I hate that 1.0a diehards have unilaterally decided that literally any amount of protection is too much, and only by leaving the door wide open to everything hateful, repulsive, and deplorable can DMs be allowed to keep their God-given right to beat "Other" people to death with a DMG if they want to. It's not like literally everyone who otherwise supports the overall process didn't come right out and say "Yeah, 6f is overtuned and needs to be redone" within, like...an hour of the document dropping or anything. Nah. We just get the same blowhards as always trotting out the same shitty arguments as always that Fantasy without explicit above-the-table exclusionism, discrimination, and hate just isn't Fantasy and if someone wants to beat an "Other" to death with a DMG who the hell is Wizards to stop him?
Would you stop making stuff up? No one is saying that.
They're saying the path to preventing bad content isn't through revoking 1.0a (since they probably can't even if they want to), and that Wizards of the Coast specifically cannot be trusted, since they can't stop obviously lying and transparently pursuing anti-competitive behavior at the expense of the community and TTRPG industry.
Additionally, a good portion of the Free Speech folks are rightfully concerned that if control of the OGL fell into malicious hands - more malicious than WotC's current management, which doesn't seem impossible considering the backsliding of civil rights we've witnessed recently in the US - the same language being touted as protection for vulnerable groups could be used to target vulnerable groups that are considered by religious fanatics (or similar) to be 'immoral' or obscene.
1.0a doesn't have that weakness. It can't be co-opted by bigots down the line to target creators they deem 'undesirable' - 1.2 absolutely could if the wrong people took over at Hasbro/WotC. That is the giant gaping flaw in giving WotC - or anyone - absolute control.
This could all be avoided if WotC just wanted to do a little more actual work.
They can set up an editorial staff and review ALL submitted 3rd party content BEFORE they send a letter to the party authorizing them to use approved WotC logos.
Anything with an illegal logo can be sued by them. Its already in the law of every normal nation. If its on the internet most hosting services will be glad to comply and take down the illegal material. Those who do not can be blocked. Thus its all forced into the dark corners of the web and 90% of the world will NEVER see it.
Take out any way for WotC to publish, republish or sub license any third party content without an additional agreement from said third party. The third party might not want its material licensed to specific parties for what ever reason they have.
Take out the ability to cancel any agreement without legal recourse. Let the third parties go to court if they think WotC canceled the contract without due cause.
WotC can afford hundreds of legal battles. Third party content creators have one chance in court let them have it. In fact let them use their local court so they do not have to fly to Washington just to get it into a court. Have a little trust and heart WotC.
My family owned a few copyrights. We routinely sent out form letter cease and desist letters along with form letter replies they could send back. If they did not reply they went to court. It cost us a stamp. 95% quit the problem activity and those who did not went to court.
Once again, the free speech folks do not get the simple reality that Wizards also has free speech—and that the creator’s free speech is the most important when it comes to a license, because they have the most foundational right when it comes to their own content. Never mind this has been pointed out over and over again to the same people - they will never listen and certainly never learn.
That’s because they fundamentally don’t care about free speech rights - they care about their own speech, Wizards’ foundational speech rights be damned. They don’t care that a licensor has a free speech right to decide how their content is used by the folks they license it to. They don’t care that Wizards is not actually limiting folks’ speech - they’re limiting folks access to Wizards’ speech and Wizards’ branding—they are still free to publish the Racist Guide’s to Racism (comparable with the biggest TTRPG), they just can’t use Wizards’ speech inside their bigotry.
None of that, of course matters to them - they either don’t understand free speech (hard to believe, since all this has been pointed out time and time again to them) or they simply don’t actually care about it.
This could all be avoided if WotC just wanted to do a little more actual work.
They can set up an editorial staff and review ALL submitted 3rd party content BEFORE they send a letter to the party authorizing them to use approved WotC logos.
That is dramatically more expensive than any gain they'd get from it. The reason things like fan content policies and open licenses exist is because you simply can't do prior review for the kind of content they license.
1.0a doesn't have that weakness. It can't be co-opted by bigots down the line to target creators they deem 'undesirable' - 1.2 absolutely could if the wrong people took over at Hasbro/WotC. That is the giant gaping flaw in giving WotC - or anyone - absolute control.
There are ways to keep any one party from having "absolute control" without leaving the barn door open.
