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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 3390104" data-attributes="member: 9225">Actually, this is what is says about the business practices:A nonprofit organization by the name of the Camarilla (not to be confused with the current club) took money for services it advertised and didn't provide, then attempted to block White Wolf's use of their own intellectual property by registering ownership of the name "Camarilla" in Utah and beginning court proceedings against the company. The NPO Camarilla was willing to destroy the Vampire IP for the sake of running its own organization. In other words, the group purporting to be the official Vampire: The Masquerade fan club tried to block the production, sales and promotion of Vampire products.This all happened because White Wolf behaved in exactly the opposite fashion you are asserting. The company assumed good faith and avoided resorting to the law, and a group of their fans responded by trying to wreck company operations and claim ownership of one of its trademarks. And to follow up, the Camarilla also asserted ownership of its MET variant.White Wolf won in the end (the NPO didn't have enough money to have its bluff called), but there were multiple instances of fallout. One of these was the attempted licensing agreement, which was designed to avoid anything like this from ever happening again. You can also thank the Utah NPO for curtailed releases from the Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade and Changeling, as the litigation cost WW a non-trivial sum.The license was certainly a blunder, but then again, the fanbase is technically in a worse legal position without it. The friends you are afraid would theoretically have to pay money but practically never would are now theoretically subject to severe civil penalties if they end up with any profit -- even the "beer and chips for the ST crew" kind. So what this boils down to is much sound and fury about a bad idea that would have had no effect on the majority of its opponents.Actually, it would have had one effect: Anybody who paid would get all of the bennies of WW's fan membership, including 20% off all products, without being required to participate in its LARP network. Oh, the oppression! The horrible, horrible oppression!</blockquote>

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