New NWN EULA and a concern

[ForceUser]

From the EULA:

5. Infogrames' and BioWare's Use of Variations. If you Distribute, or permit others to Distribute, your Variations, you hereby grant back to Infogrames and BioWare an irrevocable royalty-free right to use and distribute such Variations by any means, and to make such modifications thereto as Infogrames and/or BioWare deem are necessary to package, combine, and otherwise distribute such Variations. If you do not wish to grant these rights to Infogrames and BioWare, you must not Distribute your Variations (although you may Serve your Modules). Infogrames and BioWare will make a reasonable effort to provide credit to you in the event it uses or distributes your Variations, but you acknowledge that identifying you and/or other Variation creators may be difficult, and any failure by Infogrames and/or BioWare to provide credit to any person shall not be a breach of this License and shall not limit Infogrames' or BioWare's rights to use and distribute any Variation.

Wow. What this is telling me is if you make your own campaign modules, The Land of Exlar, and make it available for download, Bioware can use any The Land of Exlar content in one of their products without your permission or express consent. They can make money from your hard work without giving you anything. Am I interpreting this correctly?

 

[Gladimir]

Sounds about right...

Yes. It sounds like you have it right.

As I have suggested on Mortality.Net, it is best to serve your modules persistently or host DM sessions rather than distribute modules to end-users.

 

[Henry]

From the EULA:

Wow. What this is telling me is if you make your own campaign modules, The Land of Exlar, and make it available for download, Bioware can use any The Land of Exlar content in one of their products without your permission or express consent. They can make money from your hard work without giving you anything. Am I interpreting this correctly?

Exactly - because you are building this content using the toolset that is the result of THEIR hard work. Like it or not, your "Exlar" module may appear in a "Best of the Net" Biowar product, and if they CAN credit you with it, they will - but if credit is hard to determine, it won't stop them legally from selling it.

It may not be palatable to you, but you have the essence of it.

It still won't stop people from posting content for others to enjoy. NWN is about having fun, not making money without paying them royalties. If you don't wish your efforts to be used elsewhere, it's best not to contribute.

 

[ForceUser]

Ahh, I'm not trying to be a sourpuss. I can't even imagine the kind of work that went into creating NWN. I was surprised to see such a clause in the EULA; it does change things a bit. Looking at it with an optimistic slant, this is an opportunity for Bioware to credit particularly brilliant module-builders who wouldn't have made money off their product to begin with.

 

[Bagpuss]

Out of curiousity is it even legal to have such a clause in an EULA?

It obviously conflicts with other laws like copyright, would it stand up in court?

 

[Ranger REG]

Well, once you agree to the agreement (usually by clicking "Yes"), it is now legally binding. It holds both you and the licensor to the terms of that agreement. The court may favor the agreement because you voluntarily entered into it.

 

[der_kluge]

Like it says, it only applies to things that are - distributed -.

So, if you "serve" your creations and do not "distribute" them, you still maintain all the copyright and ownership. You lose it when you distribute it.

 

[Painfully]

But isn't the whole point of a copyright the right to copy and distribute the work?

 

[Gladimir]

Indeed...

You absolutely have the right to copy and distribute your own work. Creating and distributing an NWN module based on your own work doesn't give Infogrames the right to freely copy and distribute the material the module is based on, but it does give them the right to copy and distribute the NWN module. So, your copyright and intellectual property remains intact.

Now, if you wanted to make your own video game based on your intellectual property, then you would retain all rights to both the paper and the software versions of your work, assuming you were doing your own publishing of both.

But isn't the whole point of a copyright the right to copy and distribute the work?