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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fendulum" data-source="post: 8891196" data-attributes="member: 7039964">Here's what I wonder re the latest Walsh edit (and it connects to some of what people have said in this thread as well). Walsh writes:"Since the contract is accepted when someone “uses” the licensed material, then people who relied on the OGL 1.0a have a good argument under contract law that Wizards of the Coast cannot unilaterally withdraw the value that it offered under the contract."I think it's potentially important what "cannot" means here. Does it mean the license cannot be taken away? Or does it simply mean: if the license is taken away, WOTC is in breach (for which the normal remedy would be damages). For a normal non-IP license, this is a critical distinction. Say A agrees to let B use A's room in exchange for B paying A some amount of money. A is giving B a license (i.e., permission to use A's property in a particular way). But if A decides to say, no, you can't use my room anymore, A is in breach of the contract (and may owe damages, such as whatever money B already paid), but the license clearly has been revoked: B can't use the room now and if B tries, B is a trespasser.Could the same thing be true here? WOTC says: we're revoking the license. If Walsh and others who have said similar things are right, that's a breach of contract. But even though it's a breach of contract, it might still be true that anyone who goes on and relies on OGL 1.0 anyway might be liable for copyright infringement. The contours of the license and the contours of the contract are different. The other possibility (and I don't have the knowledge or experience to speculate on likelihood) is that given the context, a court would just construe the license itself as irrevocable (or only revocable on the specified grounds).(The other thing I wonder about, re the contract argument, is whether a court really would understand this as an eternal contract--which courts often are not happy to do. If you publish one book in 2002 using the OGL, are you contractually entitled to the license forever? Or is it just for a "reasonable term"?)</blockquote>

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