Right, because even though barring the kind of gross abuse that will have us walking for real and not looking back if they actually try it the new OGL gives all the actual protections we want, it's not the old version so you're not having it. Good luck with that.
There is an old lawyer joke: When you have the facts, you pound the facts. When you have the law, you pound the law. When you have nothing, you pound the table.
And there are many ones about lawyers who lied and thought that lies and personal attacks can win argument. Also about lawyers who thought they are immune to the law... to the point where disbarred. But we aren't on a forum of bad lawyer jokes, so I wouldn't think you would have to hear it all.
Sadly, everyone knows that laws and agreement don't speak directly about specific cases. But the fact the law doesn't say I shouldn't murder your family with cyan specifically wouldn't mean I am legally allowed to do so.
"in the determination of his rights and obligations" also isn't about criminal cases... Which is obvious, and once you ignore something obvious and lie, you not only lose credibility. But I know why lawyers usually aren't allowed to lie. But again discussing that isn't important here.
Yes, UDHR usually cannot enforced directly. Even when at its ratification it is signed into the law. While individual states and countries should be protect these rights, those protections vary state to state, country to country. We don't know how these rights are protected, but we know your country ratified this and accepted that they should protect these laws.
Usually, a provision in contract that would limit any access to justice and allow the other party to commit slander is unenforcable or even illegal, depending on jurisdiction. Mostly because it is the responsibility for the country to provide access to the justice system. But when make decision about supporting such behavior or not, universal values like fair trial, equality, etc. are more important than local laws, and as here the argument is about if we should accept the license or refuse to do any business with Wizards based on moral and ethical grounds, I am sure how they handle these human rights and values should be an important deciding factor to anyone who doesn't want to knowingly and willingly support abuse.
You seem to be knowingly and willingly support abuse and claim slippery slope after you seen they have gone past that.
And as I have said that hobbyists even young artists release content under OGL, your claim that it wouldn't apply to them, as they should publish something first shows you ignore known factual details to lie and support this behaviour. You know they already published stuff, continue to publish stuff even if they are young, so what you say about no risk is a false, misleading "legal advice" and a lie. Should we quote jokes about lawyers who have a habbit of doing this?
Law's outlawing murder make it illegal to murder period. There is no need for a distinction. However, if the only law on the books was "it is illegal to kill someone with cyan" it would be legal to kill someone with anything that isn't cyan. That's one of the rules of statutory construction. Some laws do in fact limit crimes to specific occurrences of an activity.
You are right the country ratified it, not WotC. Again rights is about protection from the government not other persons or entities. No where in the UDHR does it reference civil trials. Every time you have cited it, even on other threads it is referencing criminal trials. as I highlighted in your above post when I responded to it the first time. You are continuing to conflate the criminal justice system with the civil justice system. They are not the same and cannot be compared in the ways you are comparing them. The right to a fair trial is a right in criminal matters, not civil matters. You have no right to a fair civil trial. The civil system does it's best to make it fair, but it isn't a matter of rights violations.
You claimed I was the one making assumptions about people earlier, but that's what you are doing. Neither myslef nor Caerwyn_Glyndwr are advocatign for anyone to accept this draft. We have both said multiple times this is a good start, but it needs work and feedback to that effect should be submitted. Caerwyn_Glyndwr is also not ignoring the factual details. The OGL does not apply to fan content such as fan art or the likes. It never has. That has always been under the Creative Commons License. It applies to published content and some other commercial contents, which are not the things children engage in and you know that.
This will be my last response to you as you have begun using ad hominem attacks instead of presenting actual arguments. To end I will reiterate, you have valid criticisms of the OGL 1.2. and you should provide that feedback to WotC when the opportunity is available. They are not rooted in your believe of human rights or the UDRH, but if you feel compelled to include them in your feedback feel free to do so.
It isn't only about criminal concerns, as determination of rights and obligations is a civil matter.
Gonna have to disagree with you there. an individuals rights is a matter of governance. In the U.S. we have the right to free speech. That only protects us from the government restricting our free speech. It does not apply for instance to a dndbeyond mod removing a post for violation of a forum rule. Violations of human rights in the U.S. are filed as civil actions, but can only be filed against the government or individuals in their official governmental capacities. There can then be criminal charges for criminal violations as well, but those require specific criminal codes to be enforced. Even the quote you gave says it applies to criminal charges dude.
