Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
In a message dated 9/4/2005 3:51:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is a required interpretation. Otherwise, it would be possible to put the things that we didn't want you to be able say like "This product is compatible with Dungeons Dragons(R)" on the cover and claim that it was not a part of the "work" covered by the OGL. No. It would not. You can't advertise compatibility "in conjunction with" a work covered by the license. This prohibition would prevent you from advertising compatibility on the cover of a magazine even if only one article were covered. My reading of copyright caselaw indicated that the courts view any commercial unit sold as a whole as a "work" for the purposes of copyright licenses. 3 booklets sold in a box is a "work". A magazine featuring many articles is a "work". A magazine also contains individual works, Ryan. Each article, if it contains its own copyright, is a work. Works can contain other works. Every collection of poems I have is a work that contains other sub-works. Nothing in the license requires that the outermost work be the one the license is applied to. You should be able to apply it to anything copyright law treats as a work -- such as a poem, an article, etc. 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
In a message dated 9/4/2005 3:51:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A magazine featuring many articles is a "work". Just to prove my point further, Ryan -- here's a definition from Title 17: A “collective work” is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. See. In a collective work, there is an encompassing work (which gains copyrightability extending only to its section, presentation, and organization of its internal contents, along with any new content it adds). There are also individual works within it. There is NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING in the OGL that says for a collective work you can't apply the license to an individual sub-work. All that's required by implication from the license, is that you apply the license to a work, and that can be an article in a magazine, without applying the license to the encompassing collective work. 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 5 Sep 2005 at 4:24, Thomas Kyle wrote: Well, the general consensus (at least of those closest to the OGL, and several others in this discussion) is that anything in the third category of non-OGC non-PI still _isn't_ usable under the OGL, which seems to be very similar to the concept of PI (in that it can't be reused/redistributed). Correct, OGC is the only bits that are allowed to be re-used. The definition of PI was created so that there was a method of having material that was not OGC mixed in with the OGC (i.e. such as the name of an iconic character - the character's stats are OGC, but his name is PI). 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
In a message dated 9/5/2005 1:28:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I dont buy the "OGC by default" argument. I don't know if "by default" is the appropriate word. I've only claimed that you must declare as OGC everything that you don't declare as PI. What is your interpretation of: "OGC... means any work covered by the License... excluding product identity." This implies to me, that if there is no Product Identity that the work covered by the license is 100% OGC. I don't see any other reasonable construction of this definition. Do you? What is it? 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
I'm going to dissect the definition below and show it applied to a sample work of fiction. Here's the whole definition. "'Open Game Content' means the game mechanic and includes the methods, procedures, processes and routines to the extent such content does not embody the Product Identity and is an enhancement over the prior art and any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor, and means any work covered by this License, including translations and derivative works under copyright law, but specifically excludes Product Identity." OK, so let's dissect this with an example. I have a work of fiction that I'm going to apply to the OGL. It contains no game mechanics. This shortens the effective definition to: "'Open Game Content' means any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor, and means any work covered by this License, including translations and derivative works under copyright law, but specifically excludes Product Identity." Next, its not a derivative work or a translation. This shortens the definition to: "'Open Game Content' means any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor, and means any work covered by this License, but specifically excludes Product Identity." Let's say there's no Product Identity. Well the definition shortens to: "'Open Game Content' means any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor, and means any work covered by this License." At this point OGC means two things: 1) anything I mark as OGC, AND 2) the work covered by the license Since Section #8 requires me to mark all my OGC, I have to mark it so that both of the above are true, in order to fulfill the definition. part 1 of the remainder of the OGC definition is automatically fulfilled by Section #8. So now I have to make Section #8 work with part 2 of the remaining OGC definition: I have to mark "the work covered by the License" as OGC. If you want to give effect to the phrase that "OGC means the work covered by the License" there is only one obvious reading. You can't just nay-say this out of existence. If you are looking for a counter-argument you'd have to argue about the definition of the word "covered". I think it's self-explanatory, but since it ain't defined, if there's any wiggle room for a conclusion opposite to my own, it would have to leverage the phrase "covered" somehow to be construed as an alternate possibly valid alternative. Currently Tim and Clark keep saying that they don't agree, but they haven't posted any interpretation which gives effect to "OGC means any work covered by the License". I don't think any nay-saying is a valid critique until it presents a reasonable interpretation of this part of the License. 