resistor said:
I'm a little surprised at some of the fair use discussion going on here. In the filesharing world, it is a generally accepted fair use that distributing copies of a work between two people who already own it is not illegal.
Right, the precendent set by a group of people for the most part knowingly breaking the law defines legality. My understanding of copyright law (and I'm not a lawyer) is that it's pretty explicit - you may not duplicate and distribute something you do not own the rights to under any circumstances besides Fair Use. The question is whether or not this constitutes Fair Use... and I would most definitely say no. After all, all the formatting is property of WotC as well, since it's their work. Therefore, scanning it in and distributing only the OGL parts is still an infringement. If you typed it all out yourself, then it wouldn't be.
The argument runs something like this: when you buy a copy of a book/movie/song, you are actually purchasing two separate things. 1) a physical copy of the book/movie/song and 2) a license to use that book/movie/song.
Whoa there. Hold the horses. Point 2 is absolutely 100% wrong. The owner of the property owns the rights. The buyer does not. You can't buy a CD, and then use a song from it in a movie you make. That's copyright infringement. It's the same for fan fiction - fan fiction is a violation of the derivative works clause of copyright law, and thus illegal. That's why when you make a movie, or TV show, or any other publically spread work (outside of Fair Use), you need to acquire the rights to them.
Furthermore, just because the owner of the property doesn't contest the use doesn't mean he loses that right, until the copyright lapses.
I suggest you look up the 9th Circuit Ruling in MGM vs. Grokster. The judge affirms that in light of the history of fair-use, peer-to-peer networks are "capable of substantial or commercially significant noninfringing uses." This is the same issue.
No, it isn't at all. Just because something is capable of being used non-illegally doesn't make it's use legal in every case. Otherwise, I could go buy a gun and kill people, and by that argument be protected.
Did you know that you can't play a European DVD on an American DVD player? They DVD makers will try to tell you that you have to buy another copy for an American player because it's illegal to rip your DVD so you can watch it here. They're just blowing smoke, trying to scare people who don't know their fair-use rights.
No, it's actually illegal. The courts have upheld the rights of the movie industry (and gaming industry) to use region encoding. Look into Apex's early history, and what happened when they made a DVD player that bypassed the region encoding.
Just the same way, "No portion of this work other than the material designated as Open Game Content may be reproduced in any form without written permission." is the same kind of smoke. All huff and no puff. And, more importantly, legally unenforcable.
Wrong again. WotC not only has the right to protect their intellectual property, but that right is protected by US Copyright Law. It is
very much legally enforceable, and I'm sure there are a number of distributors of said illegal content that would very much wish it were otherwise.
