File type discrimination

[Brown Jenkin]

There is no issue. WoTC owns the IP, they can do with it as they please.

You are correct, and what they are choosing to do with it right now is allowing it to be freely distributed on the Internet. And once the cat is out of the bag...

The real facts are that pcgen have been commercially exploiting all sorts of IP for the past two years with no say so from the owners. The hoped to exist under the blind eye of a large corp and succeeded, until now.

PCGen for at least a very long time has made sure that they have permission for all thier material. With respect to the non-SRD WotC material they had unofficial permission from Ryan Dancey and continued after that to try to get official permission. It was only at GenCon that they finally had official talks and are now working to meet all the requirements that were laid out.

This is so much like a criminal robbing your home, and then falling on your door mat and then suing you. Yeah pcgen lost "their" data, they should have never had that data. If you became dependant on pcgen and dependent on *them* violating copyright, then you have only yourself and pcgen to blame. WoTC owns the material, they sell you that material in books. That is their buisness.

By the way criminals have successfuly sued homeowner they were robbing for negligence, but that is irrelevant. In all the versions of PCGen I have used they have always had some kind of permission for the material. In addition I have never used a source I don't already own the book for. I am not stealing any of this information, I already own it. I am mearly saving myself the effort of typing it in myself, which if I did nobody could possible complain would be illeagal.

What I find funny are group of people that somehow manage to ignore common sense and feel they have a right to pirate material all in the name of Open Source. Which gives open source a bad name and steps all over other legitimate "groups". How about this open source is a portal "copyright violaters software", which leads to full fledged pirating.

I agree with you. People should not use open source as an excuse to steal. PCGen is not doing this, they have had permission for everything and when that persion has changed they have altered thier material accordingly.

Whining about how WoTC chooses to control their property is like whining to your neighbor to mow his lawn with the grain.

My original point, and the one I have not recieved an answer for is whether by allowing its IP to be freely traded on the internet they can then complain when the same material is traded in a different file format.

 

[smetzger]

Brown- PCGen has NOT had permission to use everything that they have distributed in the past. This is a falacy that the PCGen folks have propogated. I know this for a fact because they never aproached me for permission to use my copyrighted feats from the netBook of feats that were included in PCGen.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Smetzger-I don't wish to vear into this discussion as it has been covered at least 3 times that I can remember. Leopold has stated many times they had permision from the netbook council to use the information, whether this is all the permission they need I don't know. Thier understanding from the council is that it was.

 

[smetzger]

Smetzger-I don't wish to vear into this discussion as it has been covered at least 3 times that I can remember. Leopold has stated many times they had permision from the netbook council to use the information, whether this is all the permission they need I don't know. Thier understanding from the council is that it was.

As far as I know he never said that the council gave him permission. Its pretty clear that the council does not have the copyrights and thus does not have the right to give permission.

You are the one who brought it up. I just want to make sure that people know the whole story. I don't mind that they used my material w/o my consent. However, I do mind that they gave the impression that they had my consent when they did not.

 

[Drawmack]

First I am in no way affiliated with PCGen or WotC.

Okay, to address the issue of PI. What you're saying is that since many of the d20 publishers released their information in pdf format and a good amount for free (i.e. Bastion Press) that it would be leagal for me to take their PI and redistribute it in word format that's not the case. Here's the deal

PCGen is third party software that is released under the open source GPL. Of which a copy can be found here http://www.opensourcerers.com/gpl.html. This means that all copyrights to the software and associated files are in the public domain. Therefor if they include lst files with PI and a company knowingly and willfully allows this to continue then they give up the rights to that PI.

E-Tools is a piece of software produced for and by WotC and sold to their fan base. This being the case WotC can distribute their PI in their program's proprietary format without without giving up said PI. It boils down to this they own the PI and the program so they can do whatever they want with those two things and you need to deal with it.

As far as reverse engineering the software goes. E-Tools runs on top of an access database. As such, they cannot possibly back up this assertion as technically MS reverse engineered their database before it was even built. They use a commercial database engine to create their database, they cannot say that I am not allowed to open their database inside of that engine. Therefor I can create my own compatible database, then create a front end for that database and then do with that what ever I like. Besides if someone besides me installs the software on my PC then I have not agreed to the lisense. So I'll have my GF install the software then I'm not bound by any agreement. It boils down to this, reverse engineering is legal because you can't make it illegal because you can't prove it. Besides all that, the files are not software any more then a word doc is software.

 

[Mynex]

Brown- PCGen has NOT had permission to use everything that they have distributed in the past. This is a falacy that the PCGen folks have propogated. I know this for a fact because they never aproached me for permission to use my copyrighted feats from the netBook of feats that were included in PCGen.