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 5 Sep 2005 at 9:50, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 9/5/2005 1:28:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I dont buy the OGC by default argument. I don't know if by default is the appropriate word. I've only claimed that you must declare as OGC everything that you don't declare as PI. No, you actually have claimed that anything under the license is automatically (which pretty much equals the term by default) OGC, except for what is PI. At least that is what you said on the rpg.net thread. What is your interpretation of: OGC... means any work covered by the License... excluding product identity. This is where I am having problems. You are taking only a portion of the definition given and attempting to make it the only definition, ignoring the rest of the definition, and pretty much ignoring the rest of the license where the phrasing tends to counter any possible interpretation other than the one you are attempting to apply. You cannot ignore the rest of the definition, which actually comes before that small part you continually quote. This implies to me, that if there is no Product Identity that the work covered by the license is 100% OGC. I don't see any other reasonable construction of this definition. Do you? What is it? This apparently implies to you that if there is not a PI declaration, that no matter what the OGC declaration, that OGC declaration is wrong unless it is for 100% OGC. Let's take a magazine as an example of my interpretation. Using my interpretation, the whole magazine is covered by the license. The magazine declares three articles as OGC. It then declares the names of characters and place names used within the articles as PI. So what is the rest of the magazine? Under my interpretation, it is non-open (closed) content (meaning that it cannot be re-used - even through the fair use clauses available in copyright law if you are using the OGL). It doesn't have to be declared because it is not OGC, nor is it PI. It is the default state of content (caveat - content based upon the SRD or other OGC works is automatically open, and is required to be declared as such) within the covered work. Under your interpretation, it would seem that the magazine would require a separate copy of the OGL for each of the articles. 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
In a message dated 9/5/2005 11:31:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No, you actually have claimed that anything under the license is automatically (which pretty much equals the term "by default") OGC, except for what is PI. At least that is what you said on the rpg.net thread. It's sort of question whether "automatically" is an appropriate choice of words. Even if I used it before it's sort of misleading, since you have a choice of what you PI, then nominally you have a choice of what is OGC in some cases. Where you make no choices about PI, however, then yes, it's pretty much automatically OGC. This is where I am having problems. You are taking only a portion of the definition given and attempting to make it the only definition, ignoring the rest of the definition, and pretty much ignoring the rest of the license where the phrasing tends to counter any possible interpretation other than the one you are attempting to apply. You cannot ignore the rest of the definition, which actually comes before that small part you continually quote. No, I'm not ignoring the rest of the definition, Tim. Every time the word "means" is used, as in the form, "OGC means X, and OGC means Y, and OGC means Z" then "means" can be interpreted as "includes". "OGC includes X, and OGC includes Y, and OGC includes Z, but OGC excludes Product Identity". Using the basic logic of set theory, you build a merged union of each include and subtract out the exclude. In doing so, you'll see that the part that say "OGC means any work covered by the license" is a superset of all the other things on the list that OGC includes and therefore, by definition, reference to the superset automatically includes all subsets of the supersets by set theory. So, I'm not ignoring other parts of the definition at all. I'm just appying basic set theory and determining that one of the phrases creates a superset which all the other parts are subsets of. Therefore there's no particular reason to refer to the subsets. This apparently implies to you that if there is not a PI declaration, that no matter what the OGC declaration, that OGC declaration is wrong unless it is for 100% OGC. Correct. Using my interpretation, the whole magazine is covered by the license. The magazine declares three articles as OGC. It then declares the names of characters and place names used within the articles as PI. You've used the license incorrectly. You should apply the license so that it covers each of the three articles and has OGC + PI declarations for the articles. Each article is a work, and the magazine is an encompassing work. So you can apply the license to each sub-work individually without applying the license to the magazine. Under your interpretation, it would seem that the magazine would require a separate copy of the OGL for each of the articles. Not necessarily. I could apply the OGL to the whole magazine if I wanted, and then apply a PI definition that covers all but three articles. And then create OGC and PI definitions for the three articles. That would render 100% of the covered work OGC + PI. Again, you keep debating my interpretation, Tim, but one of the individual meanings for OGC is: "OGC means any work covered by the License, excluding Product Identity". You have yet, after umpteen debating posts, unless I've missed something, you've completely ignored this line and have anted up no alternate interpretation of this line. You are busy pretending like it doesn't exist. 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 Sun, 2005-09-04 at 17:20 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 4 Sep 2005, Doug Meerschaert wrote: But Ryan just said that the intent of the OGL is that everything from cover to cover (including the covers) is the covered work, and we He has also, in the past, asserted that a website is similarly hosed. If you have a single OGL document, the entire site is contaminated. If he's recanted this particular absurdity, I do not know. -- David Bolack [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