Once again, the free speech folks do not get the simple reality that Wizards also has free speech—and that the creator’s free speech is the most important when it comes to a license, because they have the most foundational right when it comes to their own content. Never mind this has been pointed out over and over again to the same people - they will never listen and certainly never learn.
That’s because they fundamentally don’t care about free speech rights - they care about their own speech, Wizards’ foundational speech rights be damned. They don’t care that a licensor has a free speech right to decide how their content is used by the folks they license it to. They don’t care that Wizards is not actually limiting folks’ speech - they’re limiting folks access to Wizards’ speech and Wizards’ branding—they are still free to publish the Racist Guide’s to Racism (comparable with the biggest TTRPG), they just can’t use Wizards’ speech inside their bigotry.
None of that, of course matters to them - they either don’t understand free speech (hard to believe, since all this has been pointed out time and time again to them) or they simply don’t actually care about it.
Which is a big problem if their next hypothetical CEO decides that 'certain types of people' that aren't in a rock-solid protected class aren't kid or family friendly, and decides to axe content or creators that feature those sorts of people - 1.2 would allow them to cancel the licenses of anyone they wanted, because hey - Wizards free speech!
Except that 1.0a already solved that problem - there's nothing to allow the holder of the license to go after you for arbitrary reasons, and revoke your license. If they decide they don't like your content, they have to go after you some other way - like for violating a trademark, breaking the law, etc. Or, you can just be shut out of the actual distribution and sales process if you're trying to sell hateful content by the rest of the sales and distribution process, which is distributed and not subject to a single bad actor compromising it at any given step of the way.
No one is selling your example 'racists guide to racism' anywhere a normal, reputable person is going to see it.
No one is selling your example 'racists guide to racism' anywhere a normal, reputable person is going to see it.
Oh yes, no one whose first name is an anagram for "Tenser" tried to use a homebrew of a WotC property as a vehicle for his racist hate speech, and is now in court because of it.
No one is selling your example 'racists guide to racism' anywhere a normal, reputable person is going to see it.
Oh yes, no one whose first name is an anagram for "Tenser" tried to use a homebrew of a WotC property as a vehicle for his racist hate speech, and is now in court because of it.
First, no version of the OGL, existing or otherwise, could have prevented that situation. Its not involved, at all - and bad actors can just publish license free to begin with.
Second, that is exactly my point. They found an avenue to go after them. And no reputable store should be going to carry Star Frontiers now that everyone in the world knows its racist trash.
Once again, the free speech folks do not get the simple reality that Wizards also has free speech—and that the creator’s free speech is the most important when it comes to a license, because they have the most foundational right when it comes to their own content. Never mind this has been pointed out over and over again to the same people - they will never listen and certainly never learn.
That’s because they fundamentally don’t care about free speech rights - they care about their own speech, Wizards’ foundational speech rights be damned. They don’t care that a licensor has a free speech right to decide how their content is used by the folks they license it to. They don’t care that Wizards is not actually limiting folks’ speech - they’re limiting folks access to Wizards’ speech and Wizards’ branding—they are still free to publish the Racist Guide’s to Racism (comparable with the biggest TTRPG), they just can’t use Wizards’ speech inside their bigotry.
None of that, of course matters to them - they either don’t understand free speech (hard to believe, since all this has been pointed out time and time again to them) or they simply don’t actually care about it.
Which is a big problem if their next hypothetical CEO decides that 'certain types of people' that aren't in a rock-solid protected class aren't kid or family friendly, and decides to axe content or creators that feature those sorts of people - 1.2 would allow them to cancel the licenses of anyone they wanted, because hey - Wizards free speech!
Yes. That would be a problem. No, it would not be a free speech problem. That’s what you fundamentally don’t understand (along with apparently the limitations of the law under 1.0 or how hypothetical work) - free speech is content neutral, and Wizards has their speech rights regardless of what they publish with those rights. It’s the same reason the ACLU will defend abjectly horrific people’s right to speech. Heck, I’ve done some of that myself in my practice, standing up for speech that I find outright evil because it was necessary to protect the very concept of free speech itself.
So, either you fundamentally don’t respect free speech or you are fundamentally making the wrong argument, using “free speech” to mean something that it decidedly does not mean.
No one is selling your example 'racists guide to racism' anywhere a normal, reputable person is going to see it.
Oh yes, no one whose first name is an anagram for "Tenser" tried to use a homebrew of a WotC property as a vehicle for his racist hate speech, and is now in court because of it.
