Years after completely ditching the system, WotC makes their move!

[El Mahdi]

We're not buying 4e. Clearly, this is because there is still 3.5e material still floating around. It must be purged.

Lock your doors at night, people. WotC law-ninjas will soon be coming to torch your obsolete deadtree.

Well, I guess this answers the age-old question...

Ninjas do trump Pirates!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Surely there are downloads on EN World that make use of non-SRD 3e material, and I assume 4e material as well.

I wouldn't know yes or no, but my gut feeling is that if the mods found this to be the case, they'd take it down...which is probably what WoC would ask for.

In any event, I think your "there's nothing worth pursuing" is evidence of a lot of assumptions that I, for one, am not willing to make. If WotC decided EN World was cutting into their profits, could Morris afford to defend against WotC? If not, does WotC actually have to win a legal battle to close EN World's virtual doors?

Not so much assumptions as personal observations. I'm not sure of what besides some possible downloads that ENWorld has yet to remove that WotC could point at and say "this cost us money" and initiate a lawsuit.

Whether or not Morrus has the funds to win/survive a WotC suit is something only he could answer.

There is evidence, as linked upthread, that CK had a good relationship with WotC, too. After all, you generally don't recommend people go to a website that you think is causing you problems, do you?

And we have zero idea as to what went on before this time- nothing? A bunch of C&D letters? Prior threats of legal action? We simply don't know.

Nor, again, does your post answer my questions:

(1) Could WotC make the same sort of claim against EN World?

(2) How would you feel about that?

I DID answer that- I've seen nothing here WotC could hang a lawsuit on.

To file a lawsuit, they would have to allege facts supporting their claims if being damaged. With, as I pointed out, nearly all of the speech I've seen here falling into constitutionally protected safe harbors, there's nothing to allege from the forums. Given their history of mod enforcement, ENWorld would win on the merits (or possibly even an outright dismissal) that they did give their best efforts to keep the site infringement free.

So I'm asking you, is there some form of infringement you've seen here go unpunished that you feel could endanger ENWorld? Because I haven't seen any.

As to how would I feel?

Well, given my personal assessment of ENWorld's environment, I'd think WotC would be foolish to go after the site for a variety of reasons, most boiling down to I haven't seen anything they could sue for. They could file the case, no doubt, but I suspect it would be dismissed for lack of alleging facts to support their allegations, case over.

I guess I'm saying that, based in my perceptions of ENWorld, you're asking about a scenario that has less than a 10% chance of occurring.

 

[frankthedm]

If WotC decided EN World was cutting into their profits, could Morris afford to defend against WotC?

And don't forget the question of WOULD Morris defend against WotC?

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

To everyone speculating about timing - remember that we only know the time when CK decided to comply with WotC's request. We have no idea when WotC first approached them. I can easily imagine that WotC first contacted CK months (possibly years) ago with the first complaint, and has been escalating threats or discussion with CK since then. CK may only have taken down content now because the legal threatening (which is very justifyable on WotCs end) got serious, or because discussions on how to keep things legal broke down.

Hmmm, this actually jogs a memory. I vaguely recall that part of CK disappeared several months ago-- the feats pdf, maybe? It's not important, but was it my imagination, or did anyone else also notice this?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yes, as I noted a few pages ago, the base classes index disappeared about 6 months ago. So presumably this has been going on for a little while behind the scenes. Still unlikely to be YEARS, though. More likely (speculation) the issue started around the start of Essentials being announced or released.

 

[Ace]

AFAICT There are two reasons behind the PDF related decisions.

#1 is protecting IP

#2 is "edition channeling" Hasbro/WOTC was counting on an upgrade cycle to drive sales, most of the 3.5 players would move on to 4.0 and thus they'd recapture the old play base and gain some new younger players.

However a mixture of the OGL, global economic woes (the young were particularly hit) PDF warez , a different market (video games hurt TTRPG's) and the jarring edition transition (4.0 is not like older editions all that much) have hurt sales.

There were at least some notes out there suggesting that Pathfinder was selling as well as 4.0 at a times at that is a big big deal

So being a big organization and less than nimble they controlled what they could control, cut off the legal PDFs (for old and new editions) , went after that guys that posted on SCRIBD, went after CK, and took out the old archives (which is also a cost savings measure)

The problem is that none this worked, the warez world has pretty much everything ever in PDF with a few exceptions of obscure direct to PDF releases and very obscure and expensive RPG's.

For those who don't choose to be involved in that, there are plentiful retro-clones for every edition save 2.0 (its being worked on though) and cheap books a plenty. Its even possible to find players ...

As for driving 3.5 to upgrade to 4.0 , well no. The natural 3.5 upgrade is Pathfinder +OGL and essentially everything save some IP related things can or will exists sooner than later anyway.

What happened is a company relied on a business strategy (edition upgrade) that was obsolete with the OGL and as soon as it became fairly easy to scan and download books.

This doesn't mean WOTC won;t make money hand over fist or that D&D won't stay number one. Its just means they no longer have as much leverage and I think thats just fine.

 

[Senko]

Out of curiosity, ignore this question if answering would violate anything, is there anywwhere I can download a zipped/batched/otherwise collected into a single source copy of the old 3.x releases that were free on their website e.g. the pages containing new spells/items for specfic environments or themes, portal discussion, epic progressions for a shapeshifter etc? I had them once but they were corrupted when my computer crashed and I could never bring myself to spend the hours resaving them all.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Yes, as I noted a few pages ago, the base classes index disappeared about 6 months ago.

Ah, I missed where you'd mentioned that. Thanks.

Another question: Has there been an effort to OGL-ize some of the more popular WotC stuff that falls outside the SRD? Is that even possible?

I know a handful of iconic monsters (&/or thematic variants) have been done, but I'm less sure about things like feats and base classes. Such a thing would be a nice supplement to the SRD.

 

[TanisFrey]

Out of curiosity, ignore this question if answering would violate anything, is there anywwhere I can download a zipped/batched/otherwise collected into a single source copy of the old 3.x releases that were free on their website e.g. the pages containing new spells/items for specfic environments or themes, portal discussion, epic progressions for a shapeshifter etc? I had them once but they were corrupted when my computer crashed and I could never bring myself to spend the hours resaving them all.

Google the title you want and become a pirate.

That is, if you think that you can kill WOTC Ninja-lawyers.

 

[Orius]

I'd really like to say Wotc was taking things too far and Goose stepping with the CopyReich Gestapo, but CK's indexes were far beyond Fair Use IMO.

That's why I didn't list it as a source for my new game. I took a look at the stuff and the legality was definitely suspect from what I could tell.

I don't think ENWorld is in any danger. The mods here do an excellent job of policing the site and keeping copyrighted material off the boards. And most of the stuff posted here is discussion (protected), review (protected), how to use RPG products (protected) and homebrew (protected).

Besides, given WHO posts here, I'm sure ENWorld would be shown a lot of courtesy and leeway- meaning time- to self-police if some offending bit DID show up here.

I see no reason for WotC to try to shut down ENWorld. There's good moderation here, and copyrighted material likely would get modded quickly. WotC also has never gone the TSR route and jumped on homebrew rules for copyright infringement, if anything they've put effort into trying to repair the damage TSR did with that. Plus we're in many ways a source of advertisement for them, the front page announces new releases, and the site has always been about providing information about the game.