Further the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as I stated before, is not binding or enforceable against individuals. It was signed by the member nations of the U.N. and in many ways it isn't even enforceable against them because all the U.N. can do is fine the member nation or kick them out, but it has no means of effectively enforcing such punishments. It's more of a shame them into compliance situation which doesn't always work out. You need look no further than the preamble of the document to understand all of this.
While, unlike your friend, you seem to be civil and somewhat honest...
These declared human rights are universal in their scope. But their goal isn't there to use in a legal action against Hasbro or Wizards. It is there so when it comes to international laws and agreements, we have an agreed upon definition of the human rights that should be universal. But it is up to states and countries to protect these rights. Some of these rights are protected by constitutions, some of them are by amendements to constitutions, some of them are by law... And sometimes this ratified agreement can help to interpret vague laws there.
The constitution only provides binding rules to states about how they should protect those laws. Free speech law and many other laws don't apply to private property simply because you are free to use your rights elsewhere. While these rights are universal when different rights are in conflict states can determine which one is more important. This is why we need plenty of lower level more accurate laws.
So I don't say UDHR directly makes those terms unenforceable. But agreeing to UDHR made USA responsible for maintaining those rights. It mostly tries to do so, so they have their own federal and state laws to support most of these laws, as if they would ignore them, they would have political and diplomatic consequences. So protections in the law that seeks to enforce these articles in various different way exists (in different form) in most jurisdictions simply because these are human rights that are deemed universal.
But these laws are universal in scope and affects companies directly everywhere. These human laws are declared in an universal scope. Why?
If I would say: X violates human rights and is a bad person... for having blue hair... That would be slander and a very bigotted opinion, that would make that statement hateful. If I say: Our countries (and by the extension of us) we agreed on the human rights we should respect and X made a policy that disprespects and violates this part...
And they indeed violate that human right, even if it is not binding them, it is a matter of fact, and true statements can hurt their reputation, etc. These declarations are here for these serious accusations. Also it is there so you can point out to when a government doesn't protect them, and that would be also some factual thing, not only a matter of opinion, etc. These are declarations and definitions.
You really want to take the stand that people's human rights are being violated by a licensing agreement for a tabletop game? Because you don't like the offered terms? The thing is, if you don't like the offered terms you either make a counter-offer- in this case by participating in the survey- or you walk away. You cannot claim that someone making you an offer is a violation of your human rights. There is nothing in the new OGL that interferes with your rights more than in any of the dozen plus terms and conditions you check the box for without reading whenever you join a web forum.
You mean the company that literally created the whole loot box gambling scheme, targeted kids with it, and then patented it, with the very idea of TCGs (Magic the Gathering)?
They pretty clearly stole the idea (for how it's marketed; the patent is on game play) from baseball trading cards.
Nah, I did Baseball cards in grade school, and they didn't have artificial rarity baked into them the same way Magic (or Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!) does. So yeah, on the one hand I wanted the Kirby Puckett cards because he was our teams star, but I didn't care about the Nolan Ryan's I traded for them. But when it came to Magic it was my one Pegasus Mesa (out of $48 worth of packs), that got me a pair of Verdant Force (secondary market $8) to complete one of my decks. And how many (6 for 1 cent) lands did I get in return for my investment?
You mean the company that literally created the whole loot box gambling scheme, targeted kids with it, and then patented it, with the very idea of TCGs (Magic the Gathering)?
They pretty clearly stole the idea (for how it's marketed; the patent is on game play) from baseball trading cards.
Nah, I did Baseball cards in grade school, and they didn't have artificial rarity baked into them the same way Magic (or Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!) does. So yeah, on the one hand I wanted the Kirby Puckett cards because he was our teams star, but I didn't care about the Nolan Ryan's I traded for them. But when it came to Magic it was my one Pegasus Mesa (out of $48 worth of packs), that got me a pair of Verdant Force (secondary market $8) to complete one of my decks. And how many (6 for 1 cent) lands did I get in return for my investment?
And now we have people trying to present buying trading cards as some weird combination of gambling and commodities trading. Probably time for me to turn in for the night.
