Gleemax Terms of Use - Unacceptable

[PapersAndPaychecks]

That's ridiculous and more than a little pathetic. I'm in no danger of ever posting anything on Gleemax, ever; or bothering to read it either.

Those terms basically mean that no valuable content will ever be placed there.

 

[Spell]

completely out of topic, but that is the best quote i have ever seen in years. seriously.

 

[Cor Azer]

no. but let's pretend that i post a description of my game world on there, for brainstorming and discussion. then i publish it, all by myself. let's say that Wizards want to kill off competition and decide to sue me. there is no case, they win even before going to court, because all of my posts belong to them.

How exactly does it "belong to them"? I'm not a lawyer, but the User Content clause mentioned in the original post, to me, implied that they can use it without asking, but it's still yours. Particularly since it's a non-exclusive clause, they can't stop the content from being used elsewhere.

That said, I'm not a big fan of such IP clauses on principle as well, but you should at least not misrepresent them or set up straw men.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

i don't want (and can't) delve into politics (be them u.s. or worldwide), but i think there is little you can do in the way of tuning the draconic down, especially in entertainment business, these days.

i'd say that WotC policy, however unacceptable, is still less draconic than, for example, the European Community having every buyer to pay a flat tax on blank CDs and DVDs because they *could* be used for piracy and they have to use that money to fight piracy and feed the corporations that lobbied the Community for such a just and fair law.

If I a am not entirely mistaken, this is not a Tax, and it definitely exist way before file-sharing was ever an issue.

The original copyright rules allowed "personal" copies, and it basically appeared with Casette Recorders and Casettes. People where able to copy their favourite mucic for personal uses, which often meant distributing it among your friends and family (for free, selling for it wasn't personal anymore). To compensate, a cost came attached to all such media that could be used for copying, because you could (and it was likely even) that you used it for copying music for your friends.

---

On the real topic on hand. I don't like the terms of use either, but let's look at it:
- Publishers can still use the forum for their 4E OGL compatible products. SInce it'S under OGL, a lot of things can be used by any other OGL user anyway. The non-OGL parts of your product better aren't posted there, though.
For my "private" posts, I really don't expect to do anything with it except giving other people stuff they can use. If I wanted to take money for it (and believed it was worth it), I'd try to publish it instead of posing it on some random message boards. Even if nobody ever bothered to copy it into his own rulebook, if it's in a more or less public forum, why should anyone buy my own book for it? Off course, they could have missed that I posted my personal feat collection in the Gleemax house rules forum (if there is such a thing), but then it's nearly as likely that they missed WotC using my material.

 

[Cergorach]

I question the legality of the agreement.
1.) Children cannot sign away their creations, they need their parents consent. It is not enough to add a button that says "I have my parents consent".
2.) It is unclear who exactly is signing this agreement, no verification of the identity of the poster is made. So someone could sign up under a false ID, signaway ideas that aren't his.
3.) Signing away your rights is very simple and can be done online, but claiming your rights is difficult and needs to be done offline (see section 11 of the agreement).
4.) This agreement is nothing more then a watered down EULA, the jurisprudence in many countries concerning EULAs is almost non-existant.

 

[Morrus]

no. but let's pretend that i post a description of my game world on there, for brainstorming and discussion. then i publish it, all by myself. let's say that Wizards want to kill off competition and decide to sue me. there is no case, they win even before going to court, because all of my posts belong to them.

now, this is extremely unlikely to happen with me or you or joe the gamer. but it could happen to joe game designer who is laid off WotC today and starts his company tomorrow.

That's completely not what it says. Let's stick to the facts and the actual content of the ToU, folks.

 

[pedr]

I've not checked back, but I believe that there are/will be areas of Gleemax which have more 'submitter-friendly' conditions of use specifically for the use of other publishers: contrary to comments above, WotC's stated aim is to encourage publishers of all games to contribute to Gleemax and have claimed to have put some thought into a form of words that will satisfy those publishers in respect to their company's page(s).

So there'll be two 'sections' of Gleemax: a 'consumer' one where WotC Legal is concerned that people will post rules items and ideas (which might go unread by anyone in the development teams) which are then developed 'in parallel' leaving them potentially open to a time-consuming rights-battle; this form of words prevents the battle, and a 'publisher' one where actual game manufacturers (defined in some fashion by WotC) only have to grant a more limited license to WotC - at least a license to allow them to publish the material on Gleemax.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

D&D's always worked like this.

I mean, look at WOTC's claimed "intellectual property". The beholder, written by Terry Kuntz, published by Gary Gygax in Greyhawk without even a thank-you (corrected in the Monster Manual in 1977). The displacer beast, borrowed without consent from the coeurl in an A.E.Van Vogt story. The githyanki, githzerai, and slaadi, submitted by a teenage Charles Stross to White Dwarf. (His other works, such as "Zytra, Demon Lord of Mind Flayers" didn't quite catch on...) The whole apparatus of hobbits (sorry, "halflings"), wargs (sorry, "worgs"), ents (sorry, "treants"), balrogs (sorry, "balor") and so forth borrowed without consent from Tolkein. I mean, Gary Gygax even used Tolkein's misspellings ("dwarves", "dwarven".)

Don't be dumb. Protect your IP.

 

[Turanil]

I agree that a huge company like WotC has to protect itself from insane lawsuits, which seem to be so common in the US. Websites such as Dragonsfoot or Enworld don't have the same necessity because there is no money there to try to get through a lawsuit.

In any case, the web is big, and there is no need to post on Gleemax when there are great websites (such as Enworld) where you can post and discuss at leisure for free. Me, you will never see me on Gleemax : I don't care that others may be inspired to write a book based on some of my ideas; however, I want to post any idea that crosses my mind, usually for the sake of discussion, without bothering to know if someone else already published the idea before (and not be liable before a lawcourt for that!!).

 

[Neil Bishop]

I can understand Wizards wanting to protect themselves from any sort of legal risk as they are domiciled in the Land of Lawsuits.

That said, there are numerous other places on the web that one can post so it's no big deal.