Ciro, I certainly haven't been offended or hurt by your remarks; I just think you're missing some relatively simply (to me at least) point(s). Perhaps due to the language issue, but perhap more due to understanding the law.
The first issue is the civil vs. criminal law matter. Martin's post did a good job of covering this but I'll point out another aspect: when you use terms like "guilty", "prosecuted" you're clearly implying criminal law. To take another examply from this posts: > 'subject to investigation and, possibly, to judgment for breach of the > law' everyone who publishes under the OGL is *always* subject to investigation. But it's done by the other publishers from whom they have used material. The government would never be mounting an investigation because the government isn't directly involved in a civil matter. All though no one can probably afford to do so, every OGL publisher should be making a preliminary investigation (i.e. just picking up the product and skimming it) of any other OGL product that re-uses their OGC. If they then see something they believe is a misuse of their property, they'd undertake a large investigation. In any case simply publishing under the OGL makes you subject to an investigation. This is just as true in Italian as it is in the U.S. As for the issue of warranties and how that illustrates that some companies consider it in their best interests to look at the laws of various countries, you still don't seem to understand that warranties are an extremely different area of law than anything included in the OGL. It's quite well known that various jurisdictions (including different states in the U.S.) have differing requirements as to how much a manufacturer can limit their liability. So this is a specific detail that all manufactures know they must address or risk being exposed completely. There's no real work being done here to search out possible jurisdition issues - everyone knows those jurisdition issues exist. And it requires almost no effort to find out what the issues are. The OGL has very few specific details in it to begin with, and none that I can see any jurisdiction having written specific laws concerning/prohibiting. If you think there is some area of the OGL that might pose a problem, please feel free to point it out. It might be the case that in Italy what constitutes "clear designation" may end up being different than in the U.S., but that doesn't really change the OGL - just recognizes the concept of "clear designation" could be determined differently in varing jurisdiction. (This is also true for different states in the U.S. - altho if that happened they'd likely get reconciled eventually.) The time to correct mistakes isn't overly short, so I can't see that being an issue. The restrictions on the use of trademarks isn't going to be something any country is going to prohibit. What else might you be concerned about? > About "blowing things out of proportion", that was my nth remark to avoid spreading > more rumors in Internet. I have never said that OGL would be unenforceable in Italy > (or elsewhere), my initial remark/question was only to know if anybody in WotC has > looked into this because there might be possible problems. All I wished to know is > this, as somebody kindly explained to me: "WotC considered this and concluded it > wasn't worthing the time, the hassle and the money involved". Case closed. Okay, but that wasn't how you originally stated it and the real answer is probably: "WotC considered this, realized that there was nothing in the OGL which required specific rewrites for any country where copyright law matters, so didn't make the document more convoluted by including it." I'll agree that perhaps they should have included a statement that all disputes are to be decided in the U.S. state of Washington, but it's really not necessary and may actually cause problems done the line. As someone else already pointed out, contract cases can typically be brought in the jurisdiction of either party to the contract, so for WotC, Washington is always an option. For disputes between two other OGL publishers, perhaps neither of them is in Washington and neither really wants to go there for a lawsuit. > I think I'm not ignoring the 'real world information' and I have the highest regard > and consideration about your knowledge of US law and law principles in general. My > only, little, bone of contention is the principle of sovereignty and application of > US laws in toto in foreign jurisdictions based on the 'informed opinion' I got and > write earlier in the message. As I said before, no one is apply U.S. law (in toto or otherwise) in a foreign jurisdiction. What's being applied is the terms of a contract that an Italian citizen voluntarily agreed to enter into. I know enough about Italian law (and all WTO members) to know that Italy allows their citizens to make international contracts and be bound by the terms of said contracts. So by voluntarily accepting the OGL an Italian (or German, Swede, Brazilian, etc.) has agreed to abide by its terms and the Italian courts are going to enforce the contract *unless* there is some *specific* aspect of the contract that is *prohibited* by local laws. The Italian court is applying *Italian* law when they enforce the contract - as is any member of the WTO or quite honestly any country which desires to be involved in the international economy. Failure to enforce voluntary contracts would make it impossible for international business to operate within such a country. The reason the OGL can't be translated (as a binding legal document anyway) is simply because translation can change meanings; it's not an attempt to apply U.S. law in any other country. This isn't unusual at all - all international contracts are generally only done in one language (whatever language is agreed upon by the parties) as a legally binding document. There may also exist a translated version for people who cannot read the foreign language so they can understand the contract, but that version has no legal validity. The same can be done for the OGL. alec _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