First, no version of the OGL, existing or otherwise, could have prevented that situation. Its not involved, at all - and bad actors can just publish license free to begin with.
Second, that is exactly my point. They found an avenue to go after them. And no reputable store should be going to carry Star Frontiers now that everyone in the world knows its racist trash.
It's not about prevention, it's about allowing WotC to explicitly divorce themselves from such content when it's produced. Under the old OGL, that is not possible, and as the past couple threads here have aptly demonstrated, plenty of people are willing to believe WotC is willing to do anything and everything, so they understandably would rather not let the court of public opinion sort the issue out.
No one is selling your example 'racists guide to racism' anywhere a normal, reputable person is going to see it.
Oh yes, no one whose first name is an anagram for "Tenser" tried to use a homebrew of a WotC property as a vehicle for his racist hate speech, and is now in court because of it.
First, no version of the OGL, existing or otherwise, could have prevented that situation. Its not involved, at all - and bad actors can just publish license free to begin with.
Second, that is exactly my point. They found an avenue to go after them. And no reputable store should be going to carry Star Frontiers now that everyone in the world knows its racist trash.
It's not about prevention, it's about allowing WotC to explicitly divorce themselves from such content when it's produced. Under the old OGL, that is not possible, and as the past couple threads here have aptly demonstrated, plenty of people are willing to believe WotC is willing to do anything and everything, so they understandably would rather not let the court of public opinion sort the issue out.
There is nothing in the world they can do currently to prevent someone from making a product 'compatible with Dungeons and Dragons' using their game mechanics - OGL or no OGL. Revoking 1.0a does absolutely nothing to give them the power to stop that - 1.2 (or any OGL) doesn't magically change the fact that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, and I've seen reliable sources confirm that the 'compatible with' language is fine by trademark law. They literally cannot 'explicitly divorce' themselves from such things - for better or worse, they're stuck.
What changes is that if legitimate third parties want to work within the rules WotC set, 1.0a protects them from Wizards, and assures them Wizards has relatively little power to arbitrarily cripple their business. 1.2 (and other documents likely to descend from it if they insist on deauthorization) does not offer these protections. It in fact strips rights from people who would choose to use it, and protects Wizards.
OK. You win. The Hateful Conduct exclusion is entirely necessary. Lets implement it, but go a step further, and allow a third party independent body decide what is or isn't in contradiction with the Hateful Conduct exclusion, so it's based upon an impartial review of the circumstances and not subject to Wizards, or any other potentially biased actors interpretation. There's no avenue for misuse.
Now that the major hurdle is overcome, can we retain the rest of the OGL, and refrain from any limitation placed on TP VTT's or compatible rule expansions?
No one is selling your example 'racists guide to racism' anywhere a normal, reputable person is going to see it.
Oh yes, no one whose first name is an anagram for "Tenser" tried to use a homebrew of a WotC property as a vehicle for his racist hate speech, and is now in court because of it.
First, no version of the OGL, existing or otherwise, could have prevented that situation. Its not involved, at all - and bad actors can just publish license free to begin with.
Second, that is exactly my point. They found an avenue to go after them. And no reputable store should be going to carry Star Frontiers now that everyone in the world knows its racist trash.
It's not about prevention, it's about allowing WotC to explicitly divorce themselves from such content when it's produced. Under the old OGL, that is not possible, and as the past couple threads here have aptly demonstrated, plenty of people are willing to believe WotC is willing to do anything and everything, so they understandably would rather not let the court of public opinion sort the issue out.
There is nothing in the world they can do currently to prevent someone from making a product 'compatible with Dungeons and Dragons' using their game mechanics - OGL or no OGL. Revoking 1.0a does absolutely nothing to give them the power to stop that - 1.2 (or any OGL) doesn't magically change the fact that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, and I've seen reliable sources confirm that the 'compatible with' language is fine by trademark law. They literally cannot 'explicitly divorce' themselves from such things - for better or worse, they're stuck.
What changes is that if legitimate third parties want to work within the rules WotC set, 1.0a protects them from Wizards, and assures them Wizards has relatively little power to arbitrarily cripple their business. 1.2 (and other documents likely to descend from it if they insist on deauthorization) does not offer these protections. It in fact strips rights from people who would choose to use it, and protects Wizards.
