On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Sixten Otto wrote: > At 01:03 PM 1/24/02 -0700, Alec A. Burkhardt wrote: > >Legally if you want something to be non-exhaustive you need to include > >language to that affect. > > Like the typical "including, without limitation, the following..." ?
exactly. that language is missing with regard to PI. it is explicitly included with regard to OGC. (the or anything else the contributor chooses to declare as OGC language.) that makes it double hard to argue in a court that the license intended the list in the PI clause to be non-exhaustive. > >Plus the single time Ryan said anything could be PI, he was actually > >trying to make an entirely different point - as he pointed out after Clark > >& I explained the language issue. > > It's good to know that in some things, most authorities seem to agree. :-) > > To some extent that point is irrelevant to the matter of an OGC archive, > though. I think that the important thing for that purpose is that PI -- > whatever it may or may not include -- needs to be clearly identified. As > long as that stipulation is true, and enforceable (to some extent, anyway; > I imagine no one relishes the idea of "ratting someone out" to Wizards > legal), then redacting PI is reasonably possible. Otherwise, vague > statements like "all the stuff about our setting and characters is PI" make > it difficult to practically extract the OGC from a text. I agree completely. May have been another reason I didn't go into the exhaustive issue fully in my response to you. The issue of clear identification in your question seemed much more important to me. Of course realize that while Clark & I agreed that the PI list was exhaustive, we disagreed as to what constituted clear indentification. Clark felt that a general disclaimer using exactly the language from the license (all identifying marks, such as ... is PI) was sufficient, I felt the license identifies the type of material that can be identifying marks and publishers have a greater responsibility to identify the specific identifying marks they are using rather than using boilerplate language. Your final sentence is more along the lines of what constitutes *clear identification* as opposed to *does PI have to be clearly identified*. Only a court case can it really be determine what constitutes *clear identification* to a *reasonable person*, unfortunately. Some publishers prefer to make broad claims such as "all story elements are PI" as their declaration of PI for a variety of reasons. And they believe such a statement *clearly identifies* all the PI. Until someone actually mistakenly uses something such a publisher believes to be protected PI the issue is impossible to resolve as a legal matter. And please notice that I said MISTAKENLY uses - I am in no way advocating that anyone attempt to intentionally use something that they think is PI but poorly identified. If your attempting to use material from a product which you don't think adequately identifies the PI, contact the publisher and tell them what your problem is. They should be able to clear up the issue relatively quickly. And perhaps if enough people contact them, they might even do more to specifically identify their PI in future products. alec _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
