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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orcus" data-source="post: 1125021" data-attributes="member: 1254">There are lots of interesting variations of mis-designating OGC. The situation you present is one of the easier ones.If I understand correctly, your issue is that Monte has failed to designate some content as open that you believe the license requires to be open (because it was derived from open game content).I dont want to get into whether or not you are right. For purposes of this discussion, lets say you are.The question now is, what can be done with that content that is not designated as open but that you believe (or, in this case, that we presume to be) should be open.The first issue is who can complain? The answer is only WotC. If a publisher has failed to properly designate open content you (a third party) cant contact them and get them to cure it. Well, you can, but they dont have to. Maybe they will realize they made a boo boo and issue some errata to their designation or something. But only WotC can take legal action against them.The second issue is can you safely use the content that is not designated as open but that you believe should be open? This gets trickier. If you do and the initial publisher believes that it was properly not open content, that publisher will contact you and notify you of a violation of the OGL and will most likely cc WotC. You can then cure or complain that the content should have been open and let the courts decide the matter. Because of this risk, we have come to call such OGC "polluted," referring to either poorly defined OGC or, in this case, OGC that you believe should be OGC but that is not declared as such. Generally, you should avoid touching polluted OGC.Please remember, I am not coming to any conclusion about whether or not the content in question here is or is not properly designated. I am just presuming it is not for the sake of explanation.The best approach is to contact the initial publisher and say:"I was reading product X. I was hoping to use the following OGC: [detail the OGC]. But I noticed in your designation that it was not designated as OGC. I thought perhaps this is an oversigth on your part that you might correct by an amended designation. If so, please let me know so that I can use the OGC since I really like it. I will of course credit your section 15 properly in my section 15. If, on the other hand, you believe that content is not OGC would it be possible for you to grant me permission to use that content in my upcoming work [detail work]. I would of course indicate that such content is used by specific permission and is not OGC."The real issue arises when someone erroneously opens content that should really be closed (ie: reuses someones closed content but designates that as open content). This is a killer. My interpretation is that erroneous opening of content is never valid. That means you better make damn sure when you are reusing content that someone themself is reusing. You should always go to the original source of the content.Clark</blockquote>

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