[Gleemax]Another thing not to like.

[MerricB]

From Randy Buelher:

A couple of points we have changed/clarified, largely based on the conversations on these boards:

1) The Official Game Info Pages will be covered by a different policy than the rest of the site. On those official pages, users give us a much more limited license that doesn't give us much of anything except the right to have that content posted on our site.

2) Our lawyers won't let us have that policy apply to the rest of the site because there's too much danger that we will independently invent a game, or a mechanic, or a card/feat that someone else posted to the site without us even noticing and then sue us. Our lawyers will, however, allow me to tell you that we have no intention to knowingly publish anyone else's content (not without contacting and compensating them anyway) ... it's just that we expect it to happen by accident fairly often so we're obliged to cover for that.

Note that anyone who doesn't trust us enough to post their original intellectual policy to their personal page can always jump through the hoops and get an official game info page ...

Randy

http://69.8.198.225/showthread.php?t=901463

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

More quotes from Randy:

There's no one blanket answer to your question, but I think I can address it anyway. I know that the D&D guys are planning to use Gleemax to help them find new writing talent. They still intend to pay writers for magazine-style content and the easiest way to find those writers is going to be to browse the user-generated content portions of Gleemax and see who the audience is rating highest. That's also a good way to find the content itself.

There's no kind of automatic compensation guarantees built in because one thing that happens all the time is that multiple people will think up the same idea. I constantly see "new" Magic cards online that I know are already in our database. In the Great Designer Search there were several times when a designer submitted a card that was already in an upcoming set that we had signed off on but had not yet published.

So we're not promising any sort of compensation because we don't want to wind up in a position where someone is demanding compensation that isn't called for. However, we do believe in identifying and rewarding talented contributors and we'll definitely be watching the community to see who we might want to work with as contractors or even, hypothetically, as employees.

And from Scott:

I don't see fansite policy changing. IMO they serve a valuable function for promoting a product like D&D. In the past other companies effort to shut down fansites have really backfired from a consumer goodwill and PR standpoint. That being said we need to look at each and make sure that our interests are being maintained (an example is to have more clearly defined fansite policy).

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=896542

Cheers!

 

[JustinA]

I think somebody mentioned it above, but why not just slap the OGL at the end of whatever you post. Wouldn't WotC have to include your name at least in an OGL section of whatever medium they decided (book, pdf, etc) to publish your posted stuff?

No. WotC would have separate license to that material (under the terms of posting material to the Gleemax website) and would not need to use the OGL in order to publish the material. Since they wouldn't need to use the OGL to publish the material, they would not be bound by any of the terms or conditions of the OGL.

I can understand WotC's reasons for doing this. But it certainly means I'm never going to even consider using their service. IP has value and, while I fully support the OGL and similar efforts, I don't just go casually throwing ownership of my IP around for no good reason.

I see a day in the not-too-distant future when the next Malazan Empire or Midkemia will meet with great success... and the creator will discover that they accidentally ceded some or all of their rights to the creation years ago by posting to an Internet forum somewhere.

Second Point, if I drop my 300 page mini-GH setting on Gleemax, can I also post it to Canonfire? Arguably, reposting to Canonfire would be electronic publishing, just not for a profit. It would violate Gleemax policy as I read it and quote it above. This I would have a problem with.

Is there a policy for posting fan-created material that you're taking advantage of? If not, you're already violating copyright law by posting that material publicly. It's not like violating the Gleemax TOS is going to make any difference in WotC's ability to come after your Canonfire postings.

(Can you send me a copy of your GH material, though? Sounds neat.)

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Yair]

Thanks a lot MerricB.

2) Our lawyers won't let us have that policy apply to the rest of the site because there's too much danger that we will independently invent a game, or a mechanic, or a card/feat that someone else posted to the site without us even noticing and then sue us.

I'd advise WotC to put more pressure on their lawyers, then. It seems to me like the layers simply don't have the inclination to come up with original solutions that will serve Wizard's interests in the site while maintaining its rights and safety. They just revert to the standard "Don't say anything!" legal advice, they don't care about the project's goals enough to come up with creative solutions. I refuse to believe there can be none.

I seem to remember Ryan Dancey mentioning similar oposition to the OGL. I suspect its something in legal culture.

As a suggestion, have the TOS say someting like "Publishing on Gleemax bears no relevance to copyright issues. By posting here, you agree to not let the fact you posted here or the content of your posts here be any sort of factor in determining a copyright infringement case." This makes posting on Gleemax "tanslucent" to copyright issues. Wizards won't be more liable to being sued for copyright infringement by someone who posted a card on Gleemax, but won't be less liable for being sued for using your IP that you posted on your own site and on Gleemax. It will allow a publisher to talk about his product (in posts, not just on his page), a designer interested in protecting his creations could host copies outside of Gleemax that will serve as prior art, and so on.

Is there a policy for posting fan-created material that you're taking advantage of? If not, you're already violating copyright law by posting that material publicly. It's not like violating the Gleemax TOS is going to make any difference in WotC's ability to come after your Canonfire postings.

True. However, there is an official policy by WotC granting specific sites to use the title "official" and publish material based on specific settings. I know that birthright.net works under this license, and that athas.org is likewise official (leading to two official 3e Dark Sun settings - the net one, and the Dragon one...). I suspect Canonfire! does the same. That said, I don't believe Gleemax's TOS will restrict other licenses. It will merely provide a "license" to publish original content based on wizard's PI on Gleemax.

