[Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
I've been discussing this "off list" with people so I've decided to post on list. It involves the definition of OGC. "OGC... means any work covered by the license,... but specifically excludes Product Identity." Contractual construction requires that you give effect to this if possible, even if it renders something else redundant. A poor attempt at contractual construction is one where you have to delete a portion of the contract for it to make sense when you read it. The literal construction of this statement is that as soon as you cover a work with the license, it is all 100% OGC except those parts that are PI. You choose to define the "work" within the legal limits of such definition. You choose to cover it. But as soon as you have defined a work, and as soon as you cover it with the license, 100% of that covered work is OGC except the parts that are PI, per the above definition. You must then clearly designate what is OGC and what is PI. OGC declaration has effect, but it is a redundant effect, since by declaring PI and covering a work with the license, everything that is not PI in the covered work is OGC. So, nominally if your PI declaration is clear, then the OGC is the covered work minus the parts that are PI. The above statement explicitly says: OGC = COVERED WORK - PI OR COVERED WORK = OGC + PI Almost everything else in the OGC definition is valid, but redundant, because of the broad definition of OGC as "the covered work" minus the PI. This means that almost everything else in the OGC definition is a redundant subset of "any work covered" minus the PI. Somebody posted something from Clark saying that this construction "conflicts" with other parts of the license. In fact, this interpretation does not "conflict" an iota with the rest of the license. If it did, it would be a poor attempt at contractual construction by me, because it would not be giving effect to all parts of the license. Reading other parts as redundant is not the same as reading in a "conflict". The post I got that apparently came from Clark claimed that, by my logic, you could just rewrite the license to equate "covered work" with "OGC", which is not my logic. My logic is that the contract says: COVERED WORK = OGC + PI, so that COVERED WORK = OGC only for covered works with no PI. I analyze statutes all the time, and they often have lots of redundancy built into them. That does not equate to a "conflict" of statute or, in the cases of contracts, "conflicting clauses in the contract". Anyone care to give an alternate construction of the above sentence that does not read it out of existence? Lots of people seem to want to do two things: a) pretend that the OGC declaration is all important, and b) ignore the clause that says explicitly that "OGC... means any work covered by this license" except the parts that are PI One reason why the OGC + PI declarations are important, is that they, together, tell you what the "covered work" is in the eyes of the OGL end user, and this is particularly important in compilations (like magazines, etc.) where the commercial unit and the "covered work" may not be 1:1 equivalent of each other (because you might cover a single article instead of the whole magazine). Lee ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
On 9/3/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Contractual construction requires that you give effect to this if possible, even if it renders something else redundant. A poor attempt at contractual construction is one where you have to delete a portion of the contract for it to make sense when you read it. Here's the thing -- and this is important, so feel free to repeat it ad-nauseum once you get it right. *Despite* what the industry thinks, if you don't properly follow the OGL you don't gain its protections. If you fail to follow clause #8, you've broken the license. Just as if you used someone else's trademark, used non-OGC, or failed to update your Section 15. Now, it's very likely that no one is going to come after your website that improperly uses someone else's OGC -- even if you're doing it wrong, the worst they can do is make you fix it. But for the second-generation, if you don't trust your upstream authors, don't use them. Because if THEY get called to task and decide it's easier to just not fix it, then YOU lose the part of their work that used THEIR work. DM ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
In a message dated 9/3/2005 6:23:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you fail to follow clause #8, you've broken the license. Of course this is true. Nobody is debating this. You have to do it. Nobody said it wasn't legally required of you to do it. You've missed the point of the post which is arguing that the phrase "OGC means any work covered by the license, excluding Product Identity" effectively says: OGC = COVERED WORK - PI OR COVERED WORK = OGC + PI This says nothing about compliance with the requirement that you must declare your OGC. It's analyzing the definition of OGC. Lee ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
On 3 Sep 2005 at 18:57, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OGC = COVERED WORK - PI OR COVERED WORK = OGC + PI Where I was saying Covered Work = OGC + PI + whatever is left over and not covered by the previous two terms (this would be covered by standard copyright law). As Darklord pointed out elsewhere, you cannot PI, nor OGC things that you do not own. Thus if a person used material from the public domain, you could not, according to the OGL declare that public domain material as OGC, nor as PI. To me, this says that his interpretation that everything (except what is declared PI) is OGC is incorrect. TANSTAAFL Rasyr (Tim Dugger) System Editor Iron Crown Enterprises - http://www.ironcrown.com E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
