I was just going back and looking at an archive of old usenet posts, from rec.games.frp.dnd from back in 1995. T$R, as they were known then, had shut down all ftp sites that had anything related to dnd on them. greyhawk.stanford.edu was the main one. a lot of people lost a lot of homebrew stuff. i was in lawschool at the time and thought i had some small clue about copyright law and fair use. the flame wars and nasty posts were fierce. i had my part in it, and was in retrospect somewhat of a beligerent ass. sean k reynolds had recently come online as the new online rep to replace that other beligerant ass who was their first rep (i forget his name). sean calmed down things a lot. anyhow, this is a post i made on sept 20, 1995.
I WROTE:
I do respect your property rights, and agree that you have most of the rights you claim. The net is not accessed by about 95% of the American population. There is no way in which the net can be the instrument through which the entire gaming community gains rights to use your trademarked system and the terms associated with it.
(2008 comment: ok, so stop laughing, that was 1995. i dont think AOL even had full net access back then)
SEAN RESPONDED:
However, if a thousand people on the net get their foot in the door by using TSR property w/o permission, it's not that hard for another game company to push it open the rest of the way and claim that TSR has not defended its exclusive rights to its property. "Butm your honor, we have here a thousand pieces of similiar game materials evidence which TSR did nothing to try and stop the distribution of...."
I RESPONDED:
Here is my soultion to the situation:
You can _expressly_ give people on the net permission to use specified trademarks and other intellectual property on condition that they never seek to make money off it by sale to someone like Steve
Jackson, etc..
You can limit the rights strictly to publication on the internet via email, gopher, ftp, and www. Any other publication would be a violation of trademarks, etc..
You could also limit the products developed thereby as strictly not for sale in any way to anyone but T$R.. That way anyone who decides to sell roleplaying goods with your trademarks via the net will have no right to. By expressly sharing your rights, you still retain control over them. They are not taken from you. It does not open up the door for other companies, since you limit the rights as you share them.
This seems fair, since as you said, the net dnd community is small and so would pose no threat to you business-wise. If the only thing you are worried about is opening up the door to future takings of your
rights, this proposal would seem to limit it.
This has precedent in the shareware area. Look what ID Games did with Doom. Look what's going on with Netscape. It is a viable money-making strategy, so can be defended in court as not a giving up of rights, but as a development scheme to expand the business. In a sense, you're giving us a license to distribute and develop new products for T$R, as long as distribution was limited solely to the net, and we couldn't make $ off of what is developed here, unless we sold to you. The only ones who would be able to make money off it would
be you guys, if you worded the statement right.
END COPY AND PASTE
so, in retrospect, while it is not the ogl or gsl, if i remember correctly it was the first time that someone proposed the idea of licensing the rights to use certain intellectual property so that T$R's rights were protected and we could all make up what we wanted and post them to the internet.
so basically anyone who made money off of the ogl or gsl since then owes me a piece of whatever money they made, since T$R/Wizards/Hasbro obviously based them on my idea in 1995. mongoose, necromancer, paizo, i'm coming after you!
joe.
I WROTE:
I do respect your property rights, and agree that you have most of the rights you claim. The net is not accessed by about 95% of the American population. There is no way in which the net can be the instrument through which the entire gaming community gains rights to use your trademarked system and the terms associated with it.
(2008 comment: ok, so stop laughing, that was 1995. i dont think AOL even had full net access back then)
SEAN RESPONDED:
However, if a thousand people on the net get their foot in the door by using TSR property w/o permission, it's not that hard for another game company to push it open the rest of the way and claim that TSR has not defended its exclusive rights to its property. "Butm your honor, we have here a thousand pieces of similiar game materials evidence which TSR did nothing to try and stop the distribution of...."
I RESPONDED:
Here is my soultion to the situation:
You can _expressly_ give people on the net permission to use specified trademarks and other intellectual property on condition that they never seek to make money off it by sale to someone like Steve
Jackson, etc..
You can limit the rights strictly to publication on the internet via email, gopher, ftp, and www. Any other publication would be a violation of trademarks, etc..
You could also limit the products developed thereby as strictly not for sale in any way to anyone but T$R.. That way anyone who decides to sell roleplaying goods with your trademarks via the net will have no right to. By expressly sharing your rights, you still retain control over them. They are not taken from you. It does not open up the door for other companies, since you limit the rights as you share them.
This seems fair, since as you said, the net dnd community is small and so would pose no threat to you business-wise. If the only thing you are worried about is opening up the door to future takings of your
rights, this proposal would seem to limit it.
This has precedent in the shareware area. Look what ID Games did with Doom. Look what's going on with Netscape. It is a viable money-making strategy, so can be defended in court as not a giving up of rights, but as a development scheme to expand the business. In a sense, you're giving us a license to distribute and develop new products for T$R, as long as distribution was limited solely to the net, and we couldn't make $ off of what is developed here, unless we sold to you. The only ones who would be able to make money off it would
be you guys, if you worded the statement right.
END COPY AND PASTE
so, in retrospect, while it is not the ogl or gsl, if i remember correctly it was the first time that someone proposed the idea of licensing the rights to use certain intellectual property so that T$R's rights were protected and we could all make up what we wanted and post them to the internet.
so basically anyone who made money off of the ogl or gsl since then owes me a piece of whatever money they made, since T$R/Wizards/Hasbro obviously based them on my idea in 1995. mongoose, necromancer, paizo, i'm coming after you!
joe.
