Pathfinder 1E Paizo Copyright Issues at Obsidian Portal?

rangerjohn · Jul 7, 2011

My concern from all this is what is the future of the hobby? In an environment where the flgs is endangered much less tabletop play. What is the outcome? I mean seriously it has been a decade since I played in a face to face game. As for the flgs I am aware of one in a population of millions of people. More and more electronically is the way the game is being played. Sounds like a loose-loose situation for the gaming industry. Either you protect your IP and make it hard to use your product in this environment, or you don't and loose your rights and sooner or later your business. Either way the future doesn't seem very bright.

Alan Shutko · Jul 7, 2011

rangerjohn said:
Either you protect your IP and make it hard to use your product in this environment, or you don't and loose your rights and sooner or later your business. Either way the future doesn't seem very bright.

What Paizo did here makes it harder to share your campaign online, but it's still easy to use the info as long as you keep it private. They didn't ask Obsidian Portal to kill the campaign, or to kick the user off, or even to completely remove the images: they just wanted to make sure they weren't there for public consumption. To me, that's a really great thing.

With everything going electronic, it's a lot easier for me to use their artwork at the table. I can use Photoshop to yank stuff out of PDFs, create my own handouts, etc. Paizo makes that easy, since I get PDFs of everything I subscribe to, I can order PDFs of old stuff, etc. That makes it a lot easier to remaster a lot of stuff for my campaign and Paizo doesn't seem to care.

The problem comes in when you want to share your campaign with the wider world. Paizo tries to stop much of their material from being posted that's widely usable. They allow (through their Community Use Policy) you to use certain content for unlimited distribution.

This makes it tough if you want to make a really graphically rich campaign site, especially because if you put that much work into it, you want to share it with everyone. It takes more work to find graphics that you can use in that manner, and you lose out on all sorts of great work that the artists have done, because it's in the book but you can't share it broadly. I've felt this frustration, since I did campaign newsletters for my group that contained character art from the adventure (B10 Night's Dark Terror) that I'd love to post here, but I know I don't have rights to the images I used.

Since a lot of the joy and value in the Internet is the ability to share, it's more and more important that we find ways to do this while protecting the rights of content creators. I don't have an answer to this. I like the direction that Paizo and WotC have gone by allowing certain content a very broad license, and I hope more companies will do the same. I just hope we can find other ways to speed things along as well.

Dannager · Jul 7, 2011

rangerjohn said:
My concern from all this is what is the future of the hobby? In an environment where the flgs is endangered much less tabletop play. What is the outcome? I mean seriously it has been a decade since I played in a face to face game. As for the flgs I am aware of one in a population of millions of people. More and more electronically is the way the game is being played. Sounds like a loose-loose situation for the gaming industry. Either you protect your IP and make it hard to use your product in this environment, or you don't and loose your rights and sooner or later your business. Either way the future doesn't seem very bright.

Nothing about this comes anywhere near preventing you from using copyrighted material in your own game, whether online or not. The problem arose when copyrighted content was made public.

Bugleyman · Jul 7, 2011

Alan Shutko said:
Since a lot of the joy and value in the Internet is the ability to share, it's more and more important that we find ways to do this while protecting the rights of content creators.

Well put.

And I don't think Paizo is anywhere near the bad old days of TSR (which I lived through). I just want to keep it that way.

Erik Mona · Jul 8, 2011

Did I mention that we just hired Rob Repp?

--Erik

darjr · Jul 8, 2011

did Sean hire him?

Waylander the Slayer · Jul 8, 2011

heh, had to google Rob Repp, interesting prior experience of note:

Manger, Digital Projects Group TSR, Inc.
Publishing industry

May 1993 – July 1994 (1 year 3 months)

• Department manger for the makers of Dungeons and Dragons products. Researched and proposed 1994-95 CD-ROM product line. Developed Internet-based profit centers and online content. Produced advertising and collateral materials. Created product prototypes for 1995 catalog.
• Acted as liaison to TSR’s foreign offices, helping them localize products for their markets. Adapted art files to work with foreign prepress facilities.
• In 1993 Universal Studios contracted to develop shows based on TSR properties, produced these shows in-house. Planned and installed a video production facility in TSR’s Los Angeles, CA office. Designed a special effects “bible” and shooting guide, and worked with outside production houses to communicate our design goals for the finished shows.
• Responsibilities included systems and network support, budgeting/expansion planning, hardware/software procurement, market research, development of multi-player computer gaming, and creation and management of TSR’s online forums. Skilled with desktop publishing software, as well as 3-D modeling and multimedia development tools.
• Originally hired as assistant manager of in-house service bureau, where I performed technical support and pre-press operations. Responsibilities included prototyping the entire 1994 product line, package design, product layout and design, book typesetting, network management, staff training and support, and pre-press troubleshooting. Worked with vendors to resolve workflow and output problems. Promoted to DPG manager after six months

rangerjohn · Jul 8, 2011

Dannager said:
Nothing about this comes anywhere near preventing you from using copyrighted material in your own game, whether online or not. The problem arose when copyrighted content was made public.

You either missed, or more likely, I failed to express the problem. I mentioned the flgs because this used to be a place to meet fellow gamers. Where is that done now? On sites like EnWorld and even Paizo themselves. These sites are public, they need to be public. So what are you suggesting? Two sites? One to meet gamers and another to actually play?

Dannager · Jul 8, 2011

rangerjohn said:
You either missed, or more likely, I failed to express the problem. I mentioned the flgs because this used to be a place to meet fellow gamers. Where is that done now? On sites like EnWorld and even Paizo themselves. These sites are public, they need to be public. So what are you suggesting? Two sites? One to meet gamers and another to actually play?

I'm suggesting that you find gamers publicly, and play privately, whether you play in person, on a VTT, in a forum thread, or any other way you want to play. Or - perhaps an even more reasonable solution - feel free to play publicly as long as you don't use copyrighted material you don't have permission to use.

Dannyalcatraz · Jul 8, 2011

Personally, if there is something I want to share electronically with my fellow tablemates, I make files that I send directly to my fellow players (via emailed attachments or by burning a CD. It's not perfect, but it's also not something someone might stumble across on the web.

As for meeting other gamers, online resources ARE increasing the ability of gamers to network via sites like ENWorld, but mostly, I still do it by going where gamers may be found.

I don't just mean game shops: any store that sells gaming products can be a place to meet fellow hobbyists. As it so happens, this pixie-ish redhead who works the register at the Barnes & Noble at the Irving Mall is into D&D- I've made two 4Ed purchases there, both of which turned into short conversations about the hobby.

And colleges usually have at least one group of gamers active on campus. Check out their social scene.