D&D 5E Community Content Enforcement in the DM's Guild (Does it literally even?)

[Quickleaf]

8. Representations, Warranties and Indemnity.
You represent and warrant that:
(c) Excluding the Owner’s IP and Program IP which we license to you and excluding the illustrations and cartographic artwork in your Work, you are the sole owner of all rights in your Work. You have the rights or license to use the illustrations and cartographic artwork in your Work.

Well that answers it! Thanks!

Full rights to illustrations are not needed, if a license is arranged. Perfect.

 

[Morrus]

Did they? Where is that?

The only pertinent link I have is: http://www.dmsguild.com/whatisdmsguild.php

And nothing there remotely resembles legal language.

The agreement comes up when you go to upload a product to the store.

 

[Quickleaf]

The agreement comes up when you go to upload a product to the store.

Yep! I spoke too soon Caught Jester's quote of the pertinent section of the contract.

 

[delericho]

I wonder what happens when they decide it is time for 6E? Will all of the DM's Guild content be taken down and disallowed to sell elsewhere based on the license as it is now?

I guess it depends on who is running the show at WotC-D&D at the time, and how they view Open Gaming. If they're of the anti-Open Gaming crowd, then it's not at all unlikely that they'll do exactly that - just as WotC terminated the d20 license in the run up to 4e.

If they're in the pro-Open Gaming crowd, and especially if 6e is a "cleanup" edition rather than a "rewrite" edition, they may feel it's more beneficial to just keep the DMGuild live and start selling 6e products right alongside the 5e ones.

If you want to be absolutely certain your material remains available, the DMGuild isn't for you - I guess you'd have to go OGL (or, indeed, not use a license at all).

 

[BoldItalic]

Hmm.



It's trivial to do, with the right software and know-how. Does that allow a loophole by which sneaky authors can reserve the rights to their text (stat bocks, say, or spells, or anything, really), by claiming it is an illustration?

I hope not. It's not in the spirit of the agreement, but it might be in the letter as it stands.

 

[JohnLynch]

Hmm.

View attachment 73934

It's trivial to do, with the right software and know-how. Does that allow a loophole by which sneaky authors can reserve the rights to their text (stat bocks, say, or spells, or anything, really), by claiming it is an illustration?

I hope not. It's not in the spirit of the agreement, but it might be in the letter as it stands.

If the devious author tried to sell the content outside of a WotC approved venue, WotC would be able to send a cease and desist letter. If the author continued to sell it WotC could threaten to take them to court. If the devious author continued to sell the content WotC would have to decide if enforcing it's license is worth the cost of going to court.

Once in a courtroom it is irrelevant what the license actually says by the black and white ink. All that matters is what the judge says the license says. You can try to rules lawyer a judge by speaking of technicalities, but lawyers aren't exactly the most technologically savvy people, and judges are (older and thus) worse. All WotC's lawyer has to do is print out the offending document, show it to a judge and it's then up to the devious author to convince the judge that what he or she is reading is in fact an image and not writing. Assuming the devious author took the time to fly to Seattle and appear before the Court.

I'm fairly certain it wouldn't go well for the devious author at all and they would be punished monetarily as a result. Assuming they didn't take the time to setup a corporation (and given WotC requires people's personal accounts be used I don't know if a corporation could even protect the author) WotC could very well bankrupt the person. Anyone thinking of playing shenanigans with copyright would be advised to speak with a lawyer. $500 up front is a darn sight cheaper than selling your house to pay WotC's court fees.

 

[Morrus]

If the devious author tried to sell the content outside of a WotC approved venue, WotC would be able to send a cease and desist letter. If the author continued to sell it WotC could threaten to take them to court. If the devious author continued to sell the content WotC would have to decide if enforcing it's license is worth the cost of going to court.

Once in a courtroom it is irrelevant what the license actually says by the black and white ink. All that matters is what the judge says the license says. You can try to rules lawyer a judge by speaking of technicalities, but lawyers aren't exactly the most technologically savvy people, and judges are (older and thus) worse. All WotC's lawyer has to do is print out the offending document, show it to a judge and it's then up to the devious author to convince the judge that what he or she is reading is in fact an image and not writing. Assuming the devious author took the time to fly to Seattle and appear before the Court.

I'm fairly certain it wouldn't go well for the devious author at all and they would be punished monetarily as a result. Assuming they didn't take the time to setup a corporation (and given WotC requires people's personal accounts be used I don't know if a corporation could even protect the author) WotC could very well bankrupt the person. Anyone thinking of playing shenanigans with copyright would be advised to speak with a lawyer. $500 up front is a darn sight cheaper than selling your house to pay WotC's court fees.

