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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5926206" data-attributes="member: 42582">No disagreement from me here!I personally think it's a feat of marketing genius for Paizo to have consistently turned what is a major legal burden for them (namely, the OGL) into a marketing triumph!And I feel a little sorry for WotC being continually hoisted in this petard of its past licensing decision. Time and time again they seem unable to take a trick. And this seems to me to be one of those times - what strikes me as a completely reasonable contractual agreement in the context of freely distributed playtest materials is able to be held against them.I find the whole idea that there is going to be litigation over what people do with these materials among their own playtest groups is laughable in itself. But if there was such litigation, I would be taking a copy of Mearls' statement into court and on that basis arguing waiver, estoppel or some comparable line of defence.I mean, Mearls is clearly in a position to communicate on behalf of WotC in respect of the playtest - my playtest package even included a letter from Mearls to me!It's utterly routine in our economy for people to use contracts to set up rights that they have no intention of enforcing in the vast majority of cases.It's common in other areas also. For example, a public housing estate near my home has a sign at each gate saying that only residents and bona fide visitors may enter. In compelte disregard of that sign I routinely enter the estate, to walk through to the street on the other side, to take my kids to the playground, etc  - I even taught my older daughter to ride her bicycle on the grounds of the estate, because it has long flat paths with no cars.What's the point of the sign? To give the security personnel on the estate the power to move on trespassers they don't like, such as hooligans or drug dealers. They don't want to move on me or my bike-riding daughter. Heck, they probably want us there because we contribute to an atmosphere of normality rather than criminality on the grounds of the estate.Signs in shops about searching your bag serve the same purpose.The point of the OPTA, from WotC's point of view, is to give it the capacity to regulate the playtest should it want to. But it's obvious and ordinary that most of the rights they enjoy under the agreement they don't intend to enforce.That's like asking the owners of private "public" space - say, the landlord of a shopping mall - to just gratuitously relinquish title in that land. Whether or not that would be desirable in some utopian sense (and people have different views that they are forbidden from expressing on ENworld), it's obviously not going to happen. Management reserves the right to refuse entry, to inspect bags, to ask you to move on, etc, etc.The OPTA is no different. It's a private corporation maintaining private ownership and control of the stuff that it has opened up to the public.</blockquote>

Verification