You really want to take the stand that people's human rights are being violated by a licensing agreement for a tabletop game? Because you don't like the offered terms? The thing is, if you don't like the offered terms you either make a counter-offer- in this case by participating in the survey- or you walk away. You cannot claim that someone making you an offer is a violation of your human rights. There is nothing in the new OGL that interferes with your rights more than in any of the dozen plus terms and conditions you check the box for without reading whenever you join a web forum.I mean if the terms are being offered by a de-facto monopoly. A de-facto monopoly built upon a license they are seeking to expunge, even when they themselves have said for decades that it could never be revoked,
I mean if the terms are being offered by a de-facto monopoly. A de-facto monopoly built upon a license they are seeking to expunge, even when they themselves have said for decades that it could never be revoked. Well, I mean, yeah, you can make a legitimate claim that they are using said monopoly and the breaking pervious promises, to violate the human right of their contributors and customers by cutting off revenue streams and potential future expansions of non-DnD OGL games. And that's not even mentioning the curtailing freedom of expression in the name of so called "obscenity", which isn't even subject to review.
The world changes. I'm not that old, but I lived a decent chunk of my life without any internet, any mobile phones. For the longest time, if I wanted to play a videogame, I had to load it into the memory of my computer from a cassette tape.
So the OGL is outdated. It simply isn't enough anymore. It doesn't cover technologies that have emerged since, it doesn't address trends that have arisen since, and it doesn't account for concerns (morality, diversity, and so on) that have become paramount since. Basically, to move on it has to go.
Now we have a written statement (intelligently marked as a draft so all may know) that makes clear that the OGL still covers everything up to the signing of the new 1.2, is still in effect and basically always will be. And that from the signing of the 1.2, that will cover everything from that point forward (and until the next necessary update).
The new 1.2 states in plain language that all the concerns - all the potential draconian measures fans feared it would enable - are not the aim of the update.
This isn't my fight. I'm not a content creator, and I don't use 3rd party content. So maybe it isn't my place to say. Still, I honestly feel it's time to bury the hatchet.
Let me give you an example. I commute to work every day in a car, on the freeway, in rather dense traffic. Drivers are crap at driving. Not all equally crap, but everyone is at least slightly crap - including me, of course. Sometimes, someone will do something outrageous in traffic. Me, personally, I get ... let's use the word upset. I get upset, and I express my upset via horn, lights and ... hand signals. This is perhaps childish, but it's an expression of a legitimate concern: The other driver has actually put my life at risk to some degree.
However, that ... 'upset' ... can stick with me for a while. I'm not really very forgiving about this one particular thing: The other guys incompetence putting my life or well-being at risk. So I can find myself filled with impotent rage, the rest of the way to work. At this point, it's definitively childish, immature, and worst of all entirely unproductive - in fact, I am now the one putting my life and well-being at risk, because impotent rage isn't really conducive to being focussed on traffic, which is what's keeping me and everyone else safe.
In a similar fashion, I honestly feel the time for righteous wrath has passed in this case. Pressure has forced Hasbro/WoTC to change the language of their license to - propably - be in line with the original intent. The fight is over. As you stand in the aftermath, the shattered and slain remains of the enemy strewn about you haphazard as far as the eye may see, you should revel in your victory. But all thoughts of strife and conflict away, throw down your heavy blade and the burden of war, and turn to the true and good things in life: Settle a plot of land, till the earth, sow and reap and bring home your rich harvest. Raise a family, live in peace to ripe old age, and tell tales of your past great deeds to your grandchildren. And each morning until the last, as the rising sun warms your grizzled face, let this thought comfort you: They tried to cow and bend me, but they could not.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
2. LICENSE. In consideration for your compliance with this license, you may copy, use, modify and distribute Our Licensed Content around the world as part of Your Licensed Works. This license is perpetual (meaning that it has no set end date), non-exclusive (meaning that we may offer others a license to Our Licensed Content or Our Unlicensed Content under any conditions we choose), and irrevocable (meaning that content licensed under this license can never be withdrawn from the license). It also cannot be modified except for the attribution provisions of Section 5 and Section 9(a) regarding notices.
I could be entirely wrong here, but the way this is worded makes it sound like while they couldn't revoke an SRD published under this OGL they could still just revoke the entire OGL later. Am I mistaken? I hope I am, but if not this needs to be addressed. God knows none of us want to be back here when 7th edition comes out slugging it out all over again.
At what point did 'hateful horrible products' ever appear? That sounds more like a strawman argument than anything, not to mention that OGL 1.2 just gives WotC a very big stick to hit 3rd party creators with for any reason whatsoever they please, considering the wording specifically states WotC's judgement is final, without any option for dissent or appeal. Even if you get 30 days to fix the issue, they can just say thati's not good enough and pull the license. That's a massive risk to sign in on as a 3rd party.
