SRD?

[Mister Andersen]

I personally hate the 5' square as a base metric - its just too large and makes scaling objects to people a pain in the butt as well as introducing the problematic issue of "entering an opponent's square"

[aegis]

Just a short (related?) question :
At the end of WoF in the OGC section, it is said that Chapter 4's full content is considered to be OGC under the restrictions of bla bla bla ... Does that mean that the whole "rules" part of the book can be exchanged/published on a forum freely? This would be an extreme relief for me, as I really don't want my players (actual and potential) to read the fluff of the setting, while they'd certainly enjoy the crunch part of the book. 

[Crafty_Alex]

No. "Open" does not mean "free to give away" or "free from copyright." Product Identity exists for a reason, and is woven throughout most if not all of the World on Fire setting, and Product Identity materials cannot be redistributed via this agreement.

Per 2.0's declaration:

Section 1 b): "(b) “Derivative Material” means copyrighted
material including derivative works and translations (including into other computer
languages), potation, modification, correction, addition, extension, upgrade,
improvement, compilation, abridgment or other form in which an existing work may
be recast, transformed or adapted;"

and OGC declaration:

"USE OF MATERIAL AS OPEN GAME CONTENT: It is the clear and expressed intent of
Alderac Entertainment Group to add all classes, skills, feats, gear, and NPC statistics contained
in this volume to the canon of Open Game Content for free use pursuant to the Open
Game License by future Open Game publishers."

So basically, if you're not using this work as part of a published product or adding to the breadth, depth, or iteration through replication, you're not adhering to the spirit or intent of this agreement. Replication is notably missing from the above statements. Copying and pasting adds nothing, and could land you in copyright violation land.

Note that this is not the case with SRDs, and if we had included an SRD, you could replicate freely. But we haven't - deliberately. We understand the value proposition of our mechanics, which is why we invest time and effort in making them. They are, in large part, why my partners and I make our meager income from Crafty. A publisher using them to enhance his own published work or further the collaborative work of the OGL movement is one thing, but using the OGL as a chance to give your buddies "the good bits" of a book is Not OK in any way, shape or form.

The upshot is, if doing something would look like piracy to the average person, it is not kosher under the OGL. 

[Psion]

Note that this is not the case with SRDs, and if we had included an SRD, you could replicate freely. But we haven't - deliberately. We understand the value proposition of our mechanics, which is why we invest time and effort in making them. They are, in large part, why my partners and I make our meager income from Crafty. A publisher using them to enhance his own published work or further the collaborative work of the OGL movement is one thing, but using the OGL as a chance to give your buddies "the good bits" of a book is Not OK in any way, shape or form.

The upshot is, if doing something would look like piracy to the average person, it is not kosher under the OGL. 

I could quibble with that. If you couldn't do something with a license beyond what you could do without it, then what's the purpose of the license? Copying big chunks of (OGC) text would look a lot like piracy to the average person who doesn't have a clue what the OGL is.

SRDs have no meaning under the OGL; an SRD is basically an electronic version of an existing book(s) that is pre-stripped of non-OGC text to make it easy to copy and paste. But numerous products have legally been made from OGL products that aren't SRDs; it's perfectly within reason. You just need to be careful, especially in cases where publishers have made PI/OGC statements that are essentially meaningless (not that AEG/Crafty is one of them, but I have seen some that basically amount to the same thing as not being promulgated under the license at all.)

[Crafty_Alex]

...and this is why I hate discussing the OGL online.

[Crafty_Pat]

One of the things that very rarely gets mentioned in any discussion of the OGL is that text is still copyrighted even when it's OGC. That's open to lots of interpretations, of course, but the most commonly upheld one is that you can't reuse the text verbatum without the author's permission. We add a notice to reinforce our copyright on the credits page of everything we make for this very reason, and it's also part of why we don't offer an SRD.

In this particular case, and in what we've found to be most cases, folks are only interested in copying and pasting the text for various reasons that would effectively devalue it as a commodity, which is something we as a for-profit company are ethically and financially obligated to oppose. Thus we can't allow even seemingly benign copy and pasting of our mechanics in free venues, and we retain the right to refuse copyright exclusion even for paid products if they act against our business interests.