WotC would do none of that. They'd simply remove the product from DMs Guild and ban the offender if they kept doing doing it. They've already written their breach penalty into the contract, and it's a nice easy zero effort one on their part.

 

[Mark CMG]

I guess it depends on who is running the show at WotC-D&D at the time, and how they view Open Gaming. If they're of the anti-Open Gaming crowd, then it's not at all unlikely that they'll do exactly that - just as WotC terminated the d20 license in the run up to 4e.

If they're in the pro-Open Gaming crowd, and especially if 6e is a "cleanup" edition rather than a "rewrite" edition, they may feel it's more beneficial to just keep the DMGuild live and start selling 6e products right alongside the 5e ones.

If you want to be absolutely certain your material remains available, the DMGuild isn't for you - I guess you'd have to go OGL (or, indeed, not use a license at all).

I think this might be a bit jumbled. DMs Guild is not Open Gaming and how someone future WotCer views Open Gaming probably is only of cursory importance to what their DMs Guild policy becomes when 6E is closer to a reality. I'm guessing this current situation is more like having a GSL (with extra IP) along side the OGL. Of course, the OGL isn't going anywhere (no matter how they view it when 6E becomes their plan) but as the playtest for 5E rolled out, the GSL was nixed.

Did all GSL stuff except stuff already in print and in distribution channels become unsalable at that point? Does the DMs Guild allow for print versions?

As for the d20 STL, that was nigh useless by the time they had pulled it. Once they added morals clauses to it with the ability to police content, most people turned away from it. Not sure if the intention was the same, but later versions of the d20 STL essentially gave WotC the ability to tell companies to pull their product from sales pipelines for rather vaguely defined reasons (the OGL on its own has no such mechanism).

 

[BoldItalic]

If the devious author tried to sell the content outside of a WotC approved venue, WotC would be able to send a cease and desist letter. If the author continued to sell it WotC could threaten to take them to court. If the devious author continued to sell the content WotC would have to decide if enforcing it's license is worth the cost of going to court.

Once in a courtroom it is irrelevant what the license actually says by the black and white ink. All that matters is what the judge says the license says. You can try to rules lawyer a judge by speaking of technicalities, but lawyers aren't exactly the most technologically savvy people, and judges are (older and thus) worse. All WotC's lawyer has to do is print out the offending document, show it to a judge and it's then up to the devious author to convince the judge that what he or she is reading is in fact an image and not writing. Assuming the devious author took the time to fly to Seattle and appear before the Court.

I'm fairly certain it wouldn't go well for the devious author at all and they would be punished monetarily as a result. Assuming they didn't take the time to setup a corporation (and given WotC requires people's personal accounts be used I don't know if a corporation could even protect the author) WotC could very well bankrupt the person. Anyone thinking of playing shenanigans with copyright would be advised to speak with a lawyer. $500 up front is a darn sight cheaper than selling your house to pay WotC's court fees.

Yes, I'm sure you are right, but that wasn't the situation I was envisaging.

I was imagining a selfish author publishing, let's say, a compendium of monsters in the Guild but not wanting other Guild authors to copy or build on them (for example, by incorporating his stat blocks into their own adventure modules).

Why on earth would he do that?

In the (probably misguided) belief that this would force customers to buy his compendium to play the modules. He says "No, you can't copy my stat blocks into your adventure modules, because they are illustrations. You will have to tell your customers that they must buy my compendium to play your adventures." He's trying to maximize his own sales by piggy-backing on the sales of other people's adventure modules. It makes commercial sense.

I'd like to think that he wouldn't get far and that quite soon, adventure writers would turn their backs and go elsewhere for their monsters.

 

[delericho]

I think this might be a bit jumbled. DMs Guild is not Open Gaming...

It's not Open Gaming in terms of the OGL, but neither is it fully closed gaming either. Ajar Gaming?

I'm guessing this current situation is more like having a GSL (with extra IP) along side the OGL.

Or, indeed, a d20 License alongside the OGL.

And during the rollout of 4e we saw WotC ending (or simply not renewing) a number of licenses: d20 was cancelled, the Dragon/Dungeon license ended, Dragonlance was brought back in-house, and so forth. I strongly suspect that they would have pulled the OGL too, if they could have done so.

Naturally, the same could happen again.

Of course, the OGL isn't going anywhere (no matter how they view it when 6E becomes their plan) but as the playtest for 5E rolled out, the GSL was nixed.

I wasn't aware the GSL had been cancelled? In fact, I was of the impression that [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] was still using it for his 4e products. But I might be wrong about that, of course.