If they keep 1.0a, and open up 1.2 for anyone willing to sign in, it would take a lot of the heat out of the entire discussion.
Also, if anybody has a plan to to defraud thousands of people already, an OGL isn't going to stop them anyway.
The fact that hateful content hasn't appeared doesn't mean it won't. It just means they dodged a bullet.
No, it means it has no solid ground to land on. It's a poor 'what if' - argument, that I can see being used to provide WotC with more power to set boundaries on the creativity of others. Furthermore, what Krispy said
Except there is literally a case in court right now about someone attempting to publish racist content in a TTRPG homebrew and the publisher of the TTRPG slapping it down under their license terms. So it is demonstrably a thing that can happen.
If the case is in court, WotC clearly doesn't need the bigger stick that is OGL 1.2. Which only further proves they don't need it, but just want it to exert greater control on who gets to publish.
If the case is in court, WotC clearly doesn't need the bigger stick that is OGL 1.2.
Which only further proves they don't need it, but just want it to exert greater control on who gets to publish.
The NuTSR case is about trademark law -- the case is enabled because NuTSR infringed on their star frontiers trademark, not because it's racist (the racism is relevant for what sorts of damages and injunction they can seek, but couldn't happen if the trademark infringement weren't there). They wouldn't have a similar recourse for someone just using the SRD without the trademark infringement.
Plus ye old Book of Erotic Fantasy from the D20 days.
So you have managed to find TWO (2, for emphasis) examples in as many decades , with the first example having tried and failed because clearly WotC had enough protections in place already. Then the second example being neither horrible nor hateful, and with everybody obviously knowing it was 3rd party.
I assume you will excuse me from finding this quite unconvincing. In fact, I find it to only strenghten the point I made.
If the case is in court, WotC clearly doesn't need the bigger stick that is OGL 1.2.
Which only further proves they don't need it, but just want it to exert greater control on who gets to publish.
The NuTSR case is about trademark law -- the case is enabled because NuTSR infringed on their star frontiers trademark, not because it's racist (the racism is relevant for what sorts of damages and injunction they can seek, but couldn't happen if the trademark infringement weren't there). They wouldn't have a similar recourse for someone just using the SRD without the trademark infringement.
Except in the new OGL they do.
WotC: "Hey, that stuff is harmful, your license is now gone, and you can't appeal this decision. Goodbye."
They can just do this, racism or no racism. IMO, if you want to bar a company for racism, you should go to a judge and have it labeled as such. None of that subjective perception going on.
Right, because even though barring the kind of gross abuse that will have us walking for real and not looking back if they actually try it the new OGL gives all the actual protections we want, it's not the old version so you're not having it. Good luck with that.
The revoking of the OGL 1.0/a is not needed to do any of those "Protections." It is a lie. That can be already can be done without putting this language in an OGL. Nor should it be up to the soul discretion of WotC to determine what is considered harmful or not. There is already such protections in place outside of this. Not a matter of luck, WotC is just straight out lying. The fact they think they can deauthorize 1.0/a in the first place is questionable at best and doing so is going to open them up to several potential litigation. 1.2 OGL "draft" has so many blatant issues, any body would be insane to sign on to that.
I have a question for the wise of the place: If I have a product developed under OGL 1.0a (let's say Pathfinder), can I continue publishing content for that product without using 1.2? That is, can I continue to publish content for that line under OGL 1.0a?
Because if I can't, what does it mean that OGL 1.2 does not affect material released under OGL 1.0a? Of course it affects it, since I cannot continue that line.
The world changes. I'm not that old, but I lived a decent chunk of my life without any internet, any mobile phones. For the longest time, if I wanted to play a videogame, I had to load it into the memory of my computer from a cassette tape.
So the OGL is outdated. It simply isn't enough anymore. It doesn't cover technologies that have emerged since, it doesn't address trends that have arisen since, and it doesn't account for concerns (morality, diversity, and so on) that have become paramount since. Basically, to move on it has to go.
Now we have a written statement (intelligently marked as a draft so all may know) that makes clear that the OGL still covers everything up to the signing of the new 1.2, is still in effect and basically always will be. And that from the signing of the 1.2, that will cover everything from that point forward (and until the next necessary update).
The new 1.2 states in plain language that all the concerns - all the potential draconian measures fans feared it would enable - are not the aim of the update.
This isn't my fight. I'm not a content creator, and I don't use 3rd party content. So maybe it isn't my place to say. Still, I honestly feel it's time to bury the hatchet.