You well and truly don’t get it, do you? Like, it has been said to you numerous times, and you just can’t get it. Let’s say this as simply as possible.
Wizards is not trying to protect the game from all racism - they know they can’t do that if the person managed to avoid violating Wizards’ IP rights.
Wizards is trying to protect the game from Wizards’ licensed content being used in racist content.
Wizards should be able to control how their own content is used - it is THEIR content. They can’t do that under 1.0. They can under 1.2.
And they are not stopping anyone from exercising their speech. They are only stopping folks from using Wizards’ speech in ways that Wizards, exercising their own speech rights, find disagreeable.
And that’s all I have to say about that. If you still don’t get those distinctions, well, I don’t think there’s anything else I can do to help you understand such a basic idea as “Wizards is trying to control the use of Wizards own content; not the speech of everyone under the sun.”
(b) Works Covered. This license only applies to printed media and static electronic files (such as epubs or pdfs) you create for use in or as tabletop roleplaying games and supplements (“TTRPGs”) and in virtual tabletops in accordance with our Virtual Tabletop Policy (“VTTs”)
What isn’t permitted are features that don’t replicate your dining room table storytelling. If you replace your imagination with an animation of the Magic Missile streaking across the board to strike your target, or your VTT integrates our content into an NFT, that’s not the tabletop experience. That’s more like a video game.
So essentially you believe a spell effect that is made on a VTT is an NFT and is controlled by Wizards and Hasbro.
To Me this is a no....just nope I really hate this it was a good step in the right direction but you seem to want to control all VTT and my guess is that is because of the company working on their own VTT.
This new one will hinder DnD players on Owlbear, on Talespire, and so on unless they pay money to Wizards for an idea. The images I understand but you can not own fire...everyone can make fire even if its digital to show an effect. That is not making it a video game or NFT its called an effect.
This section also concerns me.
"(f) No Hateful Content or Conduct. You will not include content in Your Licensed Works that is harmful, discriminatory, illegal, obscene, or harassing, or engage in conduct that is harmful, discriminatory, illegal, obscene, or harassing. We have the sole right to decide what conduct or content is hateful, and you covenant that you will not contest any such determination via any suit or other legal action."
So people from all the info provided have no way to stand up and fight back should their content be deemed bad in the company's eyes in anyway. This means that Wizard Hasbro wants control and if the wrong person in the higher chains does not like you cause you spoke out against hasbro they could consider it hateful. We need a way to stand up for if we are deemed as such. People have a right to a trail not to have their job yanked out from under them at any moment. Speaking of that...
"3. WHAT YOU OWN. Your Licensed Works are yours. They may not be copied or used without your permission. You acknowledge that we and our licensees, as content creators ourselves, might independently come up with content similar to something you create. If you have a claim that we breached this provision, or that one of our licensees did in connection with content they licensed from us:
(a) Any such claim will be brought only as a lawsuit for breach of contract, and only for money damages. You expressly agree that money damages are an adequate remedy for such a breach, and that you will not seek or be entitled to injunctive relief.
(b) In any such lawsuit, you must show that we knowingly and intentionally copied your Licensed Work. Access and substantial similarity will not be enough to prove a breach of this Section 3. "
So if someone finds you stole things and proves it in court they still can not stop you from selling it later...isn't this considered allowing you to steal anyways just like before?
Also finally this is the big kicker in my eyes
"MODIFICATION OR TERMINATION (a) Modification. We may only modify the provisions of this license identifying the attribution required under Section 5 and the notice provision of Section 9(a). We may not modify any other provision.
(b) Termination (i) We may immediately terminate your license if you infringe any of our intellectual property; bring an action challenging our ownership of Our Licensed Content, trademarks, or patents; violate any law in relation to your activities under this license; or violate Section 6(f). (ii) We may terminate your license if you breach any other term in this license, and do not cure that breach within 30 days of notice to you of the breach."
Section 5 is Content control on what the person using the license owns, and section 9 is miscellaneous. To me this with it's wording means you can't alter any of the other parts of this document. So essentially Wizards indeed wants control over the VTT and over having the right to say who can and cant sell using the license.
This was a somewhat good step forward but the things I brought up are quoted specifically so I can get my voice on how this looks. The same stuff will be provided in the feedback if it allows us to.
