----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Mucchiello" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 6:44 PM Subject: Re: [Ogf-l] Re: Releasing a new system under the OGL
> The clause we're talking about removing is the only > benefit the source licensor gets out of the OGL (PI and Trademark > restrictions). I don't agree that this is the only benefit that the source licensor gets from the OGL. If that was true then you wouldn't get 100% OGC products. Clearly there are other benefits as well. I would say that these include: * A pre designed (by WotC) legal way to allow other people to use your copyrighted material without loosing copyright protection. * A guaranteed listing in the section 15 of any products that use your material and any future products that use any of their material * The ability to associate your company or yourself with the Open Game Content movement. Perhaps there are other advantages that I have not touched on but these ones at least would not be removed by any Swedish laws that I know of. > (Remember the owner we are discussing in this thread is releasing something > completely new to OGC and not a single word of it is derived from some > other OGC work.) In the normal case, you use the OGL to gain access to the > upstream OGC. If you are the source licensor where is your consideration if > the PI and Trademark restriction clauses are void? I'm disagreeing with > Peter's assertion that the downstream users of the material get a free ride > and source licensor gets nothing. If I remember correctly all that author wanted to do was get his content used and reused (for free) without having to worry about someone else taking away his copyright ownership. This is the first of the benefits that I mentioned above that you forgot about. He also gets the other two benefits if anyone bases some work on his stuff. I believe that the Action! System people get the same three benefits. They certainly don't get any benefits from the SRD if they don't use that! ;-) I think that you and Peter might be arguing different points as this conversation seems to be going around in a circle. I do see what people mean when they defend "crippled content" as there is nothing to compel people to use it. Those people that object to someone claiming to "own" the term Gold as a weapon description are free to publish their own descriptions of weapons. They could easily sit down together and write up any possible description you can think of for gold, silver, bone, stone or wood to strange things like elements (fire weapons for instance made from the elemental plane of fire +1 fire damage, normal damage against fire elementals and extra damage against water elementals). I'm sure that if the "anti-cripplers" worked together they could create everything then need so that they wouldn't ever need to even look at any "crippled content". Before anyone accuses me of making moral judgements against any particular publisher, let me state that I am not complaining about anyone in particular. (If I ever do decide that I don't like a particular company I will just boycott their products and not waste my time mounting a crusade against them). I'm just explaining what I think the objection that the "anti-cripplers" is. Something they seem to be implying but not openly saying. And if the OGL is a contract between the author/owner and the reuser, then there is no contract between the crippler and the anti-crippler to get in their way. In other words it *would* be a better use of their time if they created uncrippled content instead of complaing about crippled content. However, I do think that Peter is right about one thing. There is one way that crippled content is unfair and immoral. Lets have a look at the sort of content that you are likely to find if you look for it: [1] "Uncrippled" Open Game Content that is available without purchase - (The SRD is an example of this, anyone can download it so it is truly free) [2] "Uncrippled" Open Game Content that is not available without purchase - (Anything in a book that you can't find on the Internet) [3] "Crippled" Open Game Content that is not available without purchase - (Anything in a book that you can't find on the Internet) [4] Non-Open Game Content - (Either what people call "fluff" or undisputed PI in "non-crippled content" or rules from WotC Books that don't have an OGL in them) I won't mention WotC as they are a special case, that do not need to follow the rules. I'll let someone else cover them and stick to covering the other publishers. Anyone can produce any of the four types of content (although anyone who is not WotC finds it harder to make rules into the forth type), so at first it would seem fair for people to make any sort of content they like or use any sort of content that they like. Although people are forced to pay for the second type of OGC that also seems fair as it seems to guarantee that the company making that content will stay in business. I don't think any other type of content is relevant to the conversation (but I'm sure someone will correct me if they think differently). Lets look specifically at three hypothetical groups of publishers. Ones that put all their OGC on the Internet, ones that put all their OGC in books but not on the Internet and ones that deliberately use the OGL to prevent people using their content. (I'm not going to cover PI licences as they seem to be an attempt to uncripple crippled-content. I personally don't agree with the need for them, but for those publishers that honestly believe that they *do* need them for as sort of additional protection it is an attempt by them to be fair - even if you don't agree that PI licences are needed, you can't accuse them of being "immoral".) OK lets see what sort of flow of content there is between the three types of publishers I am looking at: Non-cripplers that publish content online can use: [1] and [2], they produce [1] Non-cripplers that don't publish content online can use: [1] and [2], they produce [2] Cripplers can use: [1] and [2], they produce [3] No one can use [4], and everyone can produce their own [4] so this sort of content balances itself out and can be disregarded. But have another look at what is happening to [1] and [2] again. The first group use these types of content to produce free stuff. The second group use these types of content to make money but still produce [2] that goes back into the OGC pool of rules. The third group use these types of content to make money but produce content that other people can not easily use. I want you to read that last sentence again as I think that *this* is the central point of the people that claim that this sort of thing is "immoral". People who routinely create crippled content benefit from the other publishers that create instantly usable OGC but do not put as much back into the publishing community as those other publishers that don't cripple. They benefit from the OGL without having to pay full price for it. Any OGC that they do provide is only partial content and can not be reused without extra work being done by another publisher. Throw an ambiguous PI/OGC declaration on top of that, and the second publisher needs to employ a lawyer to do editing work to avoid accidentally using the wrong thing from the first product. There has been talk of fairness in contracts and this *one* point seems to be an area of unfairness in the OGL. The OGL prevents conditions being placed on OGC so it enables "cripplers" to gain access to the hard work of other publishers without having to make an equal contribution back to that "non-crippling" publisher. The OGL actually seems to be written in a way that rewards would be cheats more than it rewards honest people. I think this is where people *can* claim that the licence is immoral in some way. But even if the complainers are right and the licence *is* immoral, is it illegal? There are a lot of things out there that are much more immoral than the OGL. Anyone who really wants to stop immoral things should go to another mailing list and do something about one of those. Lets face it people who *do* produce crippled OGC are about as immoral as people who move house and take all the light bulbs with them! My opinion of the situation is people who don't like crippled content or the very idea of PI are wasting their time complaining. Anyone who publishes so called "crippled content" probably believes that it is a sound business decision, and while I agree that crippling content seems pretty pointless to me, I can't see a experienced publisher changing their business model because of a complaint. People may say that "the customer is always right" but I don't think that anyone actually believes it. The anti-cripplers" would be a lot better off trying to do something that tipped the scales in the financial favour or people that produce uncrippled content. They could either: * Give free advertising to the non-crippling publishers. * Provide some sort of resource to non-crippling publishers and exclude the cripplers. * Promote other OGC licences that do not have PI in them in the gaming community as a whole. * Take up the challenge I made in an earlier post about using the principle of the PI licence to provide content that only non-cripplers could use. So I'll throw the ball to the anti-PI brigade and ask them if they think this is an accurate statement of their position. I'd also be interested to hear what they actually propose to do to support people that don't declare things as PI or don't cripple things. Remember guys that it is easier to influence the publishers that agree with you than the ones that think you are outright wrong. David Shepheard _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
