At 05:14 PM 4/9/2004 -0500, woodelf wrote:Let's take a random D20 System book, released under the WotC OGL, off the shelf. Now, clearly, i can abide by the terms of the WotC OGL if i want to reuse the material, right? But what if i don't like those terms. Am i forbidden from reusing the material according to the bounds/terms of standard copyright (i.e., according to Fair Use, plus reuse of any material in the book that can't be copyrighted)? If not, why not?
3. Offer and Acceptance: By Using the Open Game Content You indicate Your acceptance of the terms of this License.
Now, granted you cannot be forced to accept a license but likewise you do not have the right to just use the material normally. So one could interpret any use of OGC declared material wherein the OGL is also contained as an obligation to read the terms of the license and abide by them, or ELSE not use the material. In this regard it becomes similar to the shrink wrap licenses found in software. The difference here is you "could" see the license before using the material the question is are you obligated to look on back page of the book for the OGL?
For sake of argument, assume that some of the material can be clearly reused under Fair Use doctrines, or because it is clearly not ownable (pure math formulas, and teh like), and so on. In fact, we'll be generous and assume that even the creator/copyright-holder agrees that Fair Use would apply to these bits, and so a court case isn't a potential problem [yes, i'm aware that the odds of free reuse being clear-cut like this in the real world are pretty much zero, and of the creator admitting to it being even less]. So we have material that can be reused even if there were no license attached. It seems to me that you are not using "the Open Game Content" if you use it in this manner--because outside of the license, there *is* no "OGC". You're just using some content, which happens to also be designated as "OGC" according to this license that you're not using.
Of course, in the real world, things are a lot iffier--you can certainly reuse some material and say "i'm not using the license, because i can use this material according to the doctrines of Fair Use", but you may or may not be correct. But this was all just an analogy, anyway, to an actual formal 2nd license. I see no reason why, if i can release identical content in the form of two digital files, each with a different license, i can't simply merge it all into one file.
What about this: a website. The content appears on one or more distinct webpages. The licenses each appear on their own webpage. If you go to the WotC OGL page, it has links to all of the pages that have content licensed under it. If you go to the CC license page, it has links to all of the pages that have content licensed under it. Does it matter if the pages these respective license pages link to are actually the same pages, or merely identical pages? Why or why not? What if they are the same pages, but referenced differently (via symlinks), so that the end user doesn't realize they are the same page?
-- woodelf <*> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://webpages.charter.net/woodelph/
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