Tim Dugger wrote:
On 4 Sep 2005 at 17:27, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
So you're saying that Ryan's interpretation is correct and that Lee's
interpretation is wrong.
hehe... You know, I am not sure anymore....
Seriously, I do think that the entire product is a "covered work", so I
guess that yes, I am agreeing with Ryan in this instance (will
wonders never cease...).
However, I don't seem to recall Ryan stating whether there are only
2 types of content in a covered work or three (maybe I missed that
part).
Does it matter? Doesn't the license have to stand on its own as a legal
document? If we have to bring in the author (well, impetus for
authorship--i believe Ryan's said that lawyers drafted the final
license, based on his impetus and various internal discussions at WotC)
to figure out what the license means, is that really valid?
In hindsight, I am thinking that perhaps the license is missing a
definition for something that should perhaps be called "Proprietory
Content" (PC) that cannot be used by others and falls under normal
copyright except as prohibited by other portions of the license (such
as declaring compatibility), and define it as all content not declared
as OGC or PI. If it had such a definition, then this discussion would
not be taking place.
Yep. And the fact that it doesn't is part of what makes me think that
one of 4 things is true:
--There is no third type of content *as far as the license is
concerned*--but the license need not be applied to the entirety of the
work as generally considered. [Ignoring all discussions about the
license, and pronouncements by Ryan and WotC, this seems to me to be the
most internally-consistent reading. It only requires that some of the
clauses be redundant--perhaps there for emphasis--rather than that any
portions be ignored or glossed over.]
--The license does apply to the whole work and there is no third sort of
content. [Perhaps because the actual drafters (the lawyers) willfully or
unintentionally misunderstood Ryan's intentions.]
--The license authors were incompetent, or at least lazy/sloppy. [This
interpretation is supported by the numerous simple grammar/punctuation
errors that muddle up what could otherwise be perfectly-sensible clauses.]
--It is simply too hard to mix virally-open content and conventional
copyright law and powerful trademark-like protections, and account for
the vagaries of current publication and various media. [Open-content
license? Easy. Trademark licensing? Easy. Content licensing? Easy.
Dealing with books and magazines? Easy. All of the above, at once, plus
handling "web enhancements" and boxed sets and multiple books in a
line--all while dealing with a content that has an ambiguous status WRT
conventional IP laws? Not so easy. I mean, we don't even know for
certain how much ownership/protection RPGs enjoy before you introduce
the WotC OGL. And i'm fairly certain that, while virally-open licenses
have been tested in court at least a bit, the concept of other
restrictions "tagging along with" the open content--restrictions that
are actually tighter than conventional IP law--hasn't. Not to mention
the fact that the smaller the bit of text, the less applicable copyright
is, yet the WotC OGL, like all "copyleft" licenses, rests on
copyright--so how much power does it have when it starts to talk about
small chunks of text that, were they not embodied in a larger work,
wouldn't enjoy copyright protection? Copyrights isn't about ownership of
ideas, it's about reproduction of presentations of those ideas. But the
WotC OGL wants to talk about ideas, it seems.]
_______________________________________________
Ogf-l mailing list
Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org
http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