Smetzger,

Let me clear this up for you, both Leopold and I talked with the team leads for the various netbooks AND the council asking for permission, we got it.

If they were the wrong people to talk to my apologies, but please stop saying we 'lied about obtaining permission' it gets old very fast and it is simply not true. If the council or the team leads did not have permission to give permission, you need to take that up with them, we contacted the 'publisher' (in this case the netbooks/council) so we did exactly what we said we did and by the terms as we understood them. Bear in mind none of us are laywers, so contacting the 'publishers' is all we thought we were required to do.

If it is that offensive to you that we didn't contact you specifically, then I'll be more than happy to remove the netbooks from the releases until such a time as we (the PCGen Team) have time to contact everyone specifically and obtain their permission.

 

[Cergorach]

Removed by Admin.


AND i don't care for any response from your part about this subject except absolute silence or a carefully worded appology.

[edit]
Me like the sarcasm ;-)
[/edit]

I appologize to the rest of the board for this outburst, but it's more than a little irritating to see the same damn thing in every few discussions.

 

[smetzger]

Smetzger,

Let me clear this up for you, both Leopold and I talked with the team leads for the various netbooks AND the council asking for permission, we got it.

If they were the wrong people to talk to my apologies, but please stop saying we 'lied about obtaining permission' it gets old very fast and it is simply not true. If the council or the team leads did not have permission to give permission, you need to take that up with them, we contacted the 'publisher' (in this case the netbooks/council) so we did exactly what we said we did and by the terms as we understood them. Bear in mind none of us are laywers, so contacting the 'publishers' is all we thought we were required to do.

If it is that offensive to you that we didn't contact you specifically, then I'll be more than happy to remove the netbooks from the releases until such a time as we (the PCGen Team) have time to contact everyone specifically and obtain their permission.

Thank you for providing accurate details about what happened. I was unaware that the netbook councils gave you permission. I will be taking that matter up with them.

If you publish under d20 or OGL there is no need to obtain permission.

I am sorry for saying that you lied. That was an exageration.

 

[Henry]

Cergorach: I REALLY wish you hadn't done that.

Smetzger: Mynex's reply stands on its own. I really don't have anything to add there, other than, these guys don't fail for lack of trying.

Sm!rk: Again, I will let Mynex's reply stand here, with only one more thought - PCGen in no way attempts to steal ANYONE's intellectual IP, and is in fact (I state this as FACT) responsible for more purchases than were ever lost - in exactly the same way that the SRD was responsible for lost sales of the Players' handbook. You cannot use partial data to build something that it would take an entire book contents to finish out. It is to me as supportable as saying that a character sheet posted on the internet for the BRP Call of Cthulhu System violates IP published in the core rulebook for that game. PCgen has helped me make more use out of my WotC splatbooks than I ever would have gotten otherwise - because ever since I discovered that program, I LOATHE to write up a character on paper and pen. It's like going back to a washboard and tub after using a laundromat.

Brown Jenkin: I can understand your position, but as Davin has said, we are dealing with not only issues of IP copyright, but the fact that E-tools has just gotten out of the starting gate. It will be a while before any sort of fan-created IP violation crackdown is garnered. I won't say "if ever," because I can definitely see a crackdown coming if E-tools is not a ragin success.

I have finally gotten a chance to see a friend's copy of E-tools; I was somewhat unimpressed because of the lack of implemented features that it has compared to some of the other established packages out there. I do not bash Scott Matthews or Fluid Entertainment in any way; considering the obstacles that E-tools has had on its way to publication, it's amazing the thing ever made it to production. But its two strikes against it to me include (1) bugs and unimplemented features to be resolved with character generation, such as effects of changing attributes and equipping character, and (2) near-total loss of support during its development.

 

[thepriz]

Fantasy Comunity Council - Netbooks

Most of the material in the Fantasy Community Council Netbooks are distributed under D20 and OGL licenses. There are a few instances where the material is not OGL and is clearly labeled in the license posted in each netbook. Each submission is submitted to the Fantasy Community Council under the D20 and OGL licence. For any work that is used out of a d20 publication it is customary but not necessary to get permission from the publisher. We as the Core Council have given our unnecessary permission to use our netbooks in the PcGen program. We have also done this in return such as the Netbook of Spells and Magic has contacted Sword and Sorcery to to use their Ritual rules in our netbook. We didn't have to do this but we did. As far as I am concerned the submitter still holds whatever copyright he still has after releasing his submission to the FanCC under the D20 and OGL licenses, but I don't see what the big deal is with PcGen asking us for permission to use our netbooks.

Thanks,