The entire site, or just that sub-directory? It was my understanding that, if you had a site, and a folder called /gaming_stuff/, and that folder contained OGC material and but one instance of the OGL (as opposed to the OGL on every page where OGC occurred), then everything within that sub-directory was covered. Paul W. King -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Bolack Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 2:57 PM To: ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license He has also, in the past, asserted that a website is similarly hosed. If you have a single OGL document, the entire site is contaminated. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.18/89 - Release Date: 9/2/2005 ___ 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
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
Re: [Ogf-l] Any work covered by the license
Doug Meerschaert wrote: Nope. Anything not identified as required in Section #8 and also not noted as Product Identity is third type of content. Find me anything in the license itself that supports this. Sure, there're discussions on this list--mostly attempts to make sense of seeming contradictions; there are Ryan's [the author or at least impetus] postings; there's the WotC FAQ. But is there anything in the license itself that actually says that? I've long suspected that that was the intended meaning of the license, but that a mistake was made along the way, and it doesn't actually say that. I'd be genuinely surprised if an IP attorney, with zero previous contact with the license, and without prompting or leading questions, would conclude on reading it that it both applied to the work as a whole (as opposed to some subset work) and allowed non-OGC non-PI content. And, yes, that might undermine the various prohibitions of the WotC OGL and the D20STL. OTOH, most of those prohibitions are phrased to include in conjunction with type prohibitions. Even if only half the chapters of a book are covered by the license, i'd say it's a pretty safe bet that breaking the license's rules in another of the chapters would be construed as doing so in conjunction with the covered work. And i have no idea what happens in a court of law if there's a contract dispute and the author says i intended the license to mean X and a witness says i knew the license was supposed to mean X, so used it that way and the defendant says i don't know what he intended, the license clearly means Y, and that's what i did. ___ 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
Tim Dugger wrote: On 4 Sep 2005 at 16:05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If this is the case, then there's no such thing as the third type of content and a whole bunch of stuff has been published under the OGL using an incorrect interpretation of the license. I wonder if the fact that WotC hasn't taken any steps in the past five years to correct this misinterpretation would work against the company if it tried to start enforcing this interpretation now. I view it as squares and rectangles. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are square. You have a work, as defined by Ryan to be an entire product from cover to cover. In this work you are required to declare what is OGC, and to declare what is PI. However, there is nothing in the license that says the entire work IS OGC unless it is declared PI. My interpretation is that the work contains OGC, PI, and anything else not declared by the first two. That anything else is still bound by the OGL, especially where the OGL superceeds copyright law. That anything else can include such things as public domain material (such as the names of the Norse Gods). If the entire work were considered to be OGC, except for what was declared PI, then there would be absolutely no reason to declare what is OGC, as it would be implicit that if it is not declared as PI it would be OGC. However, this interpretation fails because it is possible to incude public domain material (such as the names of Norse gods) in a work. Since the names are public domain, they cannot be declared OGC nor PI because the contributor does not own the rights to declare it as one or the other, and if a work contains only 2 types of content (OGC PI), then it would be impossible to use any public domain material within a covered work. Thus, any work which included such would be in violation of the OGL Alternately, you can declare Thor as PI or OGC. And someone would therefore be required to not use, or make OGC, respectively,your version of the word Thor. They could, alternately, choose a different source if one were available--like, oh, say, PD. Since authority to contribute is not explicitly defined, and exactly what you are prohibited from WRT PI is not explicitly defined, and what authority, if any, you need to declare PI is not explicitly defined, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that you could declare a PD element as either OGC or PI, and thus force those who derive from it to treat it as such. And equally reasonable, and in no way a contradiction, to say that those very same people could instead cite the PD--rather than your work-- as their source for those specific elements. Let me use an alternate, and hopefully less-muddled, example. Let us suppose for a moment that the vitality/wounds system in Spycraft is closed content, that the same system in Uneathed Arcana is OGC, and that the Star Wars D20 game had been released under the WotC OGL and the vitality/wounds system there had been declared PI. Further, assume that the systems are identical (rather than nearly-identical). I believe that you could cite Spycraft and UA in your Sec.15, and use the vitality/wounds system. The fact that it is not available to you via Spycraft doesn't prevent you using the identical content via UA. Moreover, IMHO, you could cite UA and Star Wars D20 in your Sec.15, and still use the vitality/wounds system, verbatim from UA, even though that would be identical in content to using it verbatim from Star Wars D20. That is, the power of the prohibitions of PI is only as great as the PI is unique. Likewise, the requirements of OGC are only as powerful as the OGC is unique--if you can reasonably invent the content in a way that makes you legitimate creator/owner, the fact that it *could have been* copied from or derived from someone else's OGC doesn't make it necessary to designate it OGC itself. As a concrete example of this, the starship construction system in T20: it could have been derived from the existing D20 System OGC. However, it actually was derived from the existing MegaTraveller/Traveller: tNE rules. Therefore, they were not required to make it OGC, and chose not to. Perfectly legitimately and legally, IMHO. ___ 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
