The Ethics of Sharing Open Content

[eyebeams]

Before hijinks ensued, this came up in a certain earlier thread, but I think it's important enough to bring up again.

What, exactly is the ethical way for an average gamer (not a paid designer) to go about sharing open content? There's a variety of opinions, from "They shouldn't," to "Any way that's legal."

Something in me squirms at the idea of somebody paying for open content that a third party took from somebody else to begin with without the average person being able to disseminate the same content for free. There are plenty of products out right now that compile other people's open content in an attractive package (feat compilations, the SRD, etc). There's nothing wrong with that, but since they didn't create it in the first place what consumers are really paying for is the publisher's organization and layout skills. I don't see anything wrong with legally providing the same service for nothing.

But when it comes to original open content, I'm hesitant to encourage anybody to do the same thing. Yet that's what these third party repackagers are doing. What perogative do they have that ordinary folks don't? Following this train of thought, it looks like there's nothing wrong with doing it at all -- but I sense that this isn't right either.

(Incidentally, "right" and "legal" are not to be considered synonyms for the purposes of this discussion. Many legal things aren't very nice. The reverse is true to, but not especially germaine to this discussion.

As I alluded to in another thread, I think the solution here is to look at a product as a complete entity. This means its not just about the open content, but how it hangs together. So doing an OGL version of exactly the same open content as in a given book is probably stepping on the publisher's toes, but using that content with a distinct form of organization is not.

So all the OGL content of Book X as its own entity is in rather poor taste. But all of the feats in book X along with feats from book Y and Z? Not so bad.

I think another rule to follow might be a rule of vital incompleteness:

Don't include all of the open content from one commercial release necessary to make use of that book as a distinct entity.

The SRD is basically emblematic of this because it doesn't include chargen and level advancement. Similarly, it might be OK to distribute a chunk of a book that can be used for ideas, but not enough so that it is functionally the same as the book as a whole.

This kind of hearkens back to the days when artisans put subtle flaws in their work to track copycats. I'm not 100% sure about these criteria. What to do?

 

[Silveras]

What, exactly is the ethical way for an average gamer (not a paid designer) to go about sharing open content? There's a variety of opinions, from "They shouldn't," to "Any way that's legal."

Because Ethics are very much a personal matter, there are as many answers to that question as there are people interested in answering it.

Even people charged with defining and monitoring the compliance of professional and institutional groups with their own written standards find it hard to agree when there has been an infraction.

All that aside, however, the test for me is often: If my mother would be disappointed to know I did something, it is probably wrong to do it.

 

[eyebeams]

Because Ethics are very much a personal matter, there are as many answers to that question as there are people interested in answering it.

Even people charged with defining and monitoring the compliance of professional and institutional groups with their own written standards find it hard to agree when there has been an infraction.

This isn't really the case. Ethical behavior is just extralegal. In the overwhelming majority of cases though, professional ethics are applied in a pretty cut and dried fashion.

I think it's really a misinterpretation of the puirpose of an open society to let questions lie fallow like this. John Stuart Mill was, for instance, very careful to say that just because some things ought not to be legally defined in a liberal society doesn't mean that one should refrain from coming to a consensus through dialogue.

All the same though, I'm really more interested in discussion vis a vis open content, not the nature of ethical decisions by bthemselves.

 

[der_kluge]

I don't think this is a matter of ethics, it's a matter of community standards, and legal issues.

In the given thread, the individual wanted to compile all the OGC from Unearthed Arcana. Some in that thread (myself included) got that confused with Arcana Unearthed, and then it got weird. But, the intent of what the original individual wanted to do was perfectly legal, assuming UA (that is, the WoTC product) will be going into the SRD. The problem, as I see it, is that he was going to assume that all crunch = OGC, which may not necessarily be true. A publisher can release whatever he wants as OGC, and things that are traditionally OGC are derivitive of the SRD. In fact, by the rules of the license, that has to be the case. But WoTC owns that license, and can make whatever they want to open. They don't have to follow their own rules.

But I don't think that's the intent of your question.

Most publishers agree that to release all the open content from a single source is just in bad form. I suspect it wouldn't really sell very well anyway. Why would anyone want *just* the open content from a book when they could just buy the book and get everything? In fact, the only reason I could think as to why anyone would want that is to try to write other products based on that open content, but if that were the case, publishers are generally happy to provide soft copies of their works to the other publishers to make their content readily available to them. In other words, if I wanted to write derivitive products of say, Grim Tales, I could just ask the publisher for a copy of their work in digital form for easy perusal/searching/whatever because I want to write a series of Grim Tales modules utilizing their content. This is a win/win for publishers. The authors of Grim Tales potentially increase their sales, and get some free advertising out of the agreement, and the module writer gets to use an established, well-liked setting for their module.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Average gamers are likely distributing OC to their group. Publishing of hardcopy is probably Kinko's spiral binding at best and no threat to commercial entities.