Let me give you an example. I commute to work every day in a car, on the freeway, in rather dense traffic. Drivers are crap at driving. Not all equally crap, but everyone is at least slightly crap - including me, of course. Sometimes, someone will do something outrageous in traffic. Me, personally, I get ... let's use the word upset. I get upset, and I express my upset via horn, lights and ... hand signals. This is perhaps childish, but it's an expression of a legitimate concern: The other driver has actually put my life at risk to some degree.
However, that ... 'upset' ... can stick with me for a while. I'm not really very forgiving about this one particular thing: The other guys incompetence putting my life or well-being at risk. So I can find myself filled with impotent rage, the rest of the way to work. At this point, it's definitively childish, immature, and worst of all entirely unproductive - in fact, I am now the one putting my life and well-being at risk, because impotent rage isn't really conducive to being focussed on traffic, which is what's keeping me and everyone else safe.
In a similar fashion, I honestly feel the time for righteous wrath has passed in this case. Pressure has forced Hasbro/WoTC to change the language of their license to - propably - be in line with the original intent. The fight is over. As you stand in the aftermath, the shattered and slain remains of the enemy strewn about you haphazard as far as the eye may see, you should revel in your victory. But all thoughts of strife and conflict away, throw down your heavy blade and the burden of war, and turn to the true and good things in life: Settle a plot of land, till the earth, sow and reap and bring home your rich harvest. Raise a family, live in peace to ripe old age, and tell tales of your past great deeds to your grandchildren. And each morning until the last, as the rising sun warms your grizzled face, let this thought comfort you: They tried to cow and bend me, but they could not.
Except, the OGL is not outdated. These technologies were around when the OGL was made. The fight has just started, it is far from over. WotC keeps trying to change away from the intent of the of the original OGL, not make it in line. This not a childish outrage as you are making it out to be. This is WotC attacking the very foundation the community was built around in the first place. It is all that community made content that has kept this game going and brought it back. WotC are burning the fields that had grown this game and we are going to have all the less food from it, 3rd party works and such, will be gone. If one stops now, then they have indeed pulled the wool over the eyes and succeeded in bow and bending. This 1.2 is not victory of any sort. It is just as bad and far reaching.
The current draft for OGL even says you cannot challenge their decision about this matter in court. So their decision is final. If you can challenge that provision in the court, and it shows that their clause in OGL was so bad that it was illegal to begin with that don't make it a good clause. It would make their clause a very bad, abusive and highly illegal clause.
I'm not defending the clause as written. As I said I haven't formed an opinion on 1.2 yet cause I haven't had the opportunity to give it a full read. I'm simply addressing what a lot of people are throwing around as legal conclusions that basically equate to the sky is falling we are f*****. There is a lot of fear mongering going on and it's clearly from people that have no desire to have an actual conversation about this. They already have their pitch forks and torches out. I'm not saying you are a member of that group, but even in your response you are using language that shouldn't be thrown around so easily such as abusive and highly illegal. If you are stating your opinion that's fine, but a lot of people in this thread and others are asserting it as hardline legal fact.
If it is drafted in such a manner as to be unenforceable determined by a court, then that is a problem for WotC as much as it is for anyone. A contract clause being unenforceable is not necessarily the same as illegal. It can be, one of the ways a provision in a contract or even an entire contract can be deemed unenforceable is because it is illegal. It could also be deemed as such because it is against public policy or the general conscience of society. It could also be unenforceable because the court determines the parties mistakenly thought they agreed when they actually didn't. The term illegal is largely specific to criminal codes not civil codes that govern contract law. In any of these events WotC is the losing party because they are the ones seeking to enforce that provision. Would it suck to have to fight it and get that win? Sure, but there is never a true guarantee of avoiding litigation in any scenario.
Also, building on this, different judges treat unenforceable terms differently--some might strike the unenforceable portions provision (such as the language denying someone legal recourse to challenge a decision which is the most problematic part of that term) while leaving the rest of the term intact, others might strike the entire term. That should terrify Wizards--they don't want people to challenge their decisions (since racists tend to be super litigious), but they certainly don't want a judge to say "this entire term is unenforceable--you now lose all these enumerated powers to prevent racist content from being in your books).
I would not be surprised if this term changes some after the public review panel.