Tim Dugger wrote: 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? Because the work, as far as the license is concerned, and the work, as far as the consumer/reuser is concerned, might not be the same unit. ___ 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
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For now, let's assume that we have one work, a book. Let's assume that it is wholly non-derivative. Let's assume that the person who wrote the book applies the OGL to it, and says, This book, in its entirety, is a single work covered by the Open Gaming License. Let's assume that the guy has no Product Identity. How much of the book must be OGC? In my opinion, 100%. As soon as you pick a work covered by the license, that work covers by the license contains only OGC and PI, or, if there's no PI, then it contains only OGC. Then a declaration that just says the text is 100% OGC, and doesn't say anything about the art, layout, trade dress, etc., is invalid? I write an RPG. I use the WotC OGL, and declare The entirety of the text of this work, save the index , table of contents, and credits, is Open Game Content. In your opinion, are you saying that my company trademark has just been declared OGC, because it wasn't declared PI? Or that it is automatically PI, because it wasn't declared OGC? That if i merely want others to be able to continue to use my trademark as they could under conventional IP laws, rather than be extra-restricted as they would be if it were PI, i have to explicitly include some sort of mini-license or permission? ___ 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
David Bolack wrote: He has also, in the past, asserted that a website is similarly hosed. If you have a single OGL document, the entire site is contaminated. That sounds about right, actually. If your website has OGC on it, then you need to treat it all as a work under the OGL. That is, you can't use someone else's trademarks et al. DM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.18/89 - Release Date: 9/2/2005 ___ 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
woodelf wrote: Find me anything in the license itself that supports this. Section #7. ... in a work containting Open Gaming Content... Section #8: If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content. Now, there are certain things that have to be OGC, possibly including all game rules in your product. But the license makes a lot more sense when you realize that non-game rule content doesn't have to be PI or OGC. DM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.18/89 - Release Date: 9/2/2005 ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Ryan, reply-to problem
This could just be a problem with your mail client. I use Firefox myself and for those people you mentioned (and a few others I've noticed), it sends a copy both to the reply-to entry (ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org) and the original sender. I've not seen any situation though where it does not send to the list itself, unless it was a list wide setting. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ryan, can you check the list's settings. I am accidentally sending out posts to Tim and Clark directly instead of to the list. This happens not infrequently with various people. It's a result of the reply-to headers being setup incorrectly somehow, since I'm just hitting Reply Lee ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l ___ 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 9/5/2005 5:20:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And i have no idea what happens in a court of law if there's a contract dispute and the author says "i intended the license to mean X" and a witness says "i knew the license was supposed to mean X, so used it that way" and the defendant says "i don't know what he intended, the license clearly means Y, and that's what i did". Supreme Court precedent on the matter says that for contracts, and particularly for contracts of adhesion (contracts which are drafted by one party and presented on a "take it or leave it" basis without negotation), which this is, any vague area of the contract should be construed against the drafter if there is a disagreement between the drafter and another party. Where there is no vague area, I doubt that many courts are going to listen to the drafter's claims of intent if another party to a contract of adhesion is adhering to the contract per the plain English meaning of the contract. 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
In a message dated 9/5/2005 5:21:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tim's Question: "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?" Because the work, as far as the license is concerned, and the work, as far as the consumer/reuser is concerned, might not be the same unit. Woodelf, I concur. A poem is a work. A picture can be a work. A short story can be a work. If I have a book that contains a short story, a poem, and a picture, I have a singe encompassing work, and three contained works. If I intend that the OGL apply only to the short story (by my election), and my OGC and PI declarations apply only to that short story, then it signals to users of the OGL that the "work covered by the license" is the short story, and not the poem or the picture or the encompassing volume. 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
