> Ryan S. Dancey
>
> > In summary: putting files in special folder "conveniently separate" OGC
> materials, but still they
> > are not "clearly identified" according to you.
>
> I have no way of knowing if there is material in the binary that should be
> clearly identified as OGC but has not been included in the
> folder. Thus my
> copyright has been potentially compromised by restricting my ability to
> ensure that my work has not been misued. Furthermore my rights under the
> OGL have potentially be compromised because I may not be made aware that
> some of the material in the binary is licensed for my use under
> the terms of the OGL.
This is spurious logic. There is no requirement in the OGL that any
copyright holder be made aware of any use of material under the OGL, nor
that any copyright holder have any specific method of enforcing the terms of
the license. The OGL (and all copyleft licenses) rely on the force of the
law to keep things legal, they must by their very nature.
If you hear I am distributing OGC derivative of yours in such a way that
complies with the OGL but I never you an opportunity to see the document I
have acted in a perfectly legal and perhaps even ethical manner but the
effect is exactly the same.
Foreign language translations are an excellent example. We already know
that the OGL itself must be maintained in English, but so far as I can tell
there is no provision for distributing my OGC in a language that I can
understand. If you "clearly identify" all of your OGC in French I have no
way of knowing if you have complied with the license unless I learn French
or employ a translator. I am effectively been cut off from my work. Yet
this is perfectly acceptable under the OGL, but a binary file I can
understand is not? The inconsistency is staggering.
> If I receive a copy of the binary file without the folder, I haven't
> received the material necessary to allow me to exercise my
> rights under the OGL.
This is already covered by the OGL - if you don't follow the terms, you have
violated the license. If someone is distributing the binary without the
folder and they are part of a single work then they are violating the OGL,
pure and simple. It is exactly the same as if I had cut a section of the
SRD and sent it off to someone without the license and copyright notice. We
trust the OGL to serve in this situation, and a binary distribution is no
different.
> In turn, being ignorant of those
> rights and the obligations which are attached to them, I might pass the
> binary on to a 3rd party, thus breaching the terms of the OGL myself. And
> anyone to whom I distribute that binary will be in the same boat I am in.
This is black letter law: Ignorance is no excuse. If you accept such
material it is essentially 'stolen goods' - the recipient of stolen goods
has no right to those goods whether or not they knew they were stolen.
Remove the words 'binary' and replace them with the word 'book' and you have
EXACTLY the same situation. Why are you happy with one and not the other?
> Finally there is no way anyone can require that the binary file and the
> folder be distributed together - because adding such a requirement to the
> terms of the distribution of the Open Game Content portions of the work
> would be attempting to make a new licensing term binding on the OGC, which
> is specifically disallowed by the terms of the OGL.
You're being inconsistent here. The OGL discusses 'works', not files, and
we've talked about what constitutes a 'work' before - it could be many
things, ranging from a single paper document to an entire web site. The SRD
itself is a multi-part work, distributed in pieces that separately do not
meet the terms of the OGL. The mechanism to ensure that these 'works' are
distributed together is the OGL itself. If you don't keep them together
you've violated the license. It's that simple.
> But the OGL does not attempt to limit the method or format of the material
> you choose to distribute. It does not presume to envision all
> the potential
> mechanisms for distributing Open Game Content or the future methods that
> might be invented. In fact, the OGL is 100% neutral about the
> format of the
> distribution you choose to make. All it requires is that the format you
> choose passes one simple test: The Open Game Content must be clearly
> identified. Period, full stop, end of restrictions.
How can you say that the OGL is neutral on this point? Your opinion clearly
shows you believe that it is not. If we can have such a wide gulf of
interpretation on such a common and desirable format as software, then the
license is clearly deficient.
Distributing OGC in any digital form places a rather onerous burden on the
end-user: they must have a computer. The OGL doesn't address this issue at
all. If I were to create my own OGC and publish it on paper and I *DIDN'T*
have a computer, and somebody took it and converted it to a digital form,
then *I* would have been denied my rights to that new material because I had
to go get a computer in order to use see it. IT is unfair in EXACTLY the
same way you claim a binary file is unfair to those who don't know how to
read them. The problem is not that they are unreadable, but rather that
reasonable people can differ in their ability perceive whether or not
something has been "clearly identified". I would stipulate that any
undocumented format cannot, by definition, have any material that is
"clearly identified", but that in any well-documented format it is possible
to "clearly identify" portions of that content as OGC or not OGC.
People seem to think that there is something magical about binary files.
There isn't. All files are binary files. You can dump them out and look at
them and see text strings in ASCII in them. You could even, in a binary
file, have an entire text file completely encapsulated within the rest of
the work.
> It would be inaccurate of you to suggest that the OGL >prohibits< you from
> distributing computer software containing Open Game Content, because it
> clearly does not do so.
We aren't saying you are prohibited from distributing software - we are
saying that the digital world isn't as simple as the OGL implies. Or at
least that the phrase "clearly identify" is not as useful as one would hope.
You have taken a very broad term and interpreted a narrow definition to suit
your own preconceptions, and that is never good practice in a license
agreement.
-Brad
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