Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[S'mon]

Shrug

It's been there for a very long time. Two years ago it was brought to attention a lot when some players in the MtG community noticed that some fan-art was used in a newly released card. The community was outraged and the artist was temporarily suspended for not coordinating this decision with WOTC, but ultimately they had no grounds to sue for change or compensations because of these terms.

But... a Policy is not a Contract! They can't just declare my stuff is 'fan content' and therefore they can do what they like with it! Without my agreement they have no rights over it.

 

[Nylanfs]

(IANAL) There is one strange thing with the kit Walsh update though. It make it sound like wizards is supposed to be one of the parties of the contract, but I see nothing in the agreement text itself that indicates that. Rather it seem like the formulation indicates the parties to be You and the Contributors. So indeed, if wizards hadnt contributed any OGC, they wouldn't have been a party to the contract at all. Rather the role stipulated for them is more like a steward holding the copyright of the agreement text, and tasked with providing new versions as needed.

As wizards is not a priveleged party to the agreement (not really neccessarily a party at all) there are nothing to support that they should have the power to revoke the agreement on behalf of the Contributors under standard revocation theory. Indeed if so had been possible, any contributor seem like should have that right using the same justification.

WotC IS a party to the contract, one of the main considerations that they recieve from the contract is that they are ALSO free to use anyone elses OGC in future book (just like everyone else who agrees to the contract.) They have done this twice, UA & MM3. The fact that they have chosen NOT to excercise this right doesn't make it non-existent.

 

[Ondath]

Law podcast Opening Arguments made this tweet where they use a very hostile tone against Linda Codega's reporting of the situation:
They claim Linda very much misrepresents what's happening (even implying that we should be preparing pitchforks not against WotC but against Linda!).

TBH I'm very confused. I thought nothing that Linda said was inaccurate legal analysis, add to the fact that they consulted lawyers before publishing their piece, and that the conclusions were mostly in line with the lawyers in the forums are saying. So the OA folks going so hostile against the journalist that broke the news seems pointlessly aggressive to me.

I'm just tired at this point. WotC is dead silent (despite the promise two days ago!) and the uncertainty seems to cause the entire fandom to eat itself.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The community was outraged and the artist was temporarily suspended for not coordinating this decision with WOTC, but ultimately they had no grounds to sue for change or compensations because of these terms.

That's... not how copyright works. The Fan Content Policy isn't a contract. WotC could demand you take something down, but they can't unilaterally say "This is mine now".

TBH I'm very confused. I thought nothing that Linda said was inaccurate legal analysis, add to the fact that they consulted lawyers before publishing their piece, and that the conclusions were mostly in line with the lawyers in the forums are saying. So them going so hostile against the journalist that broke the news seems pointlessly aggressive to me.

The OA people seem to have some weird unstated agenda here.

Virtually all their comments on it haven't related to the legal situation at all, but to their opinion of how WotC does business, that it's fine for WotC to do whatever they like to whoever they like. It really seems to me like there might be a bit of personal bias involved, especially as they're inexplicably going overboard in attacking Linda particularly, which is kind of creepy, and doesn't seem to be their "MO". Especially as she was "just the messenger" in this situation, and yes, this stuff did go past G/Os lawyers.

I think OA are probably going to suggest there was never any threat of deauthorization, and that it's "only" a poison-pill contract, but that's not how WotC was presenting it, and it's not how the 3PPs in the negotiations have appeared to understand it - c.f. Kobold etc. - then go on and just blather about how it's "totally fair and normal really", when, like, obviously it isn't, given the OGL 1.0a. It's a position I've seen literally one other person adopt - this laughable idea that if a less-permissive licence would have been good if another, more permissive licence had never existed, then the less-permissive licence is obviously fine.

If they're going to get into stuff like suggesting a 25% revenue cut is "fine", which is not a matter of law, but a matter of business and ethics/morality, and those outside their actual purview, I think they'll get actual blowback themselves.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

"Irrevocable" does not have an inherent meaning divorced from context and divorced from the parties' intentions. In a very real sense, "irrevocable" means whatever the parties to the agreement want it to mean; or perhaps it is better to say "irrevocable" means whatever the court thinks the parties to the agreement want it to mean. Different parties will have different intentions in different contexts. The search for a single, definitive, meaning of "irrevocable" or any other word in a contract is a chimera (not in the D&D sense in the "a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve" sense)

Catching up.