In a message dated 9/5/2005 5:21:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I write an RPG. I use the WotC OGL, and declare "The entirety of the text of this work, save the index , table of contents, and credits, is Open Game Content." In your opinion, are you saying that my company trademark has just been declared OGC, because it wasn't declared PI? Or that it is automatically PI, because it wasn't declared OGC? I'm not sure where your trademarks are, and whether they are part of the text of the work. So I have no idea how to answer this. My opinion about this section of the license, as far as this thread is concerned, is limited to what is required of declarations for licensing compliance. At least in this thread I'm not willing to venture a strong opinion about what happens to your IP if you fail to exercise appropriate cautions over your declaration. I could speculate, but I don't think that's a useful contribution in the context of this particular thread which is already complicated enough. 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
In a message dated 9/5/2005 5:40:53 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And they've made it quite clear that they don't want to prohibit a magazine having some WotC OGL-using articles, and some "regular" articles. While they might like to enable that potential, the license does not permit it. Ryan Why not? I've recently posted Title 17's definition of collected works (like magazines) and it notes that while the collected works are works, they sub-works they contain are also works unto themselves. There is NOTHING in the license that says that you must apply the OGL to an entire collected work to cover a sub-work. It says only that it covers "a" (singular) "work". I respectfully disagree with your construction of the license on this subject. That said, I think the "in conjunction with" clause would apply to the rest of the magazine even if it wasn't per se a "covered work" as a whole.. Lee ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
Re: [Ogf-l] Ryan, reply-to problem
In a message dated 9/5/2005 8:30:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This could just be a problem with your mail client. I use Firefox myself and for those people you mentioned (and a few others I've noticed), it sends a copy both to the reply-to entry (ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org) and the original sender. I've not seen any situation though where it does not send to the list itself, unless it was a list wide setting. I've noticed this intermittently happen to specific people's emails, where I end up emailing them instead of the list. I'm on AOL. 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
In a message dated 9/5/2005 7:34:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But the license makes a lot more sense when you realize that non-game rule content doesn't have to be PI or OGC. Except that to come to that conclusion you have to utterly ignore the part of the license that says: "OGC means any work covered by the license excluding Product Identity" And I'm not willing to come to that conclusion simply so that I can say, "see there is a third type of content inside a covered work". I can instead read that part of the license as it seems to beg me to read it on my face and say instead: "In any collected work, you can apply the license to a sub-work without applying it to the whole collection, allowing a subwork to be OGC + PI and creating a space outside the covered work but inside the commercial unit which is not material directly covered by the OGL, but to which only the 'in conjunction with' prohibition probably directly applies" 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
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And I'm not willing to come to that conclusion simply so that I can say, see there is a third type of content inside a covered work. So, rather than take the interpretation that the industry has adopted, you prefer one that has almost exactly the same effect? Talk about arguing a moot point. Or is there some deep significance you prefer to attach to the distinction between text that is neither PI nor OGC inside an OGL-covered work and text is only in conjunction with the OGL-covered work. If there's something that you think you (and I) should be able to do, or that the other guy should be compelled to do, could you kindly spell it out for me? 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
Doug Meerschaert wrote: woodelf wrote: Find me anything in the license itself that supports this [the third type of content]. Section #7. ... in a work containting Open Gaming Content... Section #8: If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content. Now, there are certain things that have to be OGC, possibly including all game rules in your product. But the license makes a lot more sense when you realize that non-game rule content doesn't have to be PI or OGC. Neither of those clauses in any way necessitates, or even implies, non-OGC, non-PI content. Why refer to a work containing OGC? Because it also has PI, and both parts are covered by that clause. Likewise for the necessity to indicate OGC--just because, if a work only contains OGC and PI, it would be slightly redundant to identify both of those, doesn't mean that there is some 3rd bit. And, again, if the work that the license refers to is allowed to be a subset of the physical work, that, too, would explain the necessity of identifying both OGC and PI, without necessarily allowing the license to *cover* non-OGC non-PI content. ___ 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 9/5/2005 10:01:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, rather than take the interpretation that the industry has adopted, you prefer one that has almost exactly the same effect? I'm not certain I'd agree that almost complying with a license is the same as complying with a license. And, depending on how a judge rules, if he agrees that everything in a covered work is OGC except the parts that are PI, I'd hate to be the one who failed to declare some giant chunk of the covered work as either one and have him decide for me what it is. I'm not certain this would happen, as the judge could just as readily say read that the entire covered work must be OGC + PI and assume that my failure to designate the remaining portion might mean that I intended not to license it and he might then just treat it as a trivial violation of the license. Which a judge will decide? I'm not going to find out. So, I don't consider that the difference is trivial. I think when it comes to declarations, you need to darn well identify everything the license mandates that you declare and declare it as PI or OGC. Leave nothing undeclared or misdeclared that you have to clearly declare as an OGL requirement. Doing otherwise leaves you open to licensing violations or worse if your products ever get into a court. 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
