Is it OK to distribute others' OGC for free?

[philreed]

Here's a question:

Should I stop being generous with my OGC declarations?

Currently, 99% of the D20/OGL products Ronin Arts publishes are 100% OGC. If people are going to start collecting and releasing that material for free (or, because the threat of such action exists) would it be a good idea for me to start using something like:

"Material derived from the SRD or existing open game content is released as open game content. All other material is closed content and protected by copyright."

Is that what I should be using? Feels quite stingy to me. But it would protect a lot of my material.

To be clear, I'm fine with people using the OGC I release in their own products. My concern is that my material will be strip mined and posted online which will have a significant effect on my sales.

Opinions on whether or not I should change my manner of releasing OGC?

 

[Yair]

Would you rather see lots of OGC collected and provided for free or would you like to see the creators working on RPG products continue to work on those products?

I don't think I need to answer that. Would you mind if I asked you for some personal information, though? At what point at time do you feel the lost income will be trivial? That is, I believe your work provides you with ever diminishing gains - for the average product, how much time needs to pass before you feel its gain is marginal when compared to the income you must have to support yourself? (If it makes, say, 1.5$ a year, well, you can't leave off that, now can you?) And how much time for the evergreener ones?
And last - how much time do you think one SHOULD benefit from prior work (if there is a limit at all)? A decade? Life +20 (heirs)? Life +70? To infinity and beyond?

 

[JoeGKushner]

I've personally thought about taking crippled OGC and giving it a new name that's public, but that would require too much work. I'm behind enough on my reviews and miniature painting as it is.

 

[philreed]

That is, I believe your work provides you with ever diminishing gains - for the average product, how much time needs to pass before you feel its gain is marginal when compared to the income you must have to support yourself? (If it makes, say, 1.5$ a year, well, you can't leave off that, now can you?) And how much time for the evergreener ones?

Here are some actual examples from my own catalog.

101 Mundane Treasures -- Released October, 2002 -- has provided me with $311 in 2004. In 2003 it brought in $676. In 2002 it brought in $519.

Campaign Planner -- Released October, 2003 -- has provided me with $961 in 2004. In 2003 it brought in $831.

Construct Mechanus -- Released December, 2002 -- has provided me with $191 in 2004. In 2003 it brought in $390. In 2002 it brought in $152.

Forbidden Arcana: Magical Diseases -- Released September, 2003 -- has provided me with $93 in 2004. In 2003 it brought in $125.


The secret to making a living with PDFs is volume. I'm working at earning single dollars and quarters, and each and every PDF in the catalog brings in dollars and quarters. Once you get enough of those, you can afford to pay your bills.

I've drastically changed my lifestyle to make this work. Instead of buying new DVDs -- I used to buy 10 or so a month -- I now rent using Netflix. Where I used to eat out 6-10 times a week I now eat out about once every two weeks. I've gone to the theatre twice in 2004. Why have I done all of this? Because I really enjoy what I'm doing, I'm less stressed, and it's wonderful to work from home on what I want to work on. If I start losing income to free release of my work it's very likely that I'll have to go get a new job. I do not want that.

As to how long it will be before a product has no effect on my income, I don't yet know.

 

[Yair]

Opinions on whether or not I should change my manner of releasing OGC?

I'll be sorry to see you change your policy. Even if you do decide to change it, you need not go to the other extreme. Frankly, that's crippled OGC and it's just spitting into the well you are drinking from. I would go for somewhere in between - designating some "cool" elements as yours, thereby giving an incentive to people to purchase the real thing. Preferably without really hurting a publishers ability to use said material - I am not sure how. I strongly believe people are basically good and want to do the right thing, you just need to nudge them a little...
Also, allow me to say anyone passing out on your excellent graphic design at your cheap prices just to get the material for "free" is a fool. I did not purchase many of your products, but I was throughly impressed with the quality of those I did.

 

[Yair]

I've personally thought about taking crippled OGC and giving it a new name that's public, but that would require too much work. I'm behind enough on my reviews and miniature painting as it is.

Deja vu...

 

[Yair]

Here are some actual examples from my own catalog... [snip]

As to how long it will be before a product has no effect on my income, I don't yet know.

Thanks a lot for that. It definitely seems from this record that there is no relevant "expiry date" to your products (and, supposedly, in general).

I must say - it sounds like a great life, even if it pays less (he said as he reluctuntly went back to the work he's been neglecting in the past hour...)

