[od-discuss] Open Game License 1.0a for approval

[Herb Lainchbury]

I think Frederico's point about licensing instilling the thought that a
work that has copyright protection when it doesn't is important.

We have the same situation with data in general.  This practice of granting
permission to things inappropriately also shows up with publishers granting
permission to things that they aren't sure that they "own".

It might be out of scope for the OD to address the idea that facts have no
copyright protection but I would like to see this addressed somewhere.  I
myself am not 100% clear why licensing is required for something that has
no protection.

The only reason I think it might be useful to think about now is because
we're considering a rewrite so perhaps there is a chance to work something
in to address this.

I think it's still useful for publishers to explicitly state they waive any
rights that might be attributed to them associated with a work which is how
I read CC0 and Pddl type licenses.

I'm not lawyer, but what I think is happening is that by granting a license
to any work, there is an implicit "claim" that the publisher has the right
to publish and grant permission to such works.  Whether these claims are
actually valid is another story, but by waiving any potential rights they
basically say "even if we have rights, we waive them".  The license model
on the other hand says "we claim that we have copyright protection on this
work and we are formally granting you permission to use this work".

>From a consumer perspective, I think the end result is the same. Except for
the fact that it's misleading, consumers can use the work (if they can
figure out what it applies to!).  But from a publisher perspective it seems
risky to claim ownership of works that you don't actually own or have
copyrights in works that you don't actually have.

Herb







On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 1:59 AM, Federico Morando <
federico.morando at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/21/2013 12:09 AM, Rob Myers wrote:
>
>> +1
>>
>> It may be worth putting a note about the non-copyrightability of game
>> rules and/or the overreaching nature of the definition of Open Game
>> Content in the comments.
>>
> -1 on considering the Open Game License as an open license.
>
> Or, at least, I'm very skeptical. In fact, the issue concerning the
> non-copyrightability of game rules "as such" (in the sense that manuals are
> of course copyrightable as the description of a specific rule at a much
> more "micro" level, as soon as ideas and expressions are not merged) is not
> just incidental here. In my opinion, the OGL has been designed in oder to
> instill in the mind of a lot of amateur role playing game authors that "the
> game mechanic [including] the methods, procedures, processes and routines"
> govering a role playing game (let's say, D&D, to be clear) can copyrighted.
>
> Moreover, the clause about the use of Product Identity aims at something
> similar concerning potentially public domains things, such as artifacts,
> creatures, spells, plots.
> But, of course, we can deal with this using the proviso that the OGL is
> only Open when no Product Identity is identified.
>
> Overall, I would not like to endorse this license, even if - technically
> speaking - some readings of the license (i.e., a reading adding "if
> copyrightable" about 10 times...) could lead to an interpretation which is
> in line with the open definition.
>
> To conclude, I do not have strong legal objections to the addition of the
> license the the list of "Conformant but Little Used, Discontinued or
> Deprecated Licenses", but I just wanted to comment on the fact that some
> additional discussion may be appropriate and/or that the proviso about
> Product Identity should be very clear and prominent.
>
> Best,
>
> Federico
>
>
> --
>
> ------------------------------**-----
> Federico MORANDO
> Director of Research and Policy &
> Research Fellow
>
> NEXA Center for Internet & Society
> Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN
> Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24
> 10129 TORINO - ITALY
>
> tel.: +39 011 090 5954
> fax: +39 011 090 7216
> mob: +39 339 7507974
> mail: federico.morando at polito.it
> web: http://nexa.polito.it
>
>
>
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-- 

Herb Lainchbury, CEO, Dynamic Solutions Inc.
250.704.6154
http://www.dynamic-solutions.com
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