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 9/5/2005 5:21:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I write an RPG. I use the WotC OGL, and declare The entirety of the text of this work, save the index , table of contents, and credits, is Open Game Content. In your opinion, are you saying that my company trademark has just been declared OGC, because it wasn't declared PI? Or that it is automatically PI, because it wasn't declared OGC? I'm not sure where your trademarks are, and whether they are part of the text of the work. So I have no idea how to answer this. My opinion about this section of the license, as far as this thread is concerned, is limited to what is required of declarations for licensing compliance. At least in this thread I'm not willing to venture a strong opinion about what happens to your IP if you fail to exercise appropriate cautions over your declaration. I could speculate, but I don't think that's a useful contribution in the context of this particular thread which is already complicated enough. Should've been clearer: any trademarks only appear in the credits of this hypothetical work. [I forget that some people trademark all sorts of stuff that i (1) would never dream of trademarking and (2) question the validity of trademarking. Some of it for good reason mind you--it's just not the way i want the world to work.] ___ 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 9/5/2005 10:53:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Furthermore, if there is no 3rd type of content within a covered work, then it becomes much trickier to sensibly chop a work up into lots of little pieces. Let's say you have a chapter of feats, and all the feat names are PI, and all the feat mechanics are OGC, and nothing has been said about the flavor text describing the feats. Is it sensible to refer to what is essentially every other paragraph of a chapter as "a work", in the vein of copyright definitions? If not, then maybe you really can't chop things up that way. What is an isn't a work is a matter of fact-based inquiry, so I might come up with a fact pattern where every other paragraph is a work. However, for every instance I come up with that, 99 others won't be situations where every other paragraph constitutes a work. That's why I tend to refer to examples of magazines and articles, where a magazine is a collected work (per Title 17) that contains other independently copyrightable sub works (per Title 17). There, it is clear to me, that you can apply the OGL to a work, and that an article is a work, and that there is no requirement in the OGL that the OGL must apply to a collected work just because a sub-work is covered. but i'm not yet convinced that, should it ever come down to a court to decide, that that third type is actually in the license. And when I read, "OGC means any work covered by the license excluding Product Identity", then it seems very much like it doesn't exist IN the covered work, even if it can exist in an encompassing work which is not a "covered work" in terms of the license. 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 5 Sep 2005 at 21:44, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Except that to come to that conclusion you have to utterly ignore the part of the license that says: OGC means any work covered by the license excluding Product Identity Sorry, but that is NOT what it says. There is a whole lot more to that definition that that one single phrase. You want to concentrate on that phrase, and only that phrase and ignore the rest of the definition. Is the entire definition poorly worded and unclear? Yes, it is. But after reading through the entire license it is apparent that you have to declare what is OGC, you have to declare what is PI. Since the OGC definition lists what must be OGC, and also states that you can claim additional OGC before it states the part that you keep quoting, it can quite easily be said that the part you keep quoting is in error due to poor wording. The rest of the license would appear to support this. You mentioned how courts tend to rule against the drafter in regards to contracts of adhesion, yet you are not realizing that your interpretation is acutally not of benefit to the draftee (and only potentially slightly more beneficial to the drafter). If anything, your interpretation is more restrictive to a person using the license. The way I see it, the interpretation that I have would be much more beneficial to the licensee, and would be the one that a court would rule for. 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
woodelf wrote: Now, personally, i don't *like* the interpretation that there is no non-OGC non-PI content in a covered work--it wasn't until i had the third type of content explained to me that i was willing to even accept the license as viable--but i'm not yet convinced that, should it ever come down to a court to decide, that that third type is actually in the license. And later Tim Dugger wrote: You mentioned how courts tend to rule against the drafter in regards to contracts of adhesion, yet you are not realizing that your interpretation is acutally not of benefit to the draftee (and only potentially slightly more beneficial to the drafter). If anything, your interpretation is more restrictive to a person using the license. Woodelf, Tim said pretty much what I would say. The existince of a third type of content is an ambiguity in the license -- specifically, what is the status of part of a work that is neither identified as Open Gaming Content nor Product Idenity? But since it's in WotC's benefit for licensed work to have more OGC and not less whenever anyone but WotC uses it, a court should rule ambiguities in the favor of closing the content--that is, that where it isn't clear that work is OGC, it isn't. DM ___ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
