New Character Builder from WotC!

[UngainlyTitan]

The data is all their to be mined - adventure information, monster information, etc.

I expect the same rules to apply as they did on Gleemax. They can use any of your ideas that you put out there.

Just so we are clear, I did not give a rats ass then and I do not now. My issues with Gleemax were, the name, the name and I could not nevigate it. It was a mess to navigate and I frequently could not log in.
But I though the underlying idea was quite good.

The big copyright issues are; people with commerical quality material are forfetting their rights to material on such sites. I think there is no way around this as long as the hosting organisation is also publishing similar material. If WoTC allow the users to retain full copyright then they could be subject to law suits where their published material has some similarity with fan material.

It is why a lot of authors do not (or claim not to) visit fanfiction sites.

On the other hand if one is an unknown and capable of creating commercial quality material it could be very worth while to put some of it on such a site.
It will build your reputation much like modding in the pc/console games arena.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It is why a lot of authors do not (or clain not to) visit fanfiction sites.

And why Weird Al absolutely refuses to read or listen to anyone's "brilliant" parody ideas.

He knows as well as we do how litigation-happy we are in this country.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Data Mining is a pretty technical term. It has little do with someone looking through text files manually and trying to understand what you wrote and "repurposing" your ideas. It's about collecting statistical data and trying to identify trends and patterns. Like "There are a lot of Mul Fighters created these days." or "Hey, since the last errata, 65 % of the users are equipping weapons with the vicious enhancement"

 

[avin]

A) Mining doesn't mean read. The time to actually read 'stuff' rather than go 'how many fighters are using tide of iron...click' is exponentially higher.

Doesn't mean, but can be done.

B) Why are you fearmongering without substance?

Why are you blindly trusting Wotc?

C) Where's your fearmongering on Paizo for having exactly the same language on their forums? (Or Apple, or Sony or...)

I'm a DDI subscriber, I'm dming 4E... but if I had to introduce my daughter I'd do it to Paizo, not Wizards. Wotc has a bad habit of misleading and lying.

Now, to be fair, I'm not really concerned about what Wizards is going to do with character's data. I don't think they will steal ideas from it.

Monsters, on the other hand...

 

[JoeGKushner]

And why Weird Al absolutely refuses to read or listen to anyone's "brilliant" parody ideas.

He knows as well as we do how litigation-happy we are in this country.

And this is what I'm saying. I'm not saying WoTC is out to steal your brilliance! But they will do whatever they think they need to in order to protect themselves.

Which is why I'm 100% positive that WoTC will claim ownership overanything you do with the current tools and any tools coming down the line.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

And this is what I'm saying. I'm not saying WoTC is out to steal your brilliance! But they will do whatever they think they need to in order to protect themselves.

Which is why I'm 100% positive that WoTC will claim ownership overanything you do with the current tools and any tools coming down the line.

So let them, if you really have publishable grade material then keep it to yourself but for anything that is not commercial grade then why the hell not. Also there is value is putting commerical grade stuffup there to secure a rep if it is actually successfull enough as a gaming network site.

 

[evilref]

Why are you blindly trusting Wotc?

It's not blind at all.

I've been working in publishing and specifically with copyright issues for years. This is what I do for a job.

I know exactly what would happen if WotC did exercise their claim in the manner the fearmongering is aimed at suggesting and how bad it would be.

Companies go out of their way to try and avoid copyright offences because when they happen they can get very public and very messy.

This is nothing but fearmongering without substantiation. But, given you're questioning it...

I'm a DDI subscriber, I'm dming 4E... but if I had to introduce my daughter I'd do it to Paizo, not Wizards. Wotc has a bad habit of misleading and lying.

Why are you trusting Paizo given the same legal claim is made on their website?

Users posting messages to the site automatically grant Paizo Publishing the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, sublicense, copy and distribute such messages throughout the world in any media.

Or Apple..or Sony...or hundreds of companies. None of which have exercised it in the manner you're suggesting. Because they'd get crucified in court.

 

[evilref]

And this is what I'm saying. I'm not saying WoTC is out to steal your brilliance! But they will do whatever they think they need to in order to protect themselves.

Which is why I'm 100% positive that WoTC will claim ownership overanything you do with the current tools and any tools coming down the line.

1) I highly doubt they'd claim ownership given, in the US for example, there are specific steps in place regarding the transfer of copyright.

A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent.

2) Hundreds if not thousands of companies use the same boilerplate writing (you grant us the right to use...). For three off the top of my head, Sony, Apple and Paizo. To date there is not a single example of one exercising it as anything other than a defence against frivolous law suits.