[Psion]

Let me invert the order of Pat's comments here to better capture what I'm trying to say here. What I'm not trying to do here is:
1) Tell folks interested in getting free copies of books that this is the way to do it. Unless a publisher has released an entire book as OGC (which has happened, but does not describe any Spycraft book), you aren't going to be able to simply copy and paste the entire text of a book. And graphical elements, formatting, and trademarks almost never qualify as OGC.
2) Tell Crafty how they should use the OGL or in any way discourage them from using it; I consider the OGL to be a boon to the gaming community and plenty of publishers have made profit while using it.

What I am trying to do here is understand what Pat and Alex are trying to say and perhaps dispel some confusion.

In this particular case, and in what we've found to be most cases, folks are only interested in copying and pasting the text for various reasons that would effectively devalue it as a commodity, which is something we as a for-profit company are ethically and financially obligated to oppose.

Absolutely and that makes perfect sense. The license gives you tools to limit use of your material, by explicitly defining OGC and PI.

Beyond that, though, I don't see what you are getting at. As I understand it, if it is contributed as Open Game Content, the means by which it is distributed is governed only by the OGL. In section 2, "No terms may be added to or subtracted from this License except as described by the License itself. No other terms or conditions may be applied to any Open Game Content distributed using this License." There is one publisher who had an OGC statement that basically said, "you can copy this text but not verbatim" (or somesuch). That's not permissible under the license. If you share OGC, you must do so as defined in the license.

One of the things that very rarely gets mentioned in any discussion of the OGL is that text is still copyrighted even when it's OGC. That's open to lots of interpretations, of course, but the most commonly upheld one is that you can't reuse the text verbatum without the author's permission.

Absolutely. But it seems to be that by declaring text as OGC under the OGL, you have licensed the text, which is legally giving permission.

Section 4: "4. Grant and Consideration: In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content."

Section 1(g): ""Use", "Used" or "Using" means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, modify, translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of Open Game Content."

So what am I missing here? Are you simply saying that the user can't copy non-OGC text?

[Crafty_Alex]

Look at my post again. You quote 1 c without pointing to 1 b which defines what a Derivative Work is. The operative phrase is "work." A copy is not a translation, potation, modification, correction, addition, extension, upgrade, improvement, compilation, abridgment, recasting, transformation or adaptation. It is mere duplication with none of the above conditions.

Copyright is a very VERY (intentionally) fuzzy thing with the OGL. Pat and I both, as publishers, are imminently aware of that. Lawyers we know have advised us to remain so.

The spirit of an agreement is, by law, enforceable to a degree. The spirit I point to in my first post is one of contribution and improvement upon works added to the OGL. Can you point to how a duplication is, in any way, an improvement or contribution to this effort?

[Psion]

Look at my post again. You quote 1 c without pointing to 1 b which defines what a Derivative Work is. The operative phrase is "work." A copy is not a translation, potation, modification, correction, addition, extension, upgrade, improvement, compilation, abridgment, recasting, transformation or adaptation. It is mere duplication with none of the above conditions.

You mean its definition of "Derivative Material" in 1(b)?

The only place "Derivative Material" gets referenced in the license is 1(g), which defines "Use": ""Use", "Used" or "Using" means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, modify, translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of Open Game Content."

So under the terms of the license, you are permited to copy, (a bunch of other stuff) AND otherwise created Derivative Material from OGC. Copying of OGC is one right granted by the license.

Copyright is a very VERY (intentionally) fuzzy thing with the OGL. Pat and I both, as publishers, are imminently aware of that. Lawyers we know have advised us to remain so.

Absolutely. Copyright is fuzzy and in many cases you can't know if you are "in the right" per copyright law until you get a court ruling resulting from a dispute. And as Pat has rightly pointed out, the OGL does not in any way relinquish Copyrights. Its a way of granting permissions. It's a license.

I think the OGL exists as much as anything else to make re-use unambiguous.

The spirit of an agreement is, by law, enforceable to a degree. The spirit I point to in my first post is one of contribution and improvement upon works added to the OGL. Can you point to how a duplication is, in any way, an improvement or contribution to this effort?

I don't think it is, but I don't see how this bears on the discussion. Such subjective things as "is this an improvement" are wide open to interpretation and seem to me as if it would be way to slippery to be legally enforceable.

