Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="reanjr" data-source="post: 1679721" data-attributes="member: 20740">The merits of fan-created material doesn't really matter.  What matters is that both of those franchises are fully within their right to squash the fan-created material.  And the fans have no legal or even ethical right to create it in the first place.[edit]: IIRC Disney actually was going through some problems of how to handle this in the near past due to the fact that they would quash derivative pornography but not other derivative works.  By doing so, they were legally approving derivative works and weakening their copyright.  I can't seem to find the story on google.  Looking up something like that is difficult (looking up anything related to pornography other than pornography is difficult).I think you have hit on the point.  It is not worth Wizards time to go after minor offenders like this.  It doesn't mean that they do not want to or that they agree with the author.  It simply is a weighted decision.  The cost of going after this sort of minor infringement doesn't outweigh the benfits.  But this sort of minor infringement that is so rampant is what has led to the current state of affairs where most people don't even understand the copyright laws.  And this leads to even greater offenses.I didn't buy the 3.5 books because any info not covered in the SRD, I can make up myself (or use the 3.0 books for).  If the SRD were not so conveniently referenced on web pages and downloaded RTF documents, I probably would have bought them.  Now I am a collector, so I'll buy pretty much whatever trash Wizards puts out.  I also am not a fan of feats.  But if neither of these were true (and I think I am in the minorty on both of these points), a document like this (a legal one) would easily cause me to pause before looking at those books.I think you are falling into a misconception that people who pirate stuff were only doing it because it was available.  That's a fallacy propogated by all those WaReZ kids.  That usually only holds true for very expensive media (like $3000 3d design suites).  Even then, you often will find professionals who will pirate software that they otherwise would be forced to buy.I am surprised at the audacity of it all, primarily.  On such a site (a leading site with lots of professionals) I would expect a much higher standard.  I am also surprised that the site admins don't care about EN World's culpability in the copyright infringement of its posters (assuming the admins delete or modify posts; I assume they do because I have never seen a blatantly innapropriate post or pic; by doing so, the Messageboard becomes a publication of EN World and is therefore their responsibility to maintain for purposes of libel, copyright, and indecency).By NOT telling the admins about this sort of thing, one actually insulates them legally as they have no obligation to read the posts, but if read or notified about them, they have the responsibility to delete them.</blockquote>

Verification