I really appreciate your efforts to simplify matters for people. but I have to take issue with what you have said here. This ... isn't accurate, and is arguably misleading.

A person can say that contract law, in general, is about understanding and enabling the parties' intent. But that's not everything, is it? It's also (for lack of a better phrase) a system of rules that have built up over time. For example, there are rules (especially in the United States) about revoking licenses. There are rules about revoking offers (so that offers to contract are not open forever).

When people are talking about revokable and irrevocable, while I do think they are confusing various concepts (the revocability of a license, of an offer, or confusing it with termination/breach), there is a distinction between the legal concepts and "whatever parties are throwing into contracts."

 

[jgbrowning]

Law podcast Opening Arguments made this tweet where they use a very hostile tone against Linda Codega's reporting of the situation:
They claim Linda very much misrepresents what's happening (even implying that we should be preparing pitchforks not against WotC but against Linda!).

TBH I'm very confused. I thought nothing that Linda said was inaccurate legal analysis, add to the fact that they consulted lawyers before publishing their piece, and that the conclusions were mostly in line with the lawyers in the forums are saying. So the OA folks going so hostile against the journalist that broke the news seems pointlessly aggressive to me.

I'm just tired at this point. WotC is dead silent (despite the promise two days ago!) and the uncertainty seems to cause the entire fandom to eat itself.

I dunno. I found the same person's following tweets in that thread ....tedious. Using the term "fearmongering" when it's immediately followed up with "you'll have to (consume my monetized product X) to see what I mean!" reeks of click-bait and makes me think that the the monetized-discussion is actually going to be about how its not really fearmongering when viewed with nuance.

joe "suspicious" b.

 

[Ondath]

I dunno. I found the same person's following tweets in that thread ....tedious. Using the term "fearmongering" when it's immediately followed up with "you'll have to (consume my monetized product X) to see what I mean!" reeks of click-bait and makes me think that the the monetized-discussion is actually going to be about how its not really fearmongering when viewed with nuance.

joe "suspicious" b.

Agreed. It's just worrying that a half-baked "teknikly tru" take might give some ammunition to WotC to paint the whole fiasco as overblown fan reaction.

 

[Branduil]

I think we're really well past the point where a single podcast can "turn the tides." For one thing, this started as a grassroots rejection of the leaked document, building from the community itself, not from influencers. And the thing is, people aren't really waiting to be told what to think at this point, they're waiting for people to tell them what they already wanted to believe(this is true for those of us opposing WotC as well of course).

But more importantly, the commercial parties affected have already started making their decisions. The damage is done, the OGL is dead as a unifying force, regardless of what WotC says now. You can't point a loaded gun at your partners and say "just kidding!" afterwards.

 

[S'mon]

Catching up.

I really appreciate your efforts to simplify matters for people. but I have to take issue with what you have said here. This ... isn't accurate, and is arguably misleading.

A person can say that contract law, in general, is about understanding and enabling the parties' intent. But that's not everything, is it? It's also (for lack of a better phrase) a system of rules that have built up over time.

But he was talking specifically about the court upholding the intent of the parties to the contract. That is practically a 'rule', certainly in English law. He was not talking about contract law in general. He was talking about how a court interprets & applies the express & implied terms of a contract.

 

[Enrahim2]

Law podcast Opening Arguments made this tweet where they use a very hostile tone against Linda Codega's reporting of the situation:

Wonder if they might have the same take as me earlier in this thread. The "no longer an authorised" quote without the update context, alongside the faq claim without the term it explained, making correct legal understanding impossible. Hence rilling up people over the completely false inference that wizard somehow intended to shut down the 1.0a ecosystem.

That might indeed explain wizards silence! They may have mapped out their thinking to Opening Arguments, having a third party both break the news, and wouch for their legal position. If they have done this right, and actually have the legalese on their side (that they might have had months, maybe even years of time intensly mapping out) - this might turn into a PR masterstroke!