[aegis]

I perfectly imagine that publishing protect material is ... let's say extremely hazardous. I just didn't get exactly the whole signification of the OGC description. 

Then I have just a little remark about WoF, which is just great except for that. The sad thing is, in my opinion, that it scrambles fluff and crunch not specific to WoF's setting at all altogether. I think most part of Chapter 4's rules are sufficiently generic so they could have fit in one or several toolkits. Because right now, I'm confronted to a dilemma. I would like my players to buy WoF because of all the good rules that are presented in it. But I can't just let them have even the slightest sneak peak of the setting or it would ruin my entire campaign! 

My suggestion is, you could just select which rules are not specific to WoF, make one or several toolkits out of it, but still keeping on selling WoF as a whole on the other hand. This way, the GC has both rules and fluff, and the players can have the crunch only. I guess my players wouldn't be the only ones interested in that kind of product. 

[Krensky]

Well, WoF is structured so that players don't really know how much is true or not. Also, the only setting stuff I can think of in Chapter 4 is the faction feats, the master classes, and the sample faction contacts.

If I was running a WoF campaign and was really concerned about Chapter 1 and 2, I'd print out Chapter 4, redact the stuff I wasn't using or didn't want using a marker before giving it to the players.

I did something similar with Chapters 1-3 of SP when I converted my SG-1 game to SC2.0 so we weren't passing my single copy around to six different players and myself. Note that I keep this single printout between sessions, not the players.

As for Alex's question, I can think of two examples. The first is the Unearthed Arcana stuff on www.d20srg.org, and the second is DP9's copying of GoO d20 Mecha into their Mecha Compendium. However, both of those are more then a straight copy and paste. Mongoose's Pocket SRD books are similar. However both DP9 and Mongoose ADDED to the content. DP9 added statistics and some rules to GoO's mecha rules in addition ot re-framing and presenting the text (but still got tsked at for basically copying another company's book), and Mongoose added type setting and organization and linking text to make the SRDs useful as table top references. The Hypertext SRD is also more then a straight copy and paste adding a large amount of organization, correcting the rules to the current errata level, and is essentially the same thing as the Mongoose pocket guides.

I'm not exactly sure what potation means in the context of the license, since my law dictionary doesn't have it and Webster says it has to do with drinking. Since one of the Webster definitions has to do with the portion of drink drunk, it may relate to excerpting material, but I honestly have no clue. Psion, again IANAL, but I think you're getting it backwards since you can copy Derivative Material you have made, but simply copying the original text does not create Derivative Material since it's not part of the definition of that term.

All of this is kind of silly, however, as Crafty has (as is their right) taken a firmer stance on this then other companies choose to (as is their right as well) and is choosing to enforce their rights to the specific text in their books. We should honor that both because we like them and want more stuff and because they might sick their Advocate/Ninja's on us.

[ThunderMonkey]

We should honor that both because we like them and want more stuff and because they might sick their Advocate/Ninja's on us.

Those Advocate/Ninjas will poke you with sharp sticks.

[Krensky]

We should honor that both because we like them and want more stuff and because they might sick their Advocate/Ninja's on us.

Those Advocate/Ninjas will poke you with sharp sticks.

And paper cut you with injunctions.

[Crafty_Pat]

I should point out that we'd be fine with you setting up a private gaming area for your group where you distributed what you feel is appropriate. At that point, so long as the general public couldn't access the material, it's no different than you handing out photocopies at your table.

[aegis]

I should point out that we'd be fine with you setting up a private gaming area for your group where you distributed what you feel is appropriate. At that point, so long as the general public couldn't access the material, it's no different than you handing out photocopies at your table.

Yop, I know that, as we talked about the same issue concerning the core rulebook some time ago. As a matter of fact, I cut Chapter 4 out of the pdf and gave it to my players. But it would be of better interest to you if they'd buy it instead of borrowing it from me. As for other toolkits, I don't lend them mine, they buy them if they want to use new options (the Soldier has bought This Is My Rifle, the Martial Artist Practice Makes Perfect and the Fixer Fragile Minds, the Hacker and the Mask seem to have enough trouble with the core rules for now). My only ... interrogation actually (not really concern) is why are there so many new generic rules in an otherwise clearly setting-oriented book? I don't complain actually, I'm doing just fine with my little pdf-cutting and such, I'm just curious.