" That should terrify Wizards--they don't want people to challenge their decisions (since racists tend to be super litigious),( a bigoted thought with no proof) but they certainly don't want a judge to say "this entire term is unenforceable--you now lose all these enumerated powers to prevent racist content from being in your books). Your forgetting. Its not WotC published book but the 3rd parties book. WotC has no right to regulate what gets into someone elses published works.
I am in favor of inclusive content, and against racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, etc... But let's not be innocent. That clause exists to be able to control the content that is published under the OGL 1.2 beyond those parameters. That's why you have to accept his opinion as the supreme judge on those issues. That is why a judge cannot intervene.
It is very easy to find an excuse to say that content is "hateful". And they know it, because they have suffered it.
And finally, say that it will be me as a consumer who will determine if a product is racist or whatever, and I will act accordingly. I don't need moral guardians to tell me.
I have a question for the wise of the place: If I have a product developed under OGL 1.0a (let's say Pathfinder), can I continue publishing content for that product without using 1.2? That is, can I continue to publish content for that line under OGL 1.0a?
Because if I can't, what does it mean that OGL 1.2 does not affect material released under OGL 1.0a? Of course it affects it, since I cannot continue that line.
I hope you understand what I'm asking.
You may continue to publish any old content without ANY changes in content or artwork. As soon as you make a change it MUST fall under all new agreements. Any supplements or updates to the old content will also fall entirely under the new agreements.
OGL 1.0 will no longer apply to anything new. Nothing.
An excerpt from a breakdown of OGL 1.2 by an IP lawyer:
"Section 2 — License. The new OGL is perpetual and non-exclusive. This is fantastic. However, it expressly does not state that it’s royalty-free. This is not fantastic. It also states that it’s only partially irrevocable — Works made under the license will always be under the license, but the license itself can be withdrawn."
People need to see this draft for what it is - Wizards are attempting to save face, but still get what they want in the end. If people accept this and it ends up being finalised, I GUARANTEE that upon the release of OneD&D, they will void this license, their reason being that it does not protect the new version as it only covers SRD 5.1 and not whatever new SRD they release alongside it, and they will then release a completely different OGL that has all of the terms that they actually want to be in there.
Whatever OGL the community accepts needs to be irrevocable and royalty free under any and all circumstances, it needs to explicitly apply to ALL SRD versions for ALL versions of D&D, and they need less power to revoke the license from creators making content that they disagree with. Let people's wallets decide on what 3rd party published content they want in the community, we don't need Wizards to babysit us!
Right, because even though barring the kind of gross abuse that will have us walking for real and not looking back if they actually try it the new OGL gives all the actual protections we want, it's not the old version so you're not having it. Good luck with that.
Law's outlawing murder make it illegal to murder period. There is no need for a distinction. However, if the only law on the books was "it is illegal to kill someone with cyan" it would be legal to kill someone with anything that isn't cyan. That's one of the rules of statutory construction. Some laws do in fact limit crimes to specific occurrences of an activity.
You are right the country ratified it, not WotC. Again rights is about protection from the government not other persons or entities. No where in the UDHR does it reference civil trials. Every time you have cited it, even on other threads it is referencing criminal trials. as I highlighted in your above post when I responded to it the first time. You are continuing to conflate the criminal justice system with the civil justice system. They are not the same and cannot be compared in the ways you are comparing them. The right to a fair trial is a right in criminal matters, not civil matters. You have no right to a fair civil trial. The civil system does it's best to make it fair, but it isn't a matter of rights violations.
You claimed I was the one making assumptions about people earlier, but that's what you are doing. Neither myslef nor Caerwyn_Glyndwr are advocatign for anyone to accept this draft. We have both said multiple times this is a good start, but it needs work and feedback to that effect should be submitted. Caerwyn_Glyndwr is also not ignoring the factual details. The OGL does not apply to fan content such as fan art or the likes. It never has. That has always been under the Creative Commons License. It applies to published content and some other commercial contents, which are not the things children engage in and you know that.
This will be my last response to you as you have begun using ad hominem attacks instead of presenting actual arguments. To end I will reiterate, you have valid criticisms of the OGL 1.2. and you should provide that feedback to WotC when the opportunity is available. They are not rooted in your believe of human rights or the UDRH, but if you feel compelled to include them in your feedback feel free to do so.
You really want to take the stand that people's human rights are being violated by a licensing agreement for a tabletop game? Because you don't like the offered terms? The thing is, if you don't like the offered terms you either make a counter-offer- in this case by participating in the survey- or you walk away. You cannot claim that someone making you an offer is a violation of your human rights. There is nothing in the new OGL that interferes with your rights more than in any of the dozen plus terms and conditions you check the box for without reading whenever you join a web forum.
