. As a web based publication, it is sufficient to just have a single copy of the OGL and then indicate on each web page that the material is published under the OGL. The official released portions of the SRD do this quite clearly at the top of each section on WotC's site. The released sections of the SRD on the OGF site do the same, altho with slightly different language. Personally I think a direct link to the OGL from each section would be even better. But WotC has complied with the OGL verbatim so far regarding the SRD. > On the other hand, if the magazine information was taken verbatim from a > Freeport adventure, d20 Deadlands, or whatever other non-WotC source of your > choosing, I'd completely agree that it was done incorrectly. However, I do > not believe that was the case in the d20 Annual. Even if the articles were written just for the Dragon Annual, they are not in compliance with the OGL at least as regards the copyright notice. If for no other reason that section 15 was not updated to include the copyright notice of the magazine itself. Actually the way the license is presented in the magazine it is not even clear that anything in the magazine is covered by the license. The OGL appears on page 17 just before an article authored by Ryan entitled "What the heck is a d20 sytem?". Nowhere do I find a statement that the magazine has been published under the OGL. My first assumption was that NONE of the material in the magazine was actually OGC and that the magazine was more of an introduction to the concept of open gaming & the d20 system. Especially since a significant portion of the magazine deals with Wheel of Time material (which obviously wasn't going to be OGC). Then I noticed one of the OGC tracker boxes as I was skimming. These boxes point out what is/isn't OGC in the article. Some continue the rather questionable (legally) practice of asserting that everything not OGC is PI. And some even include separate copyright statements. At this point it is completely unclear to me that anything from the Dragon Annual could actually be used by someone else as OGC. Anyone wanting to use anything identified as OGC should probably go purchase the product actually being advertised. And every article that says it has OGC is really just a long advertisement for a product. alec (the guy with a law degree who isn't an attorney) _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