I am, BTW, grateful and appreciative of WotC's support of official fan sites.

 

[JustinA]

As a suggestion, have the TOS say someting like "Publishing on Gleemax bears no relevance to copyright issues. By posting here, you agree to not let the fact you posted here or the content of your posts here be any sort of factor in determining a copyright infringement case." This makes posting on Gleemax "tanslucent" to copyright issues.

I think you'll discover that you've simply re-written WotC's current policy. All you've done is obfuscated it's meaning.

(a) I post material X to Gleemax.
(b) WotC takes it and publishes it.
(c) I try to sue WotC, pointing out that the material was posted to Gleemax.
(d) WotC shrugs and points out that I can use the fact that it was posted to Gleemax as evidence.
(e) The case is dismissed.

There is a slight difference in this chain of events if your work had been previously published somewhere else. But it sounds like WotC already has a separate section of the site established for that type of material, with a different license applying to the material to be found there.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Yair]

I think you'll discover that you've simply re-written WotC's current policy. All you've done is obfuscated it's meaning.

(a) I post material X to Gleemax.
(b) WotC takes it and publishes it.
(c) I try to sue WotC, pointing out that the material was posted to Gleemax.
(d) WotC shrugs and points out that I can use the fact that it was posted to Gleemax as evidence.
(e) The case is dismissed.

That's one case. My solution isn't "perfect" in that it allows Wizards to do that, but it at least offers protection to those willing to invest in it. If you're just a fan posting on Wizard's boards, you'll still need to trust Wizard's goodwill not to publish your work. But if you're not inclined to trust them, you could protect yourself with relatively no effort. This is especially important to publishers, that can now discuss their published works without risk of WotC taking over. For example...

(a) Ryacanda posts material to Gleemax, based on his E6 system. Perhaps he just posts the system.
(b) WotC takes it and publishes it.
(c) He tries to sue WotC, pointing out that the material has been posted before WotC used it.
(d) WotC shrugs and points out that he can't use the fact that it was posted to Gleemax as evidence.
(e) He shrugs and point out that E7 was previously published under the OGL on a different site, establishing prior art not on Gleemax and so admissable..
(f) Ryacanda still get defeated in court by Hasbaro's 10k$-an-hour lawyers

Compare with
(a) Ryacanda posts material to Gleemax, based on his E6 system. Perhaps he just posts the system.
(b) WotC takes it and publishes it.
(c) He tries to sue WotC, pointing out that the material has been posted before WotC used it.
(d) WotC shrugs and points out that he can't use the fact that it was posted to Gleemax as evidence.
(e) He shrugs and point out that E7 was previously published under the OGL on a different site, establishing prior art not on Gleemax and so admissable.
(f) WotC shrugs and notes that Gleemax' TOS allows them to do whatever they want with material posted to it regardless of prior art.
(g) The judge dismisses the case. WotC for the win!

That's a big difference.

And I'm not advocating for my solution, necessarily. I'm just saying creative solutions can be found. Perhaps they better say "The Presumption will be that WotC did not derive any material from content published on Gleemax", or "Members with the Publisher status do not grant Wizards any rights to publish material based on their contributions, except on the Gleemax site, its archives, etc... ", or whatever. I don't know. I am just sure that if they think good and hard on what they want Gleemax to be and achieve, they can put it in legalese.

There is a slight difference in this chain of events if your work had been previously published somewhere else. But it sounds like WotC already has a separate section of the site established for that type of material, with a different license applying to the material to be found there.

No, that's not quite right. WotC has a section on the site where you can post what you want safely. But that doesn't protect any content published outside these areas, including material that has been previously published somewhere else (e.g. material posted on those safe pages can still be exploited if its also posted elsewhere on Gleemax).

 

[Anime Kidd]

I got a question about the apparent transition of the old WotC forum to Gleemax (or more precisely, forums.gleemax.com). Now from what I've read in this thread (and I haven't quite read all of it yet), does it now mean that Wizards can potentially publish anything posted from their old boards free of charge because it is on forums.gleemax.com now? Or am I wrong in my thinking and the old Wizards boards are still separate from Gleemax even though it is on the same website address?

 

[Felix]

I figure I'll go ahead and ask this one last time:

For anyone who is familiar with the Gleemax boards: what is the draw? What is it that those boards provide that is unique to that site? Is there a bell or whistle that makes it a different animal from ENWorld? Is there a difference between ENWorld and Gleemax beyond ownership by WotC?

 

[Yair]

For anyone who is familiar with the Gleemax boards: what is the draw? What is it that those boards provide that is unique to that site? Is there a bell or whistle that makes it a different animal from ENWorld? Is there a difference between ENWorld and Gleemax beyond ownership by WotC?

While I'm not really familiar with Gleemax, I do think it offers at least the promise of some neat things.

Advantages:
* Wiki
* Blog
* Able to legally use WotC content with impunity.
* More direct and extensive contanct with developers and WotC staff.

Disadvantages:
* Lots of annoying people around.
* Lots of focus on games and systems I'm not interested in.
* Heavy commercialization sucking the fun out of everything.
* PG-13 rating.

BTW, Circus Maximus provides a blog and personal page, as well as a nifty reputation system. I wonder why ENWorld doesn't? Perhaps in ENWorld 2...

 

[Numion]

Disadvantages:
* Lots of annoying people around.

Any place that has lots of people around, also has lots of annoying people around. That's just the way of the world.