[Gleemax]Another thing not to like.

[Raven Crowking]

Hopefully you can get some of your questions or concerns answered there.

Sure.

Why doesn't WotC agree to allow me to publish (and in so doing, claim ownership to) whatever WotC materials I want without compensating WotC? I have no intention of actually doing so; I just want to cover my liability in case I make a mistake about what is OGL content or not. If you can tell me why WotC wouldn't agree to that, I can tell you why I won't be posting on Gleemax.

You could always make the ToS include that everything on Gleemax is automatically OGC if it initially belongs to the poster, btw, including publisher previews from WotC and others. I'm just saying.


RC

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

In hopes that I do not sound like I am herding people over to our site; Randy has started a thread to address many of these concerns over on the Gleemax Forums:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=13331789#post13331789

Hopefully you can get some of your questions or concerns answered there.

Jennifer Paige
Aka "Solice"
Community Liaison
Wizards of the Coast

Don't do it! It's a trap! Once you post there they will have complete control.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Scott, since you mentioned this several times I think I need to bring this up. (I used to work on a consultant basis for Met Life and they had this problem with their relationship with the Schultz Estate.) The example you give of Disney is not one per se of copyright, but of trademark. All the characters are in effect trademarks of Disney. Trademark law is different from copyright law in that it must be vigorously defended or else it is lost. (Consider, for example the lost trademarks of Kleenex and Xerox.) Disney could loose the rights to their own characters if they are reproduced freely in the public domain. The same is not true for copyright.

Fair enough. Mickey Mouse is a trademark of Disney. The point I was trying to make is companies vigorously defend their IP rights, whether Trademark, Patents, or Copyrights. Compared to many other companies, WOTC is pretty liberal about fan use (although we take protecting our IP very seriously) and if WoTC wanted to they could do the same.

For example Kamikaze Midgets document utilizes Planescape which is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast. We could defend this if we so chose. Also his document may have copyright issues via expression of the world, characters, monsters etc.

Defense of the varied forms of intellectual property are different and equally complex and are likely drivers in the Gleemax TOS.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Fair enough. Mickey Mouse is a trademark of Disney. The point I was trying to make is companies vigorously defend their IP rights, whether Trademark, Patents, or Copyrights. Compared to many other companies, WOTC is pretty liberal about fan use (although we take protecting our IP very seriously) and if WoTC wanted to they could do the same.

Again, though, we are discussing ToS which have no time limit whatsoever, and which will still be in full effect if the complete staff at WotC changes. WotC could, for instance, grant itself a 2-year grace period to know what is on its boards, after which WotC has no rights to republish if it has not already done so.

RC

 

[Xyxox]

I like how the blogging apologist is giving this lecture about the social decency of profit ventures and then says "Read some Ayn Rand."

Yes, in defense of Gleemax please read books by the person who celebrates the unregulated triumph of the individual will to power over any concerns for the collective good.

So is it the policy of Gleemax that they should be above the regulatory intervention of the unwashed masses?

Whenever anybody tries to use Ayn Rand to support their argument, I always watch my back because it's almost always a sure sign that a knife is already sticking out of it.

 

[Xyxox]

And the ToS needs to be rewritten to protect both WotC and G-Max members and other publishers. If G-Max is supposed to be for all gamers and games like they are claiming then they need to make it as such and not just make it so that WotC gets all the benefits. As it stands the ToS implies that this is just a WotC site.

Maybe you're reading it all wrong. For years, tabletop miniature wargaming was branded as just that, tabletop miniature wargaming. Along comes Games Workshop and they re-branded the hobby as "The Games Workshop Hobby". All employees of that company are fully trained to refer to it as "The Games Workshop Hobby" and nothing else, not even recognizing that there is anything in the way of tabletop miniature wargaming outside of Games Workshop.

The point I'm making is, perhaps WoTC is attempting to rebrand "gaming" only as it relates to WoTC products and nothing else. From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense for a game company to attempt to make everybody think of them when they think of games, just as Games Workshop wants tabletop wargamers to think of them when they think of tabletop wargames, especially the young demographic who may not have been exposed to other choices.

 

[Xyxox]

User-Generated Content Policy Clarifications

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A couple of points we have changed/clarified, largely based on the conversations on these boards:

1) The Official Game Info Pages will be covered by a different policy than the rest of the site. On those official pages, users give us a much more limited license that doesn't give us much of anything except the right to have that content posted on our site.

2) Our lawyers won't let us have that policy apply to the rest of the site because there's too much danger that we will independently invent a game, or a mechanic, or a card/feat that someone else posted to the site without us even noticing and then sue us. Our lawyers will, however, allow me to tell you that we have no intention to knowingly publish anyone else's content (not without contacting and compensating them anyway) ... it's just that we expect it to happen by accident fairly often so we're obliged to cover for that.

Note that anyone who doesn't trust us enough to post their original intellectual policy to their personal page can always jump through the hoops and get an official game info page ...

Randy

Here

It sounds like the best thing for you (if you so choose to embrace Gleemax) is to get a publisher account and then you are not subject to the public TOS. If you post stuff to a message board you would just provide a small overview with a re-direct top your personal page so as to not put up work WOTC would have access to.

I would guess this is what a lot of established (Ari, Mona, etc) writers would do since they typically get paid for their work.

Given the above two quotes, it is very clear that WotC is working diligently to protect both its IP and the rights of its Gleemax users. These two statements should put to rest any concern whatsoever over the TOS for Gleemax as there is now ample evidence to demonstrate WotC is not out to kill its Gleemax users and steal their stuff.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Given the above two quotes, it is very clear that WotC is working diligently to protect both its IP and the rights of its Gleemax users. These two statements should put to rest any concern whatsoever over the TOS for Gleemax as there is now ample evidence to demonstrate WotC is not out to kill its Gleemax users and steal their stuff.

IMHO, the question isn't about the motives of WotC, but about the motives of the posters. What would motivate me to post to a board where, by posting, I automatically lose the right to publish content elsewhere, ever, or to protect or profit by that content should it be published at any point in the future by WotC?

Giving your rights away today because you trust the people in charge of WotC doesn't mean that you can get them back tomorrow should someone else be put in charge.


RC

 

[Storm Raven]

Giving your rights away today because you trust the people in charge of WotC doesn't mean that you can get them back tomorrow should someone else be put in charge.

Of course, people said the same things back when guys like Dancey were in charge of WotC and the OGL and d20 license were part of an evil plot to steal everyone else's IP. And since then WotC has undergone about two turnovers of personnel and the shibboleth hasn't materialized.

Stealing from Gleemax posters would be a bad move for WotC - for the ability to save a handful of dollars by not paying someone the trivial amounts that gaming content is usually sold for, they would reap a whirlwind of negative publicity that would make evryone hate them as much as in the days when saying "T$R" was in vogue. It just wouldn't be worth it.

 

[Xyxox]

IMHO, the question isn't about the motives of WotC, but about the motives of the posters. What would motivate me to post to a board where, by posting, I automatically lose the right to publish content elsewhere, ever, or to protect or profit by that content should it be published at any point in the future by WotC?

Giving your rights away today because you trust the people in charge of WotC doesn't mean that you can get them back tomorrow should someone else be put in charge.


RC

You ahve a couple of options here.

1) Post a brief synopsis of what you're talking about and provide a link to the games specific (blog, myspace clone, whatever) that exist under different TOS.

2) Obtain a publishers account and link from your brief synopsis to that area.

Either way, you're more protected than if you post everything to the boards outright. WotC provides this functionality and the protection in the other two areas. It's the best of all worlds.