"3. WHAT YOU OWN. Your Licensed Works are yours. They may not be copied or used without your permission. You acknowledge that we and our licensees, as content creators ourselves, might independently come up with content similar to something you create. If you have a claim that we breached this provision, or that one of our licensees did in connection with content they licensed from us:
(a) Any such claim will be brought only as a lawsuit for breach of contract, and only for money damages. You expressly agree that money damages are an adequate remedy for such a breach, and that you will not seek or be entitled to injunctive relief.
(b) In any such lawsuit, you must show that we knowingly and intentionally copied your Licensed Work. Access and substantial similarity will not be enough to prove a breach of this Section 3. "
So if someone finds you stole things and proves it in court they still can not stop you from selling it later...isn't this considered allowing you to steal anyways just like before?
This provision means you cannot seek an injunction (denial of ability to publish the content moving forward), but you can seek monetary damages. So, while they can still use your content, they have to pay you for that content. That is going to take two forms - you can ask for payment as if you were an author in the book and you can ask for damages in terms of your lost revenue because Wizards took your property and sold it in your place.
That is a massive change from the 1.1 version, where they could use your content freely.
There is good reason to prohibit injunctive relief - injunctions are obscenely expensive. Reprinting versions without the content, possibly changing release schedules, and ultimately causing other financial harm to Wizards and (more importantly) delays to expected releases or the removal of already purchased content harming players. There also is the risk of a preliminary injunction - a judge prohibiting content release during the pendency of a lawsuit (which can take months or years), greatly delaying all manner of things, hurting players and Wizards alike.
Now, while I am all for prohibiting injunctive relief due to the massive harm it can cause, I did suggest one change to this language—asking that content creators be allowed to sue for the “specific performance” (legalese for “I want them to be ordered to do something) of providing authorship credit. After all, if it is proven the content was stolen, I think they deserve to at least have the right to ask their name be put in the book, in addition to being paid for their work.
"3. WHAT YOU OWN. Your Licensed Works are yours. They may not be copied or used without your permission. You acknowledge that we and our licensees, as content creators ourselves, might independently come up with content similar to something you create. If you have a claim that we breached this provision, or that one of our licensees did in connection with content they licensed from us:
(a) Any such claim will be brought only as a lawsuit for breach of contract, and only for money damages. You expressly agree that money damages are an adequate remedy for such a breach, and that you will not seek or be entitled to injunctive relief.
(b) In any such lawsuit, you must show that we knowingly and intentionally copied your Licensed Work. Access and substantial similarity will not be enough to prove a breach of this Section 3. "
So if someone finds you stole things and proves it in court they still can not stop you from selling it later...isn't this considered allowing you to steal anyways just like before?
This provision means you cannot seek an injunction (denial of ability to publish the content moving forward), but you can seek monetary damages. So, while they can still use your content, they have to pay you for that content. That is going to take two forms - you can ask for payment as if you were an author in the book and you can ask for damages in terms of your lost revenue because Wizards took your property and sold it in your place.
That is a massive change from the 1.1 version, where they could use your content freely.
There is good reason to prohibit injunctive relief - injunctions are obscenely expensive. Reprinting versions without the content, possibly changing release schedules, and ultimately causing other financial harm to Wizards and (more importantly) delays to expected releases or the removal of already purchased content harming players. There also is the risk of a preliminary injunction - a judge prohibiting content release during the pendency of a lawsuit (which can take months or years), greatly delaying all manner of things, hurting players and Wizards alike.
Now, while I am all for prohibiting injunctive relief due to the massive harm it can cause, I did suggest one change to this language—asking that content creators be allowed to sue for the “specific performance” (legalese for “I want them to be ordered to do something) of providing authorship credit. After all, if it is proven the content was stolen, I think they deserve to at least have the right to ask their name be put in the book, in addition to being paid for their work.
If they allowed that then I would have no issues with it.
The intent of the VTT one is probably in part to limit the field for VTT's so they can try and come out with their own later with animations, but also to clearly define what they acknowledge as a VTT and what is a video game; on the surface this sounds ridiculous but keep in mind that there is almost definitely no pre-existing legal definition they can fall back to, so if someone tries to pass what is obviously a video game by claiming it's just a VTT, they'd have to spend a lot of time and money in court fighting over the issue and might not even win. Personally I don't see it as a huge issue; I've yet to participate or see a VTT that uses animations like that.