E-publishing is the bigger ethical problem. There's no fiscal cost involved in making a PDF from any existing e-document anymore and for those who don't want to type PC hardware is sufficiently quick that 50+ pages can be scanned & OCR'd in an hour or so, more if you skip the OCR and manage it as graphics.

I see the psychological impact of free copies of OGC works on the publishers but my economic outlook is too much Rand and Heinlein to really care about them; they made their choices and should be prepared to live with the consequences. IMO they released the sections as OGC because they are either generous souls or felt that the OGC contribution would generate them goodwill they could turn into additional sales.

A truly generous soul will feel no dismay when something freely given is freely used.

Which means we are only discussing the impact on individuals who were banking on goodwill for personal gain. This isn't a "bad" thing IMO because it amounts to buying sales the same way "free toaster with every purchase" buys sales. The "bad" happens when people get miffed that the "free toaster" is being sold at a profit on Ebay by a garbageman who picked up all the unused toasters.

"That toaster was a gift!" they cry, "Intended to make the lives of my customers better with golden brown toast, not line someone's pockets!"

"Feh" says I, "You're irritated someone found a way to make money from your effort in a way you weren't bright enough to anticipate and it's cutting into your bottom line."

"Well....yeah!" says them.

The answer then is to be quiet about your distress; the more noise you make the fewer of your competitors will be likely burned. Why should you pay for their education?

Change your free-toaster scheme to "free plastic collector's cup" and reduce your vulnerability. Only OGC what you think needs to be OGC. Then expect someone else to use it in a fashion you find personaly, moraly, ethicaly, religiously, and biologicaly offensive so you won't be caught offguard when someone does.

Someone will eventually irritate the OGC publishers in a high-profile way and we will learn just how badly the well can be poisoned. Until then I'd recommend that gamers try to avoid being that irritant (no posting entirely OGC books to usenet; make cheap gamers work for their freebies) to maintain an unfettered flow of OGC for as long as possible.

If you must be blatant to stroke your own ego, target out-of-print lines or publishers who've left d20 publishing. At least then there's a degree of plausible deniability ("What, how can it hurt you when you no longer sell the product?").

 

[dcollins]

But, the intent of what the original individual wanted to do was perfectly legal, assuming UA (that is, the WoTC product) will be going into the SRD. The problem, as I see it, is that he was going to assume that all crunch = OGC, which may not necessarily be true.

You know that on the copyright page of UA itself it already says that all the contents are OGC?

 

[Morrus]

The fact that something is legal doesn't mean that you should do it. There are plenty of perfectly legal things you can do which you shouldn't.

If people get into the habit of exploiting as much OGC as they are legally allowed to, the result is that publishers will stop releasing large sections of OGC. That's detrimental to all, because large sections of OGC mean that you can use the bits you need without exploiting the product as a whole.

Publishers don't release OGC to be generous. The moment doing so starts affecting sales, you can expect to see that OGC disappear. At present, they do so as a combination of 1) being required to [re. stuff derived from the SRD]; and 2) because having others use their content in moderation may benefit them, saleswise. For example, WotC released the SRD in the hopes that it would create a large market of 3rd party publishers supporting their products, and thus drive more sales of the core rules (which, as I understand it, worked; Green Ronin seem to have had some success with other companies supporting their M&M line, and Malhavoc with AU).

 

[der_kluge]

You know that on the copyright page of UA itself it already says that all the contents are OGC?

Really? I've not noticed that. It's not in the SRD, although I do see that they have added some stuff.

If that's true, why was this guy trying to extract "just the OGC" portions of it, if it's entirely OGC?

 

[wingsandsword]

Really? I've not noticed that. It's not in the SRD, although I do see that they have added some stuff.

If that's true, why was this guy trying to extract "just the OGC" portions of it, if it's entirely OGC?

It is not entirely OGC, just most of it. It has a section that clearly states what is and isn't Product Identity, and it has a few PI sections (Githyanki/Githzeriai and Slaad Bloodlines come to mind). A direct text copy of it would be clearly infringing, and as Cergorach proved, it is possible to extract the OGC, but you do need to be careful for PI that could be in there and extracted (like the Star Wars references in the Wound/Vitality section, which is OGC but obviously the SW name is right out).

There is also the world of difference, people assuming that everything that WotC makes OGC goes right in the SRD, it isn't true and they don't have to. Just because WotC didn't release a SRD update didn't mean it was OGC (i.e. the last few pages of MMII and about 95% of UA), but it does mean you have to go to the trouble of extracting the OGC from the PI instead of having a handy computer file (and being careful while you do it).

 

[barsoomcore]

Publishers don't release OGC to be generous. ... At present, they do so as a combination of 1) being required to; and 2) because having others use their content in moderation may benefit them, saleswise.

I also think it's true that nobody really knows yet what the optimal course is, and in fact that the optimal course may be different for each publisher.

But what to do? That's simple. Follow either your conscience or the law, whichever is the MORE restrictive. Don't ask other people to follow YOUR conscience, but do what you can to ensure they follow the law. If the law falls greviously short of what your conscience demands, see about changing the law.