3) I can claim ownership over everything you write, that doesn't mean it's going to be held up in court. There is no precedent to support the boilerplate text used on websites to actually grant the owner of the forum the right to use your copyright for itself. Quite the opposite given how copyright trends have been going.

4) The boilerplate specifically falls down because many individuals simply cannot grant such a right to anyone else.

5) The negative PR to such would be huge. As in Hasbro-stock affecting huge. Corporations do not like lawsuits they are likely to lose or that have a negative PR attached. Particularly when, in this example, they'd actually have positive PR from, you know, buying the supposed writing (assuming anything is ever put up that's worth publishing...and that it was seen by someone at the company who felt such).

etc. etc. etc.

This is uninformed fearmongering and is no more justifiable than political attack adds

Senator Bob did not deny today that he stole money from the union pension fund.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Basically, I'm in agreement with the above.

While I did say that proof is key, it is equally true that boilerplate is essentially a deterrent, like a small creature puffing itself up to appear larger.

AFAIK, no case in US intellectual property law has ever been decided merely on the strength of a company's boilerplate.

 

[catsclaw227]

It's not clear to me where Microsoft is going with Silverlight. My impression, which could easily be wrong, is that they will support it or a version of it with Windows 7 Phone, "but HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform" according to the guy in charge of their server and tools business.

To be fair, Wizards would have no idea when embarking on this project that Silverlight might soon be dead. Meanwhile, the other major alternative - Flash - has been extremely heavily panned by Apple. Why go with it?

HTML5 is not yet an option. It certainly wasn't 6 months ago.

Silverlight is not dead.

I am not sure if this has been mentioned yet, I didn't read the next 6-7 pages yet, but the quote about their "strategy shift" with regards to Silverlight was taken way out of context.

Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President in the Microsoft Developer Division, and a serious developer himself clarified things here.

Over the last week there has been a lot of confusion/concern about Silverlight that occurred from an interview given at the PDC conference last week. A few days ago Bob Muglia (President of our Server and Tools Division) posted a blog post on the Silverlight Team blog that helped clarify what he said in the interview that caused the controversy. You can read his post here.

Three of the things that he explicitly said in the interview (and which were reported in the article - but unfortunately lost in the public reaction to it) were:

1. Silverlight is very important and strategic to Microsoft.
2. We’re working hard on the next release of Silverlight, and it will continue to be cross-browser and cross-platform, and run on Windows and Mac.
3. Silverlight is a core application development platform for Windows, and it’s the development platform for Windows Phone.

In his blog post he expanded more to discuss some of the core areas we are focusing on with Silverlight going forward:

• Client Apps (both inside and outside the browser) - with a particular emphasis on enterprise business applications
• Apps that run on Devices - Silverlight is now the client programming model for Windows Phone and Windows Embedded (which includes things like TVs)
• Media Solutions – Silverlight will continue to pioneer premium media capabilities and experiences

The "strategy shift" comment he made in the interview was intended to be about us increasing our focus on the above three areas as key scenarios where we think we can really differentiate and add a ton of value with Silverlight. These are not new areas but rather core things we’ve always focused on with Silverlight and are the primary scenarios customers use it for today. You’ll see even more focus on these areas in future Silverlight releases.

Where our strategy has shifted since we first started working on Silverlight is that the number of Internet connected devices out there in the world has increased significantly in the last 2 years (not just with phones, but also with embedded devices like TVs), and trying to get a single implementation of a runtime across all of them is no longer really practical (many of the devices are closed platforms that do not allow extensibility). This is true for any single runtime implementation - whether it is Silverlight, Flash, Java, Cocoa, a specific HTML5 implementation, or something else. If people want to have maximum reach across *all* devices then HTML will provide the broadest reach (this is true with HTML4 today - and will eventually be true with HTML5 in the future). One of the things we as a company are working hard on is making sure we have the best browser and HTML5 implementation on Windows devices through the great work we are doing with IE9.

This by no means should be interpreted as Silverlight not being important. We all know the importance of having the richest possible experiences for key platforms and form-factors, and the value that consumers (both end-users and enterprise) attribute to it. This is not just a true statement for Microsoft platforms - but has obviously been demonstrated by many others as well (Apple being an example). Silverlight is a strategic technology from Microsoft that enables developers to build those, and we think our investments and focus (in particular with the above three areas) provides us with an incredibly compelling and differentiated platform to do so. We’ll be sharing more details about some of the great Silverlight improvements coming in the future soon.