Another Cease and Desist Letter: 4E Powercards

[mxyzplk]

Except ASCAP and BMI exist and this isn't really an issue. ASCAP and BMI receive licensing fees from every public performance venue in existence allowing live and recorded music to be reproduced for the enjoyment of the venues' patrons. It is amazingly similar to a protection racket. If you open a bar with a jukebox, within weeks someone from one of the two companies will show up asking for a cut. I have no idea how they find out but they do.

Yeah, here in Austin there has been a rash of small venues - coffee shops that have sone acoustic guy show up once in a while, etc. - getting cracked down on by these guys and told to pay large fees or not allow music performances. Sadly, many of them are giving up offering music as a result.

 

[catsclaw227]

My entire point is not that Wizards isn't legally entitled to C&D these guys. My point is that legally, they're entitled to C&D just about everyone including homebrew guy. Who they go after is strictly according to "whoever they feel like this month." Their statements about why do try to create the implication of a limit, but there is not one. They haven't said, for example, that "we don't think the stuff on ENWorld doesn't violate our IP rights" - they just say "Oh we like *you* guys. We're 'less concerned' with you."

I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree. In my opinion, your stance is extreme and borderline fear-mongering.

I am not worried that our group's game website/blog/forum will be targeted by WOTC because we posted our game's PCs and I put up some images from the SoW Adventure Path we are running.

If I were to post all the class details from the current crop of source books and copy all the monsters from Draconomicon and Open Grave for anyone to download, then yes, I should be concerned.

But, then again, I wouldn't do it in the first place, since it violates WOTC's IP and it isn't mine to freely disseminate.

Do you feel that a fansite has the right (even in spirit, regardless of legality) to reproduce the IP of a for-profit company, without permission, and give it away for free?

 

[jgsugden]

WotC is selling powercards right now.

If you've paid for D&D insider, you can download the character generator. It creates power cards.

I think WotC is missing the boat with these C&D letters. Shutting down other web sites is never popular. Rather, I'd contact the people running these sites and discuss options that allow WotC to bring these people on board with WotC.

In Ema's case, I'd have offered to let the site continue if they shared profits with WotC, and agreed to meet certainly quality and timeliness standards. Further, I'd have offered to provide advanced previews of the text of new product to help Ema stay timely. This is the approach I'd take with any pay site selling my product in a different format.

In the powercards site case, when the cards were not being sold for profit, I'd simply have told them that they may continue operation AS LONG AS they implement a sign in system so that only D&D insiders could sign in. In other words, I'd have left it open for business for D&D insiders only.

The costs of these transitions would have needed to have been born by the sites themselves, with limited technical support from the WotC folks.

I'd expect to see both sites reject these types of offers, but there is a chance they might accept the offer - and if not, and a C&D was necessary, at least WotC could say that they made efforts to work with the community before they resorted to striking out with C&Ds. To me, using a C&D should be a measure of near last resort.

 

[xechnao]

mxyzplk

There might be a reason behind this. The sooner they had provided a fan site policy the more their PR could have suffered. Same about the GSL/OGL policy. Similarly about trying to convince for a new model of game based on or needing power cards. Is this unexpected?
Was it you that cited white wolf's fan site policy? I read on a thread (think it was on rpg.net) about these C&D letters that white wolf conceded a fan site policy after flame wars were growing really long.
So I guess this fan public(market) and entertainer(industry) conflict is one to be expected.

 

[Dausuul]

And yes, they weren't homebrew. But they also weren't torrent sites. ...

So they are deliberately creating an unsafe environment even for the homebrewers out there till they come out with a stated policy. I don't consider pointing this out "anti-Wizards." Their actions are limiting innovation and communication about their own product. IMO it's way in their best interest to decide what kind of D&D promotion they want fansites to do and declare they're OK doing it. At this rate they are just scaring off random fansiters from bothering with their games. Rouse's answer to them is "check with your lawyer!" Yeah, sure....

I am in no way a lawyer, but I know that copying large chunks of the Player's Handbook and posting them online is a damn-fool thing to do, and anyone who does it would be an idiot not to expect a C&D the minute Wizards gets wind of it.

Now, should they have a stated fansite policy? Absolutely, just like they should have a GSL for third-party publishers, and I'm pretty irritated that they've taken this long about it. But in the absence of a stated policy, a little common sense should apply. Obviously Rouse isn't going to offer us an ironclad, hard-and-fast definition of what will and will not be challenged; as far as I know, he also is not a lawyer, and if WotC hasn't come up with a policy yet, he's not about to commit them to one on his own.

So he gave us an idea of WotC's general aims right now - take down the sharing/torrent sites, leave the homebrewers alone. Clearly, this is not all-encompassing and is merely a guideline. The question then becomes, say I'm planning to create a site that is neither a torrent site nor a homebrew. Which category does it fall closer to? The answer in this case is quite clear: It's putting up a whole bunch of Wizards IP to be downloaded by the public for free, which puts it in the sharing/torrent category.

Find me a case of somebody who's posting genuine homebrew stuff receiving a C&D, and I'll share your outrage (as well as being dubious about the legality of it). But I'm not going to try to defend blatant copyright infringement on the grounds that it isn't exactly the same as a sharing/torrent site.

In the powercards site case, when the cards were not being sold for profit, I'd simply have told them that they may continue operation AS LONG AS they implement a sign in system so that only D&D insiders could sign in. In other words, I'd have left it open for business for D&D insiders only.

The costs of these transitions would have needed to have been born by the sites themselves, with limited technical support from the WotC folks.