On Sat, 3 Sep 2005, Tim Dugger wrote: OGC = COVERED WORK - PI OR COVERED WORK = OGC + PI Where I was saying Covered Work = OGC + PI + whatever is left over and not covered by the previous two terms (this would be covered by standard copyright law). Thus if a person used material from the public domain, you could not, according to the OGL declare that public domain material as OGC, nor as PI. To me, this says that his interpretation that everything (except what is declared PI) is OGC is incorrect. The problem with adding the plus leftover standard copyright law stuff as part of the covered work, is that those things that are part of the covered work are not covered under standard copyright law. For instance, you are allowed to get away with some things in copyright law (mentioning other people's trademarks, or quoting short passages under fair use rules) that you aren't allowed to do within a covered work under the OGL. Spike Y Jones ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
On 3 Sep 2005 at 20:47, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The problem with adding the plus leftover standard copyright law stuff as part of the covered work, is that those things that are part of the covered work are not covered under standard copyright law. For instance, you are allowed to get away with some things in copyright law (mentioning other people's trademarks, or quoting short passages under fair use rules) that you aren't allowed to do within a covered work under the OGL. So we would have the following: 1) OGC 2) PI 3) Non-OGC, Non-PI Material For #3, it is neither OGC nor PI, and is covered by normal copyright law, except where it is superceded by the limitations from the OGL. Would that be a better way of phrasing it? Okay, now back to the core question. The issue being discussed is as follows: Lee has stated (and he can correct me if I get this incorrect) that in his opinion, if you apply the OGL to a work (any work), that it is automatically 100% OGC. You then need to declare what portions are PI, and declare what portions are OGC, and that the work is made up of only those two types of content. However, the way that I view it (i.e. my opinion) is that when you take a work (any work) and apply the OGL to it, that you automatically end up with two types of content. The first being that which must be declared OGC (i.e. any mechanics or other material derived from the SRD or other OGL sources (presuming that those other sources made their declarations correctly and you are using those sources properly). The second type would be content type #3 that I listed above. At this point, you would then expand the OGC declaration to include anything else you want to be OGC. You would also make your PI declaration for anything you want to mark as Product Identity. By my reasoning, the license would not include the following clause -- 8. Identification: If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content. -- if the whole work were considered OGL just by applying the license to the work. To put it another way, Why do you have to clearly indicate which portions of the work are OGC if the whole work is considered to be OGC just by putting it with the license? This topic was a sidebar that came out of the thread, on rpg.net, about the OGC wiki that Mike Mearls proposed, and that others have since began working on. TANSTAAFL Rasyr (Tim Dugger) System Editor Iron Crown Enterprises - http://www.ironcrown.com E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
On Sat, 3 Sep 2005, Tim Dugger wrote: So we would have the following: 1) OGC 2) PI 3) Non-OGC, Non-PI Material For #3, it is neither OGC nor PI, and is covered by normal copyright law, except where it is superceded by the limitations from the OGL. Would that be a better way of phrasing it? I think a better way of phrasing your concern about public domain text and other things that may creep in is: The covered work consists of the Open Gaming Content plus the Product Identity minus any text that the publisher doesn't have the authority (i.e., ownership rights) to contribute. This means a book could contain four types of text: 1) Open Content 2) Product Identity 3) Text that is within the covers of the book but is not within the declared bounds of the covered work (also commonly referred to as the third type of content) 4) Text that is mistakenly declared to be OGC or PI, but which actually isn't covered by the strictures of the OGL Okay, now back to the core question. The issue being discussed is as follows: Lee has stated (and he can correct me if I get this incorrect) that in his opinion, if you apply the OGL to a work (any work), that it is automatically 100% OGC. You then need to declare what portions are PI, and declare what portions are OGC, and that the work is made up of only those two types of content. Just be careful here: When Lee talks about a work, he probably means that as something distinct from a book. That is, he's of the school that says the covered work isn't the equivalent of the product, because the work can mean an individual OGL-bound article within a larger magazine that isn't bound by the strictures of the OGL. However, the way that I view it (i.e. my opinion) is that when you take a work (any work) and apply the OGL to it, that you automatically end up with two types of content. The first being that which must be declared OGC (i.e. any mechanics or other material derived from the SRD or other OGL sources (presuming that those other sources made their declarations correctly and you are using those sources properly). The second type would be content type #3 that I listed above. At this point, you would then expand the OGC declaration to include anything else you want to be OGC. You would also make your PI declaration for anything you want to mark as Product Identity. By my reasoning, the license would not include the following clause -- 8. Identification: If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content. -- if the whole work were considered OGL just by applying the license to the work. To put it another way, Why do you have to clearly indicate which portions of the work are OGC if the whole work is considered to be OGC just by putting it with the license? You can also read Section 8 the other way around: If you distribute Open Game Content, you must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing *aren't* Open Game Content. Read this way, what it refers to is the fact that you have to clearly denote any PI that falls within the declared OGC, lest it be considered Open. Since the work consists of OGC and PI, if you accurately declare one (e.g., The OGC is all of the following ... with the exception of these specific words...) you've effectively identified the other. Spike Y Jones ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
