<<First, you can't toss out the OGL. The whole thread is an argument about the
OGL. Second, your simplification isn't at all what the OGL says or implies.
>>
Actually, there was a running debate a month ago about whether PI represented a series of prohibited terms or simply a list of things to "white out" before drawing on the source. My point in the post to Ryan was that one reading of the PI list was as a list of prohibited terms. Since contracts can be created which create lists of prohibitions, I think it's not a wholly unreasonable way to view the OGL.
The only thing that complicates that viewpoint in the slightest, really, is that the terms you PI have to be "owned" by you (also another thread from a month back).
<<
There is a difference, as Ryan has so aptly pointed out, between PI that is
enforceable and PI that is valueless.
>>
Again, if PI is a list of prohibited usages -- you agree to use my OGC but I give it to you only if you avoid my prohibited terms list, then the fact that his name has been published ad nauseum would not matter an iota.
If you viewed the PI list as a "list of things to 'white out'", then you'd white them out, source them from somewhere else, and recreate the original document.
<<But who's to say that all poses have been created or conceived? >>
No, I'm saying that poses can't be owned. No ownership = no PI. You have to be the owner of the PI to PI it. Ownership is not defined. Can you own a theme? Not a book with a theme -- a theme? Can you own a pose? Not a specific drawing of a pose, but a pose? Ownership is required for PI declaration.
If ownership is limited to traditional copyright and trademark definitions of ownership, then many of the things listed as possible PI items could not ever be PI'd by anyone.
<<
You are
assuming that there isn't someone out there creative enough to invent
something that would fit into one of these two concepts.>>
Nope, not my point in the slightest. I'm assuming (rightly or wrongly, and perhaps wrongly), that these things can't be owned under trademark and copyright law and are ALWAYS in the public domain for some things on the PI list and thus they would NEVER receive protection, since nobody could ever raise any legal evidence that they owned a "theme". A verbatim _expression_ of a theme? Sure. A theme? No.
Since the license seems intent on protecting things that don't seem to normally be protectable and which always seem to be in the public domain and are always unowned it raises a question of what it means to "own" something, and that definition may not necessarily neatly coincide with those we've come to expect from copyright and trademark law.
<<
Salvatore describes the dark elf in a pose with his swords
that I had never heard of or tried to picture before. Something about
spinning like a screw. Now maybe I am not seeing it my head right. Maybe I am a shut-in and don't know anything about anything, but, it is possible that this is a "new" pose. >>
So? It has to be owned to declare it as PI. Under what body of law is the pose owned? None that I know if. The verbatim _expression_ is owned. But the pose? Never heard of such a thing under copyright or trademark law. No owner = No PI.
<<So, if the book were OGC, except for the pose and
the language describing the pose, I should think that Salvatore could make the case that people were using his PI if he saw it appear in another work.
>>
Certainly he could claim ownership of the text, but the pose? How do you define ownership? By what body of law?
Lee
