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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 5276702" data-attributes="member: 447">I don't, and shan't pretend to, speak for Morrus, but my own personal take on it is this: copyrighted content that is distributed for free is still copyrighted.In other words, I would posit that while EN Publishing distributes the Player's Guide and Campaign Guide "for free" -- that is, at zero cost to anyone who chooses to obtain a copy -- the copyrighted material therein is not "free to distribute" -- that is, EN Publishing's copyright on it is still in force, and it would violate EN Publishing's copyright to copy and/or distribute the material in another format.In other other words, I don't happen to believe that the existence of a free product equates to permission to copy and distribute copyrighted material within said free product.Now, realistically, because sharing the material with your gaming group is something EN Publishing might want to encourage, I don't personally have a moral problem with placing a portion of the material behind a password (the game mechanical information), even though it's not, strictly speaking, legal.* I can certainly get behind the disclaimer. I can't personally support copying the images, though; they're not needed as player reference information.* In the 3.5/d20 versions, the following is reserved as  Product Identity and is not free to copy even under the OGL:  "the covers, the title and contents page, the illustrations, 'EN  Publishing,' the EN Publishing logo, character and place names, story  elements, and the EN Publishing product line title 'War of the Burning Sky'."* In the 4E versions, the GSL doesn't have any provisions  for the reuse or copying of game-mechanical content from Licensed  Products.* Most importantly, however, neither the OGL nor the GSL cover blogs or Web sites (and the GSL specifically states that a Web site can never be a Licensed Product).Overall, I would think directing your players to EN World so they can download the product themselves is a better way to go.</blockquote>

Verification