Ryan Dancey Answers to OGL questions

[I'm A Banana]

I don't find this answer very enlightening, given that the question was specifically about the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license, not CC-Attribution (a.k.a. CC-BY) which you characterized as confusing, and which is not the same as the CC-BY-SA license) or any of Creative Commons's other licenses.

See, sounds like a confusing mess to me! So many different kinds of licenses with different nuances...heck, if RD was confused even in the answering, it would seem that his criticism carries some weight....

 

[Yair]

Yes. Because I think the Creative Commons licenses are a confusing mess.

This is the first time I've seen the CC licenses discredited like this. I'll certainly take it under advisement.

Having re-read the cc-by-sa license, I agree that it's more confusing (and verbose) than the OGL. I'm wondering, though - if you could issue an OGL v2.0a, what changes would you make? You've mentioned wanting to add a section regarding how to use the OGL name itself; anything more?
[My list of suggested changes would probably include a better definition of what "clearly indicate" means in Section 8 (OGC designation), and some way of enhancing the viral nature of OGC and limiting Product Identity designations.)

I find myself in need of a copyright license to comment on the use of OGL. I can't use the OGL for this, as the OGL denies me the use of Product Identity. I also don't want to simply invoke copyright, however. I was thinking of using the cc-by-sa license, but perhaps I'll simply write a simple declaration and suffice myself with that.

 

[Nepenthe]

I think that AEG's Spycraft 2.0 is about the most complete "contemporary world" roleplaying resource in one book imaginable, d20 or no d20.

Couldn't agree more, a brilliant book IMHO as well. I hope the current owner of the IP, Crafty Games, will see the end of their delays soon and manage to squeeze out the updated second printing and the other stuff in the pipeline.

 

[Piratecat]

Chaos Disciple, please do not post in this thread. A thread gets closed because we don't want the topic discussed any longer. Going into a new thread and trying to turn it back to the old subject isn't appropriate.

Please email me if you have any questions. Everyone else, please don't respond to Chaos Disciple's post; well intentioned and polite as it may be, I have zero interest or tolerance in a repeat of the old thread.

Carry on, folks!

 

[Ry]

Creature Collection, 3 Days to Kill, D20 Toolbox, Spycraft 2.0, Ptolus, Star Wars Saga, Testament, A Game of Thrones the outpouring of adventure content from so many publishers

Those are all excellent products, but most of them are fairly closed-content. Do you have a soft spot for any contributions to OGC other than WotC's?

 

[Dragonblade]

Just I have to say I find this discussion fascinating. Thank you, Ryan and Scott for your insights!

When current and former professionals from WotC, and other companies like Ryan, Scott, Monte, Chris Pramas, etc, post in a thread I find it refreshing. For me it helps to ground companies like WotC and make them seem more like a group of like-minded gamers and less of a monolothic corporate entity.

I hope this thread continues and hopefully more WotC vets and current employees will drop by and poke their heads into threads like this.

 

[Yair]

Yet more technical legal questions. I understand if no one wants to answer, and I certainly expect Ryan won't want to wallow in this mess, but it's just that it's apparently a thread to ask questions on the OGL and I'm currently reviewing some such designations. Unfavorably. Which raises some questions. So I apologize for the tediousness in advance.

Can someone designate a term in the public domain as Product Identity? For example, may I claim "Tir Nan Og" (the Celtic "fairyland") as PI?

Can one designate an entire section of the work, say a chapter, as PI? Can he do so if it contains derived game mechanics, e.g. a Save DC? Can he designate the entire work as PI excepting the designated OGC? If so, what's the effect on the derivative work? If I designate an entire chapter as PI, does it mean that no one downstream can copy the entire chapter verbatim (just like someone can say "Tir Nan Aken" without violating the "Tir Nan Og" PI), or that no one can say "The" (as that word is part of the text in the PI chapter)?

I suspect no one can designate whole swaths of text as PI, but can designate places and locations (like the Tir Nan Og as expressed in Slaine), concepts (like Enuch, an imaginary system of Celtic honor), and thematic elements - all this from Section 1e. I also suspect you cannot claim a term in the public domain as PI, but I actually ain't seeing that in the license.

 

[Ranger REG]

Yet more technical legal questions.

Legal questions are best left for the lawyers to answer. We here can only give educated non-legal answers.

Can someone designate a term in the public domain as Product Identity? For example, may I claim "Tir Nan Og" (the Celtic "fairyland") as PI?

