OGC Wiki?

[philreed]

Do you think OGC declarations have become MORE or LESS clear since the OGL was introduced?

I think that overall less clear, and more restrictive is the trend -- especially in the past year.

 

[BryonD]

*chuckles* Phil, I honestly think you are taking the wrong approach here..

Try this..

Go ahead and do it, don't talk about it.. Just do it..

*waits 10 days*

The idea dies as people realize the work involved.

This happened with the NPC Wiki thing, people are naturally lazy. As soon as a few of them realized they could just get NPC Designer and never need the place it lost its appeal. One thing you can bank on, people will be lazy and in the end, what little does get done will serve as an a free ad to your work and products.

Exactly.

Stop asking about it and do it.
Of course you need to make certain you met every requirement every step of the way. And IANAL but I really think that flagging stuff as "maybe not open" just isn't going to fly.

 

[BryonD]

Yes, this is allowed. The problem I've encountered is publishers just using OGC without crediting it* or, even worse, making up names for my products and not using the actual names.


* There are actually now products on the ENWorld gamestore that do this. It seriously pisses me off.

Wow!

Now that sucks a lot worse than MIKI talks. Is there nothing you can do about it? I'd imagine it is difficult to get results that are worth the effort. But sheesh.

Is my understanding correct that if you don't use OGC correctly under the OGL then it is in effect as if the OGL does not exist and the content is treated as your IP? (at least pretty close to that).

Does ENWorld gamestore offer any help here? Seems it would be real easy to drop non-compliant product from the list. That should get the publishers attention.

 

[Nellisir]

Yes, this is allowed. The problem I've encountered is publishers just using OGC without crediting it* or, even worse, making up names for my products and not using the actual names.

* There are actually now products on the ENWorld gamestore that do this. It seriously pisses me off.

Wow. That'd piss me off something fierce too. Are the same products sold at RPGNow?

I think that overall less clear, and more restrictive is the trend -- especially in the past year.

Interesting. I was under the opposite impression, but I'm a biased observer. If a company has a history of unclear OGC, or I hear that a product is unclear, I don't buy it. Maybe that's why I'm spending so much less....

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Roudi]

Does ENWorld gamestore offer any help here? Seems it would be real easy to drop non-compliant product from the list. That should get the publishers attention.

According to the OGL, any breach of the license is between the publishers involved, and possibly WotC. None of this is the vendor's business. Quite frankly, none of this SHOULD be the vendor's business, as no vendor ever agreed to be enforcers of the OGL (or even the d20 STL, or any other license, for that matter). Consider the fact that the vendor doesn't have to (and shouldn't have to) review each product for license compliance, and also that any infractions of the license are usually brought up by those being infringed upon. The vendor can only really tell that the situation has been rectified when it hears from the offending publisher. In both cases, the vendor is relying on information in good faith, and has no way of knowing for sure whether the claims made against the offender are valid, or whether the offender has rectified the situation.

So, it is not the responsibility of a vendor website to adjudicate a dispute between two publishers over license issues. It would be an even worse situation if one publisher tries to coerce the vendor into taking action against the other. A licensing dispute is purely between the offender, offendee, their legal representation, and possibly WotC. That is how it should stay.

That said, I was already under the impression that the offender in Phil's case had made steps to rectify the problems.

 

[BryonD]

According to the OGL, any breach of the license is between the publishers involved, and possibly WotC. None of this is the vendor's business. Quite frankly, none of this SHOULD be the vendor's business, as no vendor ever agreed to be enforcers of the OGL (or even the d20 STL, or any other license, for that matter). Consider the fact that the vendor doesn't have to (and shouldn't have to) review each product for license compliance, and also that any infractions of the license are usually brought up by those being infringed upon. The vendor can only really tell that the situation has been rectified when it hears from the offending publisher. In both cases, the vendor is relying on information in good faith, and has no way of knowing for sure whether the claims made against the offender are valid, or whether the offender has rectified the situation.

So, it is not the responsibility of a vendor website to adjudicate a dispute between two publishers over license issues. It would be an even worse situation if one publisher tries to coerce the vendor into taking action against the other. A licensing dispute is purely between the offender, offendee, their legal representation, and possibly WotC. That is how it should stay.

That said, I was already under the impression that the offender in Phil's case had made steps to rectify the problems.

OK, I won't claim to be able to challenge that. Though it seems a bit odd.

But I didn't demand it anyway. It seems to me that with ENWorld position in the community they would want to do this of their own free will.

But that is just my opinion. And I don't claim it to be relevant to any obligation on ENWorld of any sort. Sorry if I seemed to overstep there.

