JVisgaitis said:
Its posts like this that I find disturbing and possibly detrimental to the entire community. I hope the GSL is supported. I hope that people don't try and result to copyright to produce products for 4e. All of that just adds up to bad blood and a very adversarial relationship with Wizards of the Coast. I'm so over the whole, "the man is holding me down mentality and we need to teach the man a lesson." Its just so tired already.
I'm not "raging against the machine", anti-4E over here. I love WotC's products, I buy a boatload of them, and I love 4E so much that I'm never going back to 3E or OGL products. Sorry, OGL guys.
But I've had all I can stand of the copyright cartels trying to hijack copyright to maximize their profits at the expense of sanity and common sense, and to erode fair use rights under copyright and the public domain down to nothing. It's become so prevalent that it's been used to water down the d20 license into the GSL, which has virtually no benefit to a 3rd party publisher over the rights he already has, and actually restricts them quite a bit.
Now, it's true that Wizards may try to sue a 3rd party publisher with the law against them, and win through attrition. That's a sad reality of our current legal system. But that doesn't mean that I have to sit here and be happy about it. I have no intention of going back to OGL games, but it's already a rotten, adversarial relationship when they try to force companies to give up their existing product lines in the hope that they'll succeed with 4E.
I understand that 3rd party publishers need to maintain a good relationship with Hasbro, as they have their own business interests to look after. Fortunately, I'm not dependant upon the Dungeons and Dragons brand for my livelihood. In the modern age, with piracy being so rampant, companies are going to have to learn that goodwill with their consumers isn't just a bonus - it's necessary to turn a profit. And if they want to try to close off 5E and crush fair use through abuse of the legal system, I hope they burn off every ounce of goodwill they've got.
I don't even buy too many 3rd party products, to be honest, so the GSL won't have a huge effect on me. I don't need adventures written by others, since I enjoy writing my own settings and adventures, and the crunch from WotC is usually more symmetrical and better tested in my experience. I bought a bunch of d20 Modern stuff, Malhavoc stuff, Iron Heroes, and a few odds and ends of products that supported my campaigns really well. But I could live happily without any 3rd party support, in all likelihood. And I know there's virtually no chance of what's said here changing anyone important's mind about the GSL. But if they want to go down this road, they'll quickly go from being a cool company that I like to support to a company I hate and will never give another dime to.
If that means D&D dies... well, I'll be sad. But this issue is more important to me personally, and more important to us as a culture than any game I might enjoy. This isn't about people wanting to latch onto a property for free, or get free stuff. We're facing a Digial Dark Age, where threat of lawsuit, lack of support from the original author, and the vicious attack on the public domain through copyright extension is going to cause thousands upon thousands of works to disappear from public consciousness, and perhaps entirely, just because people are terrified of running afoul of copyright law. That's unacceptable. Look up the Google Library Project to see how shortsighted publishers can be - they don't even care if anyone is making any money off of the original work. And every shred of ground lost on this hurts us as a culture, IMO the greatest culture in history for an intellectual.
In short, while I appreciate the difficulty of your situation, I'm sorry. I'm going to continue to be upset by this. But I'd rather do what's right than be comfortable.
