> Clark Peterson > > ...which of course runs afoul of the licenses becasue > if the d20 mag isnt an open work then they violate the > license by taking open content and NOT providing it as > open content. > > The magazine violates the license any way you look at > it.
Or did they? Here's a nasty little thought I just had, after Ryan reminded me about Anderson v. Stallone. I think I'm worrying about nothing, but I'll toss it out anyway. Hasbro owns the SRD. They grant others the right to use it under license, but any work that uses the SRD is still derivative. Anderson v. Stallone found that Anderson had no grounds to sue Stallone even though he alleged that Stallone used his treatment as the basis for one of his movies. The key phrase was that Andersons's work was an "unauthorized derivative" and therefore not deserving of protection. The OGL clearly authorizes derivation, and certainly implies that the copyright is intended to be held jointly. But it still bets the question: Does anyone have standing to sue Hasbro/WotC if they take your SRD-based derivative work and publish it as their own (perhaps in a d20 issue of Dragon). Is the fact that the work was authorized enough, or can they step outside the license because they own everything anyway? Is this the part that makes IP lawyers nervous about copyleft-type licenses? -Brad _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