Alone, it can't be PI, but if it is accompanied by an author's description/version of the celtic fairyland -- and he designate both term and description as PI -- it could be.

And if you intend to use the author's version of Tir Nan Og, then you would technically be in breach of PI. If you intend to use your own version or descriptive expression of the celtic fairyland, then that's fair game.

 

[RyanD]

Can someone designate a term in the public domain as Product Identity? For example, may I claim "Tir Nan Og" (the Celtic "fairyland") as PI?

Sure they can. Doing so has no effect on anyone's ability to use that term however, as it is in the public domain, and can thus be independently sourced by anyone. Making a PI claim over something that a publisher did not independently create is essentially pointless, but legal.

Can one designate an entire section of the work, say a chapter, as PI?

Sure.

Can he do so if it contains derived game mechanics, e.g. a Save DC?

Yes, although this question leads to my conclusion that you don't really understand the point of Product Identity.

The product identity clause in the OGL exists for 2 reasons:

1: To make ABUNDANTLY CLEAR to any 3rd party user what parts of the work the publisher DOES NOT wish to allow others to use per the "open" concepts embodied in the OGL. it serves as a mechanism for communication, so that misunderstanding can be avoided.

2: It allows closed and open content to be editorially mixed without requiring obfuscating formatting. The PI concept is what allows simple, human readable statements like "Darth Vader has 5 hit points", while keeping what needs to be open ("hit points") legally bounded from what needs to be closed "Darth Vader".

The purpose of the Product Identity clause is not to perfect copyright or trademark interest a publisher might have in a work. The legal system already does that; it's not the OGL's water to carry.

Can he designate the entire work as PI excepting the designated OGC?

Sure.

If so, what's the effect on the derivative work?

You could use the OGC, but not the PI.

If I designate an entire chapter as PI, does it mean that no one downstream can copy the entire chapter verbatim (just like someone can say "Tir Nan Aken" without violating the "Tir Nan Og" PI), or that no one can say "The" (as that word is part of the text in the PI chapter)?

It means that to the extent that the material you designated as Product Identity exists in no form other than that you created yourself (or that you have licensed from some 3rd party who did create it), nobody else can use it without your permission. Since you are not the person who created the word "the", your Product Identity claim has no real-world effect.

Now, lets talk about Conan.

Conan is just a word. Nobody can "own" that word. It existed so long ago that any copyright or trademark claim on it would have long expired. The use of "Conan" as a name cannot be owned. The are hundreds of thousands of "Conans" in the world, in fact, there are probably more fictional characters named "Conan" than there are living human beings. If you claimed "Conan" as Product Identity, your claim would be valid, legal, and pointless. There is no way you can demonstrate that YOUR use of the word "Conan" or the name "Conan" eliminates MY ability to use that name in my works, even if they use OGC provided to me from a source which claims "Conan" as Product Identity. If you sue me, I'll have the unanswerable defense: "I'm not referencing your "Conan", I'm referencing some historical person, or public domain character of that name.

Now, if you had the proper licenses, and if the copyright and or trademark is still valid, it is possible that you might be able to assert a useful Product Identity claim on the term "Conan The Cimmerian". A 3rd party who wanted to negate your PI claim might have a very hard time finding any examples of a public domain Conan who was Cimmerian.

Now let's take this one step further. Instead of a text usage, let's envision a painting.

If the painting is of the Conan character, as portrayed by Ah-nold in the "Conan the Barbarian" movie (or sequels) and you claimed THAT as PI, you'd have a very strong case if anyone attempted to circumvent your claim. The combination of image, name, and character create a "nexus" which is easily separated from the public domain background of generic "Conan".

Imagine that I create a work of fiction, in which I have a character named CONAN. That would be the COmputing Network AdministratioN system who is the hero in my cyperpunk thriller about the brain-scan image of a serial killer loose in cyberspace who is murdering AIs. if I define my Product Identity as "the character CONAN as depicted in this work", I can probably assert a PI claim against you if you use my OGC in a derivative work featuring a digital gumshoe named CONAN.

Product Identity can best be described as a "No Trespassing" sign around content that can be legally protected using other means, not as a kind of IP force field that converts public domain content into closed content by merely wishing it to be so.

Ryan

 

[Mouseferatu]

my cyperpunk thriller about the brain-scan image of a serial killer loose in cyberspace who is murdering AIs.

Not for nothing, Ryan, this is an amazingly cool idea for a novel. Did you just come up with that as an example, or is such a book actually in the works?