Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[slaymaker1907]

Hahaha, I thought about the young chickens.

And if I sound certain, that's on me. You are right, none of this is remotely settled and could have totally different outcomes depending on state and federal circuit.

For me, the bottom line is I don't see a United States judge making irrevocable a license that does not say "irrevocable." That's totally contrary to US common law and the restatement.

For the legislative analogy, I respect your opinion, but stand by it as a useful academic comparison.

There is strong precedent for an open license that allows for sub licensing to be irrevocable. In fact, it would cost the software industry tens of billions in dollars if this were not the case almost overnight. The MIT license mentions nothing about being irrevocable yet it widely assumed to be as such (otherwise there would be huge risk in using any software library under the MIT license).

What companies can (and have done) do to move away from an open license is to release any new versions of said software under a more restrictive license. However, users can and have either just used the old and open version or even just forked said code to have do things like security updates.

WotC is playing a stupid game here and is going to win stupid prizes. I think their lawyers are awful (ones that know what they are doing will either just use an existing license or carefully modify an existing open license) and this is going to cost them huge amounts money in legal fees.

 

[mamba]

The only way the megacorporations can sell anything is because of copyright law. Do you really think anyone would subscribe to Disney+ or HBOMAX if all that content was just out there for free?

do you think anyone would produce content (the kind of content we are talking about here, high production value movies and tv series, not tik toks and youtube) if it were?

 

[Xyxox]

You are sadly mistaken here... They can drag you into court every week, maybe several times a week, for months at a time, force you attend conferences and mandated arbitration hearings, demand endless discovery, try to subpeona everyone under the Sun you work with, and then drag the proceedings out for months and years, all while a cloud of doubt hangs over your business. They can make motions for summary judgement, dismissal, ask for interim restraining orders stopping you from doing business, etc. etc. etc. This all gets very expensive and eats away any value your business has. It is TYPICAL for these sorts of cases to take years to reach resolution, years of paying retainers, fees, and hourly rate charges for lawyers. These are also, often, FEDERAL cases, because copyright is Federal law, which increases the complexity and potentially opens things up to nasty strategies like suing you in New York when you are based in L.A. Care to fly to NYC every other week? Yeah, I don't think so... (I mean, sure you can fight that, YET ANOTHER legal battle!).

This, folks, is what is known as Nuclear Lawfare. It's completely legal and is how larger corporations have been sticking it to smaller corporations for decades upon decades. If the smaller litigant has enough, it can become a mutually assured destruction scenario, but it requires a major amount of funding to get there.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Given how the leak and quotes were presented, I for one did think it was exerps from actual legal texts. And I am very surprised if I am alone. This might be good to be aware of when interacting with non-lawyers, if this indeed is obvious to a lawyer.

You are missing the nuanced point here: it isn't that the documents that were leaked were not the work of lawyers engaged by WotC; rather, it is that those documents themselves are still in draft form. They have not been released by WotC or acted upon. It appears that right now, matters are still in flux. To what degree? We simply don't know.

This is not unusual. I draft legal documents daily and some time later, send them to the client for approval. With complicated documents, there are follow up meetings and discussions.

tl;dr: just because a lawyer wrote it does not mean it is a "final" draft. It might be -- and it might not be, too. Let's wait and see what happens.

 

[Xyxox]

Based upon what was revealed here:


Ogl 1.1 is real, it was planned to be released on the 4th with sign on required by the 13th. It was attached to contracts they sent out to big third party companies with the idea being they get the big third parties to sign on to sweetheart contracts and OGL 1.1 is a done deal because none of the smaller third parties would be capable of affording litigating it.

WotC/Hasbro was actually going down this dirty road and only stopped because somebody leaked it before it could be announced.

WotC/Hasbro was 10 seconds from midnight on Nuclear Lawfare.

 

[overgeeked]

WotC/Hasbro was actually going down this dirty road and only stopped because somebody leaked it before it could be announced.

Even if they properly stop and never proceed, there are too many big name 3PP who’ve publicly and privately said they’re walking away.

 

[Xyxox]

You are missing the nuanced point here: it isn't that the documents that were leaked were not the work of lawyers engaged by WotC; rather, it is that those documents themselves are still in draft form. They have not been released by WotC or acted upon. It appears that right now, matters are still in flux. To what degree? We simply don't know.

This is not unusual. I draft legal documents daily and some time later, send them to the client for approval. With complicated documents, there are follow up meetings and discussions.

tl;dr: just because a lawyer wrote it does not mean it is a "final" draft. It might be -- and it might not be, too. Let's wait and see what happens.

It wasn't a draft. It was a final version. It was attached to multiple contracts sent out to large third party creators with contracts that were sweetheart deals before Christmas. The only reason it is not in force right now is it was leaked before it was released and WotC/Hasbro blinked. See post 664.

 

[Xyxox]

Even if they properly stop and never proceed, there are too many big name 3PP who’ve publicly and privately said they’re walking away.

I am firmly convinced they are still going to do it, they are just regrouping on how to implement.

This will be locked up in courts for years.

 

[overgeeked]

It wasn't a draft. It was a final version. It was attached to multiple contracts sent out to large third party creators with contracts that were sweetheart deals before Christmas. The only reason it is not in force right now is it was leaked before it was released and WotC/Hasbro blinked. See post 664.

Now we just need to know who among the 3PP signed on to screw over everyone else.

 

[Xyxox]

Now we just need to know who among the 3PP signed on to screw over everyone else.

It will be easy to tell what third parties sold out the community for thirty pieces of silver. My guess is Critical role probably did because they probably got the best deal of all, but time will tell.