Nah, I did Baseball cards in grade school, and they didn't have artificial rarity baked into them the same way Magic (or Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!) does. So yeah, on the one hand I wanted the Kirby Puckett cards because he was our teams star, but I didn't care about the Nolan Ryan's I traded for them. But when it came to Magic it was my one Pegasus Mesa (out of $48 worth of packs), that got me a pair of Verdant Force (secondary market $8) to complete one of my decks. And how many (6 for 1 cent) lands did I get in return for my investment?
And now we have people trying to present buying trading cards as some weird combination of gambling and commodities trading. Probably time for me to turn in for the night.
I mean if the terms are being offered by a de-facto monopoly. A de-facto monopoly built upon a license they are seeking to expunge, even when they themselves have said for decades that it could never be revoked. Well, I mean, yeah, you can make a legitimate claim that they are using said monopoly and the breaking pervious promises, to violate the human right of their contributors and customers by cutting off revenue streams and potential future expansions of non-DnD OGL games. And that's not even mentioning the curtailing freedom of expression in the name of so called "obscenity", which isn't even subject to review.
Oh - the only way to win is to not participate.
So, let's go:
The world changes. I'm not that old, but I lived a decent chunk of my life without any internet, any mobile phones. For the longest time, if I wanted to play a videogame, I had to load it into the memory of my computer from a cassette tape.
So the OGL is outdated. It simply isn't enough anymore. It doesn't cover technologies that have emerged since, it doesn't address trends that have arisen since, and it doesn't account for concerns (morality, diversity, and so on) that have become paramount since. Basically, to move on it has to go.
Now we have a written statement (intelligently marked as a draft so all may know) that makes clear that the OGL still covers everything up to the signing of the new 1.2, is still in effect and basically always will be. And that from the signing of the 1.2, that will cover everything from that point forward (and until the next necessary update).
The new 1.2 states in plain language that all the concerns - all the potential draconian measures fans feared it would enable - are not the aim of the update.
This isn't my fight. I'm not a content creator, and I don't use 3rd party content. So maybe it isn't my place to say. Still, I honestly feel it's time to bury the hatchet.
Let me give you an example. I commute to work every day in a car, on the freeway, in rather dense traffic. Drivers are crap at driving. Not all equally crap, but everyone is at least slightly crap - including me, of course. Sometimes, someone will do something outrageous in traffic. Me, personally, I get ... let's use the word upset. I get upset, and I express my upset via horn, lights and ... hand signals. This is perhaps childish, but it's an expression of a legitimate concern: The other driver has actually put my life at risk to some degree.
However, that ... 'upset' ... can stick with me for a while. I'm not really very forgiving about this one particular thing: The other guys incompetence putting my life or well-being at risk. So I can find myself filled with impotent rage, the rest of the way to work. At this point, it's definitively childish, immature, and worst of all entirely unproductive - in fact, I am now the one putting my life and well-being at risk, because impotent rage isn't really conducive to being focussed on traffic, which is what's keeping me and everyone else safe.
In a similar fashion, I honestly feel the time for righteous wrath has passed in this case. Pressure has forced Hasbro/WoTC to change the language of their license to - propably - be in line with the original intent. The fight is over. As you stand in the aftermath, the shattered and slain remains of the enemy strewn about you haphazard as far as the eye may see, you should revel in your victory. But all thoughts of strife and conflict away, throw down your heavy blade and the burden of war, and turn to the true and good things in life: Settle a plot of land, till the earth, sow and reap and bring home your rich harvest. Raise a family, live in peace to ripe old age, and tell tales of your past great deeds to your grandchildren. And each morning until the last, as the rising sun warms your grizzled face, let this thought comfort you: They tried to cow and bend me, but they could not.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Honestly, that's a great deal more romance than I can find in dickering over legalese.
I could be entirely wrong here, but the way this is worded makes it sound like while they couldn't revoke an SRD published under this OGL they could still just revoke the entire OGL later. Am I mistaken? I hope I am, but if not this needs to be addressed. God knows none of us want to be back here when 7th edition comes out slugging it out all over again.
If the case is in court, WotC clearly doesn't need the bigger stick that is OGL 1.2.
Which only further proves they don't need it, but just want it to exert greater control on who gets to publish.
