I appologize . . .

[HellHound]

I think that pinning the blame on the store is the wrong way to do this. After all, we don't boycott stores because they sold products that violated the OGL in the past, right?

(Look around, many major publishers have sold at least one or two products with an OGL violation)

 

[d20Dwarf]

You could give each publisher a PI MP OC IT y rating.

 

[Zaukrie]

My point is that it is still for sale. And, RPGnow has no inventory costs to recover. At what point should they feel some moral obligation to now remove it from sale?

 

[d20Dwarf]

I think that pinning the blame on the store is the wrong way to do this. After all, we don't boycott stores because they sold products that violated the OGL in the past, right?

Actually it isn't, once they've been alerted to the fact that a product is in gross violation (they can easily verify it themselves after it's been pointed out). It's the same reason someone would boycott PJ Cenny (name changed, clearly) for stocking Lathy Kee clothes after it is revealed that they were made by Guatemalan children in sweatshops.

I did find it disturbing how quick the vendor was to try to distance himself from any responsibility for what he sells.

James, the content of the products you sell defines your store.

 

[jaerdaph]

No lawyer or publisher here, but now that you know that it is clearly an illegal infringement of WOTC property, should it still be on your site for sale?

To be fair, even though it may be obvious to those who have seen the product and commented on it here, it's actually up to WotC to determine this as it is their IP.

 

[rpghost]

No lawyer or publisher here, but now that you know that it is clearly an illegal infringement of WOTC property, should it still be on your site for sale?

I personally don't have the ability/knowledge to make such a call. So am I to bend to the general public who are stating such and are yet not lawers or representitives of WOTC? I already stated that I'd work with a "panel" to help in this regard, but then the vendors would have to provide free copies to this panel. If someone is iffy, they aren't going to do that. So it would require a contract change to build in the right to our vendor agreement to allow us to hand copies to a review panel.

It's all a bunch of mess and not nearly as simple as you make it out to be. It puts us into a position of pissing off a vendor and making legal/judgement calls on something that it is not really our place to do so. I'm not even sure if that's legal for us to do it that way - luckly we have a clause in our contract that allows us to remove product at our whim.

Obviously this product has crossed the line by a mile. I have removed this product as it's very obvious in this case.

Anyway, I again don't understand why in the last 1 hour it's taken me to verify this information and to act on it by removing the product, 3 people have found it nessiary to bash my integrity and the image of the store. Come on guys, I'm only human. Gezz...

James

 

[SilentJay]

To be fair, even though it may be obvious to those who have seen the product and commented on it here, it's actually up to WotC to determine this as it is their IP.

At the same time though, RPGNow has done the right thing and taken the PDF at the first sign on inpropriety.

 

[HellHound]

Actually it isn't, once they've been alerted to the fact that a product is in gross violation (they can easily verify it themselves after it's been pointed out). It's the same reason someone would boycott PJ Cenny (name changed, clearly) for stocking Lathy Kee clothes after it is revealed that they were made by Guatemalan children in sweatshops.

But I think that giving the store a few days to check the validity of the claims and to check to see if the vendor doesn't in fact have license to do these things is not beyond reason, and shouldn't be held against the store.

 

[Ghostwind]

James, the fact that you have taken the step to remove the product shows you are trying to do the right thing. The author should have asked that it be removed immediately once it was clear that he had issues. Instead he chose to leave it up and institute minor fixes as he went (which is a lot like what happened in the recent past with a certain popular "free d20 compliant product" but that is an old discussion). With the amount of product you offer, there is no way you can police it all. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the publisher of the product to make sure he is in complete compliance, not yours.

However, if a complaint from an individual is brought to your attention, it should warrant investigation either from yourself or from someone entrusted to handle such matters. A great deal of violations are usually corrected through a simple email pointing out the problem between publishers. It's only when you get someone (such as in this case of blantant IP misuse) that it becomes necessary to apply a 2 x 4 to get the point across. You did the only thing you should have done once you were aware of the issue, yanking the product pending further review. That is probably the best way to go about it for now...

 

[PosterBoy]

I did find it disturbing how quick the vendor was to try to distance himself from any responsibility for what he sells.

James, the content of the products you sell defines your store.

Hey now, this is is bit strong and not fair.

In James defense, he gets 3-5 new PDFs a day. I know, because I help him out putting the product up.

Do you have any idea how long it would take to make sure every book was OGL compliant? A long time.

I try to look at every book for gross errors. Since the psi stuff is under the OGL (or the gentlemen's agreement), I didn't notice any gross errors in my quick look.

But with that said, there have been many books that have been caught before release that no one hears about. He does a LOT more than the traditional retailers do and it's a harder job since small publishers are often more prone to OGL errors than the bigger print guys.

It's really the job of the open gaming community to report porblems than it's the job of RPGNow to find them. It's RPGNow's job to remove them when it's clear there is a violation. Which they did and have done in the past.