Yair

 

[Cergorach]

"Material derived from the SRD or existing open game content is released as open game content. All other material is closed content and protected by copyright."

A sure way to piss people off is using that as your OGC declaration. I'm pretty certain that you would loose quite a few sales from people here. Not to mention that i personally wouldn't mind extracting the OGC 'material' from such a product on the day of it's release and posting that on the same day for free on the net.

But i don't really see the problem here? Have i strip mined your products yet? No. Why haven't I, it would have been easier to strip mine your digital works then to scan and OCR the UA? Simple, i'm giving you a brake and your products aren't at the top of my list for OGC assimilation (trying to stop it is futile). Not to mention the fact that i can only do so much alone.

Remember Perpetrated Press, they made Arsenal and Factory, those books where interesting enough, but we haven't heard from PP in years (i think they went belly up). There where some usefull ideas in there, and i'm now in the process of OCRing Factory and will release the OGC contained in there. Maybe we can convert it to v.3.5, improve upon it, maybe it will even renew interest in PP and their books.

 

[philreed]

A sure way to piss people off is using that as your OGC declaration. I'm pretty certain that you would loose quite a few sales from people here.

And not a surprise at all. I greatly dislike that type of declaration, myself. As I feel I've demonstrated by my own releases. But, how many steps is it from releasing UA for free to someone releasing a Bastion or Green Ronin product for free? Where, exactly, is the line?

But i don't really see the problem here? Have i strip mined your products yet? No. Why haven't I, it would have been easier to strip mine your digital works then to scan and OCR the UA? Simple, i'm giving you a brake and your products aren't at the top of my list for OGC assimilation (trying to stop it is futile). Not to mention the fact that i can only do so much alone.

Not yet. But the more times something like this takes place with a product, no matter the publisher, the more likely it is that I will be the target of such action. Am I being overprotective and worrying? Maybe. I honestly don't know what the right action is at this time.

Remember Perpetrated Press, they made Arsenal and Factory, those books where interesting enough, but we haven't heard from PP in years (i think they went belly up). There where some usefull ideas in there, and i'm now in the process of OCRing Factory and will release the OGC contained in there. Maybe we can convert it to v.3.5, improve upon it, maybe it will even renew interest in PP and their books.

I'm not sure what I think of this. To toss out a thought:

What if PP is right now working on a collected and revised version of those books? Would releasing that material as free OGC have an impact on their upcoming release?

 

[WizarDru]

Personally, I think skinnydwarf summarized some of the most relevant information, though I certainly am receptive to philreed's point.

Now, clueless conniving kazaa theives notwithstanding (and let's be honest, that guy probably felt the same way about any product, not just phil's PDFs, and certainly not just the OGC parts), I think philreed's analysis is overly generous to the number of lost sales that WotC or Green Ronin would experience versus perhaps a PDF-only release.

First off, print publishing has not been displaced by PDFs. Most people I know consider PDFs to be a 'nice-to-have', but not a replacement for a published work. I can't take a PDF on the train to work or a dozen other places where a computer is problematic. Further, the layout of a printed work is both relevant and useful to me, something an OGC reprint won't offer. Take a good look at Unearthed Arcana or any WotC work, really. It's visually appealing and has lots of quality artwork...something an OGC releasal isn't likely to offer. It's also from WotC, which gives it a veneer of authenticity that, say Malhavoc, isn't going to have.

I think that the core issue, "is it OK to distribute others' OGC for free?" suffers from vague wordage. Clearly, it's legal. The issue of lost sales seems, to me, an empty argument. The OGC wasn't created to develop intellectual freedom, or even as a favor to the 3rd party publishers. It wasn't meant to help them, per se, so much as encourage them to create content for D&D, to help sell WotC's product. It was a clever idea that benefits players, 3rd party publishers and most importantly, WotC. It's no accident that the one company that produced virtually no OGC material for years was WotC itself. WotC wants people to provide for them....that's part of the business model. Then they can pick and choose and bring the bright ideas back in house...for no money.

OGC has tons of benefits that don't boil down to cold hard cash, of course, and I don't mean to imply that Ryan Dancey and WotC created it without considering the ways that it would benefit the hobby. In point of fact, I think they approached it from that angle, looking for a way to make a business model around it. But the whole idea of the OGC is to allow for material to be picked at, by WotC if no one else. Note that Unearthed Arcana has material yanked directly from Green Ronin and others, for example. That's the payoff, right there.