The NuTSR case is about trademark law -- the case is enabled because NuTSR infringed on their star frontiers trademark, not because it's racist (the racism is relevant for what sorts of damages and injunction they can seek, but couldn't happen if the trademark infringement weren't there). They wouldn't have a similar recourse for someone just using the SRD without the trademark infringement.
So you have managed to find TWO (2, for emphasis) examples in as many decades , with the first example having tried and failed because clearly WotC had enough protections in place already. Then the second example being neither horrible nor hateful, and with everybody obviously knowing it was 3rd party.
I assume you will excuse me from finding this quite unconvincing. In fact, I find it to only strenghten the point I made.
Except in the new OGL they do.
WotC: "Hey, that stuff is harmful, your license is now gone, and you can't appeal this decision. Goodbye."
They can just do this, racism or no racism.
IMO, if you want to bar a company for racism, you should go to a judge and have it labeled as such. None of that subjective perception going on.
The revoking of the OGL 1.0/a is not needed to do any of those "Protections." It is a lie. That can be already can be done without putting this language in an OGL. Nor should it be up to the soul discretion of WotC to determine what is considered harmful or not. There is already such protections in place outside of this. Not a matter of luck, WotC is just straight out lying. The fact they think they can deauthorize 1.0/a in the first place is questionable at best and doing so is going to open them up to several potential litigation. 1.2 OGL "draft" has so many blatant issues, any body would be insane to sign on to that.
I have a question for the wise of the place:
If I have a product developed under OGL 1.0a (let's say Pathfinder), can I continue publishing content for that product without using 1.2? That is, can I continue to publish content for that line under OGL 1.0a?
Because if I can't, what does it mean that OGL 1.2 does not affect material released under OGL 1.0a? Of course it affects it, since I cannot continue that line.
I hope you understand what I'm asking.
Except, the OGL is not outdated. These technologies were around when the OGL was made. The fight has just started, it is far from over. WotC keeps trying to change away from the intent of the of the original OGL, not make it in line. This not a childish outrage as you are making it out to be. This is WotC attacking the very foundation the community was built around in the first place. It is all that community made content that has kept this game going and brought it back. WotC are burning the fields that had grown this game and we are going to have all the less food from it, 3rd party works and such, will be gone. If one stops now, then they have indeed pulled the wool over the eyes and succeeded in bow and bending. This 1.2 is not victory of any sort. It is just as bad and far reaching.
" That should terrify Wizards--they don't want people to challenge their decisions (since racists tend to be super litigious),( a bigoted thought with no proof) but they certainly don't want a judge to say "this entire term is unenforceable--you now lose all these enumerated powers to prevent racist content from being in your books).
Your forgetting. Its not WotC published book but the 3rd parties book. WotC has no right to regulate what gets into someone elses published works.
I am in favor of inclusive content, and against racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, etc...
But let's not be innocent. That clause exists to be able to control the content that is published under the OGL 1.2 beyond those parameters. That's why you have to accept his opinion as the supreme judge on those issues. That is why a judge cannot intervene.
It is very easy to find an excuse to say that content is "hateful". And they know it, because they have suffered it.
And finally, say that it will be me as a consumer who will determine if a product is racist or whatever, and I will act accordingly. I don't need moral guardians to tell me.
You may continue to publish any old content without ANY changes in content or artwork.
As soon as you make a change it MUST fall under all new agreements.
Any supplements or updates to the old content will also fall entirely under the new agreements.
OGL 1.0 will no longer apply to anything new. Nothing.
An excerpt from a breakdown of OGL 1.2 by an IP lawyer:
"Section 2 — License. The new OGL is perpetual and non-exclusive. This is fantastic. However, it expressly does not state that it’s royalty-free. This is not fantastic. It also states that it’s only partially irrevocable — Works made under the license will always be under the license, but the license itself can be withdrawn."
People need to see this draft for what it is - Wizards are attempting to save face, but still get what they want in the end. If people accept this and it ends up being finalised, I GUARANTEE that upon the release of OneD&D, they will void this license, their reason being that it does not protect the new version as it only covers SRD 5.1 and not whatever new SRD they release alongside it, and they will then release a completely different OGL that has all of the terms that they actually want to be in there.
Whatever OGL the community accepts needs to be irrevocable and royalty free under any and all circumstances, it needs to explicitly apply to ALL SRD versions for ALL versions of D&D, and they need less power to revoke the license from creators making content that they disagree with. Let people's wallets decide on what 3rd party published content they want in the community, we don't need Wizards to babysit us!