 

[Yair]

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I don't think you're saying that something free is of less intrinsic value than something with a monetary cost; the most valuable piece of OGC is also the one that's been free since the beginning - the SRD.
It's unclear if you mean devalued in a monetary sense (ie, free OGC is stealing from the publishers), or an intrinsic sense (ie, free OGC is crap).

I believe Phil meant the monetary sense. I doubt he meant the works of Shakespeare, say, have no intrinsic value.

They can attempt to cripple OGC, but that has two negatives for a dubious positive. Crippling OGC in an attempt to prevent legal reuse establishes an adversarial relationship with the consumer, and doesn't prevent said reuse. That which is crippled can be uncrippled. Certain items must be OGC. Failure to mark them as such courts legal action, not to mention hypocrisy.

I am afraid I disagree. I do not share your appreciation of informed customers and their importance at all. Sales are and will be based on a customer base that doesn't even know what the OGL is.
Those who become adversarial are a minority in the gaming public that is so small it isn't worth worrying about. I don't purchase Malhavoc products partly due to their crippled OGC, but I don't delude myself it makes a difference.
Copyright law and the OGL are tricky things. If the text is "properly" crippled, I wouldn't boldly try to uncripple it without a lawyer, and even then there are the costs of going to court to bear in mind (even if you are sure you're legally right).
Regarding material that was supposed to be released as OGC but wasn't, that doesn't mean it's OGC. It means the copyright owner can charge the violator, it doesn't mean we can use it as OGC.
While I am confident, for example, that under the OGL certain items in Iron Heroes should have been OGC that weren't, I am not so vain as to trust my judgment over that of Monte Cook that has been living off the OGL for years and devoted a lot of time to discussing it with peers and actual, you know, lawyers.

I have no fear that OGL publishers will stop using the OGL and d20 System. That won't happen. WotC's d20 System license changes are far more threatening in this arena than any OGC Wiki will ever be anyways, and if the "decency act" didn't do it nothing will.
What may happen is that more material will be crippled. I am not even sure if that will happen, but it might.
I don't think there is any trend in OGL declerations. Different companies do it differently, and that is all. But I haven't purchased a lot of products in the last year, I could be wrong.

Does ENWorld gamestore offer any help here? Seems it would be real easy to drop non-compliant product from the list. That should get the publishers attention.

There is an interesting proposal.
I suppose it would be more polite to send an offended email first, and I'm not sure that the hassle is worth it since it isn't likely to produce more sales or contracts.
But the idea of the stores refusing to sell illegal material is interesting. I wonder if a store is liable for the sale of such material? If so, I wonder if a store is liable for the selling of unclearly marked OGC

 

[Yair]

According to the OGL, any breach of the license is between the publishers involved, and possibly WotC. None of this is the vendor's business. Quite frankly, none of this SHOULD be the vendor's business, as no vendor ever agreed to be enforcers of the OGL (or even the d20 STL, or any other license, for that matter). Consider the fact that the vendor doesn't have to (and shouldn't have to) review each product for license compliance, and also that any infractions of the license are usually brought up by those being infringed upon. The vendor can only really tell that the situation has been rectified when it hears from the offending publisher. In both cases, the vendor is relying on information in good faith, and has no way of knowing for sure whether the claims made against the offender are valid, or whether the offender has rectified the situation.

So, it is not the responsibility of a vendor website to adjudicate a dispute between two publishers over license issues. It would be an even worse situation if one publisher tries to coerce the vendor into taking action against the other. A licensing dispute is purely between the offender, offendee, their legal representation, and possibly WotC. That is how it should stay.

That said, I was already under the impression that the offender in Phil's case had made steps to rectify the problems.

What does the OGL has to do with it? It's the copyright violation that matters.
If I wrote "A Thousand Ways To Say Ooops", and publisher A stole it and sold it through vendor V, I'm sure I could sue the publisher for violating my copyright. I am not sure, but I think if I have a strong case I could at least get a cease-and-desist injunction on the sale of the fraudelant good, if not sue the vendor directly and let him roll on the responsibility to whatever his supplier is. (Why should I care to check it out? He's the one selling my property.)
The OGL only enters into whether it's a copyright violation or not, it cannot impose conditions on sale or lighten legal liability of vendors for copyright infringement if such occurs; that's under copyright and law and beyond the contract.

Not that anyone would sue anyone over any of this.

 

[jdrakeh]

Wow. That'd piss me off something fierce too. Are the same products sold at RPGNow?

Not any more.

 

[philreed]

Interesting. I was under the opposite impression, but I'm a biased observer. If a company has a history of unclear OGC, or I hear that a product is unclear, I don't buy it. Maybe that's why I'm spending so much less....

It's important to note that you're an exception to the standard customer. For the most part, customers could care less about OGC in a product.