D&D General Is D&D Beyond Exclusivity Bad for D&D?

[Maxperson]

Indeed, all of TTRPGs can probably go in the trash right off.

Is there any entertainment media that is important to the bulk of humanity?

 

[Maxperson]

But ... but ... DDB could be sending out nanobots to annihilate my PHB gathering dust on my shelf right now as we speak! I'll be forced to use a resource that's significantly more convenient, flexible and time saving! How will I ever survive!

That would have been even better if you had said the nanobots were going to re-write your PHB.

 

[AlViking]

Is there a legal way to do this that doesn't involve keeping a phone forever in order to read it in tiny print?

"But your honor, it was only $100 that I took from a house I broke into. It's not like I robbed a bank!"

What they should have done is have downloadable digital content along with a general warning at the time of purchase that lets people know to download the PDF as soon as possible, because any digital content on the site is subject to change.

Legal protections like this?

No portion of this work other than the System Reference Document​

material defined above may be reproduced in any form without​

written permission from Skydawn Game Studios Inc.​

Which is from my PDF of Esper Genesis. Or perhaps the similar copyright statement I have in my PHB? For personal use I guess there is an issue if I was concerned about a few paragraphs of lore, if I'm concerned about archives it doesn't matter what format it's in. Meanwhile if I want to see the old version of Volo's I happen to have a hard copy so it's not an issue.

 

[SlyFlourish]

But ... but ... DDB could be sending out nanobots to annihilate my PHB gathering dust on my shelf right now as we speak! I'll be forced to use a resource that's significantly more convenient, flexible and time saving! How will I ever survive!

I don't believe that's in the Terms & Conditions. Changing or shutting off any of the material you purchased on D&D Beyond at any time is.

 

[saviirkad]

Based on a legally reasonable interpretation of the terms of service (2.2. (ii)), any archivist is also violating their agreement with Wizards. While this threat of a particular interpretation being enforced, and the likelihood or not of it being enforced, is not unique to DDB, it would be moot if a physical product or transactional download was offered in addition. Trying to archive the DDB-exclusive content puts the archivist's access to the content at risk. So, the archivist's job is harder, and the community suffers.

Digital lending is a minefield, and the same terms of service lock out a library from accessing DDB-exclusive content, so again, without other options, the librarian's job is harder, and the community suffers.

Access is not binary.

I'm definitely not a lawyer, so I would not have any confidence myself in this, but I was under the impression that archival and personal use was already established to be legally distinct from derivative works.

 

[SlyFlourish]

WotC's under no obligation to make it easier for them by making sure these exclusives get posted elsewhere so that these academics don't have to spend a few moments doing it.

I argue WOTC does have the obligation to preserve their digital works every time they talk about being good stewards of D&D. They state the obligation to be good stewards continually and, in several cases, they do a really good job:

• They sell physical books that can last hundreds of years.
• They release their rulesets under open licenses in several versions and several languages.
• They released hundreds (thousands?) of D&D products in PDF from 1974 to 2013 on DriveThruRPG.

They also have, in my opinion, dropped the ball several times:

• Deleting all of Dragon+ magazine.
• Deleting everything posted to dnd.wizards.com.
• Removing all of D&D Insider and all the 4e tools.

If they want to be good stewards of D&D, that means more than just focusing on temporary releases on their current platform. It means preserving the past and future legacy of D&D. And it's not hard to do that. They could easily release EPUBs and PDFs of their published products. The cost is minimal and there's no good reason not to: they're already pirated so they're leaving money on the table and D&D beyond still serves a valuable purpose as an online tool. The only reason they don't is because they don't feel like they have to but I think that goes against their stated desires to be good stewards of D&D.

Seriously, if you haven't read their Terms and Conditions, read it and ask yourself if this license sounds like they're being good stewards of the future legacy of D&D or even a good business partner to their customers. And you can skip the whole "but all companies are like this now" idea. That's not true in this hobby. Every other RPG company I know sells PDFs of their products to their customers.

 

[bsss]

I'm definitely not a lawyer, so I would not have any confidence myself in this, but I was under the impression that archival and personal use was already established to be legally distinct from derivative works.

I'm no lawyer either, but if you are thinking of fair use, unfortunately that is a defense that you must assert permits your use of copyrighted material in a way the copyright holder doesn't agree with. That defense may help in a court regarding the specific pieces of copied material, but WotC doesn't need to take someone to court unless they're doing something far worse, as WotC (again as part of the terms of service) has a far more expedient and effective option of just telling the person to hit the bricks and deleting their account, with no liability towards whatever money got put into the service (at least, no liability unless another lawsuit intervenes).

If someone still wanted to fight, then they'd get to figure out how binding arbitration vs. other options works, which I definitely know next to nothing about. Other than that, most of the personal use and so on relies on WotC just not caring or being able to notice the difference. If you're just saving to disk and ignoring the risk, honestly, I personally think that's a fair practical decision --- I don't think there's much any risk that WotC is going to find out that you printed some pages to PDF and would choose to actually do anything about it, but the point remains that these hoops to jump through exist and people have to skirt the agreement to get these copies, and wouldn't have to if WotC just offered PDFs or so on themselves.

 

[mamba]

Is there any entertainment media that is important to the bulk of humanity?

maybe not, but that just goes to show how bad the ‘99% do not care’ argument actually is

 

[AlViking]

I don't believe that's in the Terms & Conditions. Changing or shutting off any of the material you purchased on D&D Beyond at any time is.

I get that to you it's a big deal, it's just not for me. Companies are not responsible for ensuring anything they publish is available forever. Times change. I no longer own copies of movies or TV shows, haven't bought a novel in physical form in decades, all my games are on steam. WOTC is in no way unique and I don't hold them to a higher standard. As far as the magazines are concerned, it was a nice gesture that they were online for a while but they were never under any compulsion to provide that service.

 

[saviirkad]

I'm no lawyer either, but if you are thinking of fair use, unfortunately that is a defense that you must assert permits your use of copyrighted material in a way the copyright holder doesn't agree with.

I wasn't thinking of fair use, no. Far as I know that's still under the umbrella of a derivative work.

but the point remains that these hoops to jump through exist and people have to skirt the agreement to get these copies, and wouldn't have to if WotC just offered PDFs or so on themselves.

I honestly don't see how them selling a PDF would resolve an issue with derivative works. I can see that being an easier way to archive a work, but companies still want to prevent the creation of derivative works whether it's an online resource or a downloaded file, no?

This honestly sounds like a problem invented by armchair lawyers looking at boilerplate legalese, but I know I'm sitting in an armchair myself I don't know.