Palladium's Online Conversion Policy makes no sense

[Achan hiArusa]

I just read Palladium's no conversions policy (http://www.palladiumbooks.com/conversions.html) and it doesn't make sense. You can post fan works for Palladium games as long as you include:

“Rifts® (or whatever) is a Registered Trademark and copyright of Palladium Books Inc. All rights reserved, worldwide.”

But Siembieda does not want conversions because it could be a violation of the "other guy's" copyrights.

Now, that's all well and good. He respects the copyrights of other holders. But several companies (Steve Jackson, White Wolf, etc.) have the same policies, so if they don't mind and Siembieda doesn't mind, I don't see the problems with online conversions. Also if you include a copy of the OGL, then there isn't any problem at all with WotC. So in the end his reasoning for not allowing conversions falls through when he allows fan works to be posted and the other party allows fan works to be posted.

This so makes me want to make a roleplaying section of my (very out of date) website with a section of Palladium Conversions which just has CRC data on its Beta and Alpha decay products of its radioisotopes.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, in some cases, there can be trouble with the OGL. Because very few people use it correctly. You essentially have to rely on everyone knowing what they are doing.

Say someone converted some Palladium stuff to d20, and made something like a "Juicer " or "Glitterboy" Class. What if someone then picked it up and put in a netbook of d20 classes. And then a company decided to print a big book of classes and included the Juicer in it.

Palladium would be able to sue that latter company, even though they didn't realize they were using someone else's IP. And the company being sued could then sue the original person (or someone else down the chain) for doing the OGL wrong and it could potentially be a big mess.

You might say that would never happen. But Mongoose did something similar with Fading Suns - they took the Noble Class from Fading Suns d20 (some text verbatim) and used it in Conan d20 but didn't credit Hollistic (the FS company) or Fading Suns d20 in the OGL. Now if someone uses that class and only uses the Conan OGL, Holistic could sue someone for copyright infringement. Holistic won't, but they could.

Palladium doesn't want to be put ina position like that, I think. Which is a bit paranoid (and he apparently confuses trademarks with copyrights, you can't use a copyright for not defending it if fans infringe, otherwise StarTrek would have been gone long ago, for the Star Trek fan fic), but somewhat understandable.

OTOH, they are also a lawyer happy company, and tend to assume every other company is. But in reality, most other companies don't care, even if it is copyright infringement, as long as people arne't making money off of it, they don't see it as worth their time.

 

[Caspian]

Yeah but mind you from what I saw back when I was in that community is that they only went after fans, like just guys on the internet. I never really saw them go up against another company.



Jonathan

 

[Krieg]

That is because fans typically don't have the wherewithall to fight Palladium.

They can't bully other companies.

 

[jester47]

It will be really funny when the fan is some smart wrich guy with an army of lawyers at his disposal and actually uses everything right.

I will LMAO that day. In fact it makes me want to be a smart rich guy with an army of layers at my disposal.

Hrm, maybe I can get Bill Gates to start playing rifts and suggest he do a conversion...

Nah!!!

Aaron.

 

[Aristotle]

Yeah but mind you from what I saw back when I was in that community is that they only went after fans, like just guys on the internet. I never really saw them go up against another company.

Maybe we're talking in different contexts, but Palladium did go after Wizards of the Coast pretty severely back before Wizards was really on the map (before M:tG). I'm fairly certain the dispute was over generic conversion rules in the Primal Order books.

 

[maddman75]

I just read Palladium's no conversions policy (http://www.palladiumbooks.com/conversions.html) and it doesn't make sense. You can post fan works for Palladium games as long as you include:

From what I understand, Kevin Siembieda is an egomaniac who considers someone using his rather interesting settings with anything but his hopelessly broken and dated system to be a crime against nature and reason.

Does it make sense now?