I agree, this would have been a much better solution; in fact, creating a system of licensed fansites authorized to repost Wizards IP for DDI subscribers would be a brilliant move, allowing WotC to harness the enthusiasm of their fans (just compare the 3E d20srd.org to the Wizards SRD site to see how much value fan enthusiasm can add), and increase the value of the DDI at minimal cost to themselves. Here's hoping someone with the authority to implement such a solution reads this...

 

[catsclaw227]

In Ema's case, I'd have offered to let the site continue if they shared profits with WotC, and agreed to meet certainly quality and timeliness standards. Further, I'd have offered to provide advanced previews of the text of new product to help Ema stay timely. This is the approach I'd take with any pay site selling my product in a different format.

In the powercards site case, when the cards were not being sold for profit, I'd simply have told them that they may continue operation AS LONG AS they implement a sign in system so that only D&D insiders could sign in. In other words, I'd have left it open for business for D&D insiders only.

As you said, these ideas, while interesting, would make for some major headaches.

In the case of the powercards site, there's no way WOTC would give up their membership information or authentication info. Managing the login process would be painful and would either require that WOTC redirect all users to the powercards site with a temp authentication ticket, or provide the 3PP site a complete list of users (not on any planet would that happen!).

Forget about the nerdrage that would ensue if any of this authentication process failed even a little bit.

 

[mxyzplk]

I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree. In my opinion, your stance is extreme and borderline fear-mongering.

I am not worried that our group's game website/blog/forum will be targeted by WOTC because we posted our game's PCs and I put up some images from the SoW Adventure Path we are running.

If I were to post all the class details from the current crop of source books and copy all the monsters from Draconomicon and Open Grave for anyone to download, then yes, I should be concerned.

But, then again, I wouldn't do it in the first place, since it violates WOTC's IP and it isn't mine to freely disseminate.

Do you feel that a fansite has the right (even in spirit, regardless of legality) to reproduce the IP of a for-profit company, without permission, and give it away for free?

And it's fine to disagree. I have to say though, since White Wolf came out with its guidelines saying "your characters are derivative IP and we own them" just a couple months ago, I don't have that same safe feeling WotC won't do the same. Comes down to a basic trust issue. IMO, a real life recent example of the #2 RPG company doing it means that speculating that the #1, who won't come out and say what its policy is, might do the same isn't really fearmongering, it's plain logic.

The answer of course to "does a fansite have the spiritual right to reproduce IP..." is of course yes. In fact, I'd replace "right" with "need." Not wholesale copying, but as we have seen, the legal definition of "reproducing IP" is as simple as my current priest's character sheet including the power "short descriptions" from the PHB. That's technically reproducing Wizards IP and it's technically actionable. But it's also kinda expected. And some amount of this, Wizards wants to happen. It's part of building a community around your products. But how much do they want to have happen, and where does it cross the line for them?

This isn't some unique problem to this industry. I work for a computer-type company with plenty of software IP. Some people still adhere to a completely closed model there, but that's largely old giants that made their money long ago. The newer guys, you have to figure out - what do I release as open source? What do I make "industry standard interfaces", release to the IEEE as specs, etc. rather than trying to keep them proprietary? How do I allow our base to write programs using our products, create add-ons for our products, etc? And we know it's important for the community of our customers, resellers, consultants, etc. to know where that line is, as vagueness is chilling to the market. People don't want to take a risk and get shut down after investing time and money. Even WoW had to come to a clear agreement with modders as to what was OK and what wasn't. WotC needs to do the same.

 

[Maggan]

Forget about the nerdrage that would ensue if any of this authentication process failed even a little bit.

"Here I am, standing in what was once the headquarters of game producer Wizards of the Coast. Mere hours ago, the tidal wave of what Pentagon experts have called "The Billion Gamer Flamewar" hit this unsuspecting suburd, reducing these buildings and several surrounding blocks of industry property to ashes. President Obama have promised to look into this devastating turn of events, and have hinted that Internet access might be revoked for gamers across America, to save us all from a similar fate once these gamers learn that Hasbro, the owners of Wizards of the Coast, is poised to ask a gamer to pick up a pice of trash he dropped at GenCon. Reporting live from where ever I'm standing at the moment, I'm Kent Brockman."

/M

 

[Dausuul]

As you said, these ideas, while interesting, would make for some major headaches.

In the case of the powercards site, there's no way WOTC would give up their membership information or authentication info. Managing the login process would be painful and would either require that WOTC redirect all users to the powercards site with a temp authentication ticket, or provide the 3PP site a complete list of users (not on any planet would that happen!).

Forget about the nerdrage that would ensue if any of this authentication process failed even a little bit.

Certainly there would be serious technical challenges involved in setting it up (the temp authentication ticket seems like the most likely approach), but think of the ultimate value to be gained. Every successful fan site would add to the value of the DDI and pull in more subscribers, fueled by word of mouth on sites like ENWorld. A lot of the apps that are currently giving WotC's software team nightmares could be developed free of charge by fans, and competing fansites could fine-tune things like format and presentation. WotC could even run a "Featured Fansite of the Month" article, or something of the sort, in Dragon.

Thanks to the nature and history of their product, WotC happens to have a very dedicated (not to say obsessive), creative, tech-savvy fanbase. Why not capitalize on that?

 

[Ydars]

Because then WoTC would have to give up some control and some of that cool IP they invented.

You know: stuff like Beholders, and Githyanki and all the other D&D iconics. Stuff like Eberron and FR etc.

This is their right as they legally own all this stuff, right.

Oh wait? They actually didn't invent ANY of this stuff: the fans did, or else writers of fantasy novels that got ripped off but never bothered to sue WoTC or TSR before them.

All WoTC actually invented was game mechanics, which can't be construed as IP.

You will forgive my confusion over recent events.