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Frylock on the ‘Ineffectual OGL’
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<blockquote data-quote="Deleted member 7015506" data-source="post: 7797444"><p>Okay it took me a real while to translate some terms and trying to understand the context and deeper meaning of the whole affair. And very likely I am still wrong and misunderstood quite a deal of the whole affair. But after that rather time consuming effort, I got the following conclusions for me (and please correct me if I am wrong):</p><p>(As stated by others) Fyrlock thinks, that WotC is claiming copyrights/misusing copyrights for things they don´t have. May it be game rules, stats blocks, monsters, etc. based on whatever previous court decisions are there. So they, according to his thought model, can´t enforce something they don´t have nor have the rights to. Therefore the whole copyright claim by WotC is not justified in his view and his publication of those stat blocks don´t violate copyrights at all. </p><p>The OGL is worthless according to him, since it robs possible designers/publishers of rights they would have, since WotC is misusing the copyright laws by stating, that certain parts of their game are Intellectual Property (Or at least I get the impression). And he thinks this is a misuse of copyright laws. </p><p>I don´t understand, where the misuse is, when WotC says, you can publish material as long as you don´t include those IP parts. Now the only point he may have is, that perhaps certain monsters or other parts are at a small chance not the IP of WotC and therefore the "offering" of the OGL and SRD is not enforceable, since those parts (where he assumes WotC has no copyright on) of that "offering" is rendering the whole "offering" (perhaps called a contract) meaningless.</p><p>And now I wonder, if Fyrlock published one of his stat blocks for such IP considered monsters as the Githyanki, Mind Flayer, etc. The only question is, and perhaps that is what he is counting on in case the affair goes to court, if those IP "protected" monsters are really covered by some copyright or IP laws and are really the IP of WotC (thanks S´mon for the remark about that). And if they are not IP protected, would they make the OGL/SRD meaningless and their publication perhaps in a more dramatic escalation turn the whole D&D game into a kind of Public Domain material (=WotC own mistake in his assumption?)? I understand, that if this would be the case you can´t still simply paste and copy the rulebooks and publish them as their own.</p><p>To sum it up I simply get the impression, that Fyrlock is trying to prove, that if one part of a contract/offering is not valid under existing laws, than the whole contract/offering is not enforcable (which is usually the case in laws of my home country. Therefore a clause in every good contract here states, that if one part of a contract is wrong, the whole contract in itself is not nullified by that wrong part (literal translation)).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Deleted member 7015506, post: 7797444"] Okay it took me a real while to translate some terms and trying to understand the context and deeper meaning of the whole affair. And very likely I am still wrong and misunderstood quite a deal of the whole affair. But after that rather time consuming effort, I got the following conclusions for me (and please correct me if I am wrong): (As stated by others) Fyrlock thinks, that WotC is claiming copyrights/misusing copyrights for things they don´t have. May it be game rules, stats blocks, monsters, etc. based on whatever previous court decisions are there. So they, according to his thought model, can´t enforce something they don´t have nor have the rights to. Therefore the whole copyright claim by WotC is not justified in his view and his publication of those stat blocks don´t violate copyrights at all. The OGL is worthless according to him, since it robs possible designers/publishers of rights they would have, since WotC is misusing the copyright laws by stating, that certain parts of their game are Intellectual Property (Or at least I get the impression). And he thinks this is a misuse of copyright laws. I don´t understand, where the misuse is, when WotC says, you can publish material as long as you don´t include those IP parts. Now the only point he may have is, that perhaps certain monsters or other parts are at a small chance not the IP of WotC and therefore the "offering" of the OGL and SRD is not enforceable, since those parts (where he assumes WotC has no copyright on) of that "offering" is rendering the whole "offering" (perhaps called a contract) meaningless. And now I wonder, if Fyrlock published one of his stat blocks for such IP considered monsters as the Githyanki, Mind Flayer, etc. The only question is, and perhaps that is what he is counting on in case the affair goes to court, if those IP "protected" monsters are really covered by some copyright or IP laws and are really the IP of WotC (thanks S´mon for the remark about that). And if they are not IP protected, would they make the OGL/SRD meaningless and their publication perhaps in a more dramatic escalation turn the whole D&D game into a kind of Public Domain material (=WotC own mistake in his assumption?)? I understand, that if this would be the case you can´t still simply paste and copy the rulebooks and publish them as their own. To sum it up I simply get the impression, that Fyrlock is trying to prove, that if one part of a contract/offering is not valid under existing laws, than the whole contract/offering is not enforcable (which is usually the case in laws of my home country. Therefore a clause in every good contract here states, that if one part of a contract is wrong, the whole contract in itself is not nullified by that wrong part (literal translation)). [/QUOTE]
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