OGL Section 15 Question

[Mark]

Of course bear in mind, almost no one actually does the OGL correctly, and no one at WOTC (or any 3rd party company) seems to care. Heck, companies still often either omit the SRD itself or their own product in S15. And it's what, 5 years after the OGL came out.

Explain.

 

[Man-thing]

For example:

I was looking at AEG's Mercenaries tonight which has a good deal of open game content in it and in its section 15, there in no copyright information for Mercenaries in it.

It has:

Dungeons
Evil
Undead
Dragons
Monsters
War

listed

but no mercenaries.

I've also seen some companies reuse their own material without citing the earlier reference.

 

[Nellisir]

I was looking at AEG's Mercenaries tonight which has a good deal of open game content in it and in its section 15, there in no copyright information for Mercenaries in it.

AEG, admittedly, is a little weird. They did goof on a number of S.15s, and I believe they continue to do an odd thing in the Rokugan accessories where they place the copyright information for that accessory outside the S.15, in a seperate paragraph. But nowadays, I believe they are the exception, not the rule.

I've also seen some companies reuse their own material without citing the earlier reference.

The OGL governs distribution, modification, and reuse of OGC between parties, not within a single party. It allows one party to use a second party's copyrighted material without obtaining a separate agreement. A company can reuse it's own OGC all it wants, without citing itself, since it owns the material and can essentially grant itself an unlimited right outside of the OGL to reuse said material. They still have to cite outside sources, though.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Because, in all likelyhood, you don't know, particularly if you've never even seen any of the others. If you've never seen any of the source material, you can't know what was used and what was merely included due to the nature of the license. Even if you have seen it, it's often hard to determine what is new, what is copied, and what was modified.

Would it work to send an email to orriginal company saying "Hey, I liked The Biggest Fish In the World, I'd like to include it in the Big Book of Fishes, was it orriginal or taken from another source?"

 

[DragonSword]

Yep, but I doubt a company would want to spend time sending S15 details to every single company that wants to use some of their OGC. Publishers would have no time to spend making decent OGC products, because they would be spending all day every day checking their inboxes and producing new S15s for every individual piece of OGC they've ever made.

 

[HellHound]

Okay, I'm confused. If I want to use "The Biggest Fish in the World That Steals Paper" I need to reference:

The Kid’s Colouring Book ‘o’ Critters - Celebrity Edition 2002 Copyright 2002, Ambient Inc; by Chrystine Robinson, Genevieve Robinson, M Jason Parent

Since its the source I drew the item from.

Are you saying I need to include everything in its section 15? Like this:

Four Color to Fantasy, Copyright 2002, Natural 20 Press
Spycraft, Copyright 2002, Alderac Entertainment Group
Forbidden Kingdoms, Copyright 2002, Other World Creations
Cyberstyle, Copyright 2002, Dark Quest, LLC
The Kid’s Colouring Book ‘o’ Critters Copyright 2002, Ambient Inc; by Chrystine Robinson, Genevieve Robinson, M Jason Parent
The Kid’s Colouring Book ‘o’ Critters - Celebrity Edition 2002 Copyright 2002, Ambient Inc; by Chrystine Robinson, Genevieve Robinson, M Jason Parent

Because if that's the case then shouldn't I also have to reference:

All the Section 15 from the Spycraft book
and all the sections from the books that spycrafts lists.
and so on.

EXACTLY.

And in the case of the Kid's Colouring Book, we made SURE to reference the ENTIRE section 15 of each product we were referencing. Therefore you wouldn't have to hunt down the products we list in our S15, because it already incldues their entire S15.

That's the nature of a viral license like this.

That's NOT a flaw, it is a perfection. It means that attribution remains through multiple generations and incarnations.

The trick to get around it isn't to email me and ask if it is original (it is), but to get me to release the material in a seperate, private release PDF for you that has a section 15 ONLY for the Biggest Fish... And I wouldn't do this, because I *CANNOT* remember what was referenced from what books. In some cases, it was just scanning the books looking for ideas that got them listed in the section 15.

As for problems - yes, they exist.

For example, FEATS by AEG has a TOTALLY hacked Section 15, that is unuseable...

 

[Nellisir]

As for problems - yes, they exist.

For example, FEATS by AEG has a TOTALLY hacked Section 15, that is unuseable...

That's not a problem with the license, though.
If AEG ever releases FEATS as a watermarked pdf, I might someday correct their S.15, albeit only for my sinister purposes.* In the meantime, it's easier to grab what I want out of the other books I have.

Cheers,
Nell.

*Yes, I know I'm suppose to reproduce it exactly as they did. But since it's wrong, what are they really going to do?

 

[Mark]

*Yes, I know I'm suppose to reproduce it exactly as they did. But since it's wrong, what are they really going to do?

Contact the publisher privately at first, then publically if necessary, to get them to fix their section 15. If that doesn't work, you could contact WotC legal in that regard as well as contacting any other companies that are not properly handled within the section 15 of the offending publisher. In the end, it is more likely that it would be easier to produce your own OGC.

 

[HellHound]

The publisher in question has no interest in correcting the flawed S15, and lays the blame squarely at the feet of the author of the work, not themselves.

 

[reanjr]

I did that for some of the THRILLING TALES Advanced Classes. Re-wrote and re-tooled some abilities from other Open Content. I went ahead and credited them in Section 15, for two reasons: One, it's no hassle to do so; and Two, they *did* provide the material that was the inspiration for what I ended up putting in the product, so I figure they deserved the credit.

Would I have been on strong legal footing had I not credited them? Possibly, but who cares? It's a couple of lines of small type on one page. Worth doing just to stay "ethically clean", IMO.

I agree. I can't think of a reason incorrectly crediting someone else would be bad.