D&D General Frylock on the ‘Ineffectual OGL’

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Morrus]

Knock it off, you two.

 

[Shardstone]

deleting

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[S'mon]

severe downside, including but not limited to issues like opening you up to discovery

By discovery you mean the other side's lawyers reading your blog?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I find the commentary here much more amusing than the original topic. My initial thoughts, which have not really changed since originally coming across this, was, "What a cheeky fecker". Claiming to own stuff that he clearly did not.
I am in no position to judge the legal arguments but the commentary here is illuminating.

 

[S'mon]

Re legal arguments - for this post I had to actually read both his argument ,AND reread & parse the OGL clause terms - I never normally do that much work unless I'm being paid!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[seebs]

To be fair, there's a ton of copyright cases that basically say that game rules aren't copyrightable, and some of them might be moderately on-point. The argument would then be that the OGL is a trick -- it's offering you special terms under which you're permitted to do something you could have done anyway, etcetera.

I wouldn't want to be the one to argue the case, in general. But there is definitely previous legal history for the notion that the rules of a game can't be protected by copyright, which is why so much attention goes into the brand identity stuff, which is much easier to defend.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.