While the hateful conduct one could theoretically be abused, all that would do is torch the brand. The community has made it abundantly clear that if WotC were to attempt any kind of draconian clamp down, they'd walk. I expect their first quarter report is already going to be pretty painful to go over. This is not a unique provision to the new OGL either; if you reviewed the terms for submitting content on YouTube, Twitch, or any art hosting site for example, you would find similar provisions, as a license is a direct connection between a brand and a licensed product, and as such the brands want an option to sever that connection if someone uses the license to tie them to content that runs contrary to their image. Granted, most of those do have a review/appeal process, but that is because they often reply on user reporting of violations to bring issues to their attention, and so the process is a check on report trolling, and it is ultimately left to the company to decide what is acceptable. As WotC will be the ones initiating things on content they feel violates this provision, it would serve no purpose. Again, this is unlikely to be widely used; I rather doubt they'll hire a team solely for the purpose of searching through and parsing over the entirety of all 3PP's created under the license, and as I've said on the off chance they did decide to go on some insane crusade with it, it would simply drive their consumer base away from them.
For the point about what happens if it is found that content was stolen, I agree it's not a perfect resolution, but from what we know of their creative process they are very adamant that their creators avoid all fan content specifically so they cannot deliberately or unintentionally steal anything, and once again if they start abusing this it just means they drive off the people they're hoping to sell to. Yes, it will suck if someone's work gets stolen and I've seen a lot of people saying that part should be modified to include adding an acknowledgement of the original creator to the work their creation appears in, but I get from a business perspective why they really don't want any injunctive measures, and (though I know I'm gonna get people out for my blood by saying this) it's not necessarily unreasonable. Suppose, for example, it came out that the knot tying rules from Xanthar's were cribbed from a 3PP. Is it reasonable to insist that they have to cease production of the whole book until they remove that portion and write off all copies produced but not sold to retailers as a loss over three short paragraphs? It's an imperfect solution, but as the saying goes, this is also an imperfect world, and frankly screwing over the company just because you got screwed over is retribution, not justice or resolution.
Wizards should be able to control how their own content is used - it is THEIR content.
They can, and did do this - when they created 1.0a, and insulated it from their own future interference. 1.0a is control over how others can use their content, and while they may regret some of the possibilities - they can't go back in time and undo it. They made sure of that, so people could trust it. They may not have done that well enough, but they absolutely tried and you can't deny that.
Beyond that, 1.0a does allow them to reserve stuff as Product Identity, in order to protect their IP and brand if they want.
And even in ancient year 2000, they had plans for separating bad content from their brand - its why the d20 logo was a separate license, which they had their own standards with much greater control over.
Wizards should be able to control how their own content is used - it is THEIR content.
They can, and did do this - when they created 1.0a, and insulated it from their own future interference. 1.0a is control over how others can use their content, and while they may regret some of the possibilities - they can't go back in time and undo it. They made sure of that, so people could trust it. They may not have done that well enough, but they absolutely tried and you can't deny that.
Beyond that, 1.0a does allow them to reserve stuff as Product Identity, in order to protect their IP and brand if they want.
And even in ancient year 2000, they had plans for separating bad content from their brand - its why the d20 logo was a separate license, which they had their own standards with much greater control over.
Yes yes, they sold their soul and therefore are condemned for eternity, but somehow they are the evil ones for trying to do something about that.
They're 'evil' in this case for using it as a pretense/smokescreen for trying to restrict Video Games and VTTs, and grant themselves a eternal license to kill off third party publishers at will.
I don't believe their intent for a second so long as the above is being added to the future license. If they dropped that, I could be convinced their intent was benevolent - I don't think it'd change what they can do with 1.0a, but I'd at least admit there was possibility their 'noble intentions' were valid and laudable.
I fully support them trying to inhibit hateful content. The way they're going about it doesn't suggest they particular care about the best way to do that, and does suggest they like the idea of using it to justify other anticompetitive behavior.
Or to summarize in simpler terms, I don't care at all about a legitimate attempt to suppress hateful content. Go crazy, its a good cause. I do care about them using quasi-legal chicanery to tell people they suddenly can't build character builders, VTTs and video games using the favorable terms they've supported for 20+ years and promised would always be an option for doing so even if they came out with less favorable terms later.
I don't know if someone brought this up ( too many pages), but the document references that they will follow some policies outside of the OGL, which can change constantly. So, in other words, I'm not changing the OGL, but I'm placing a variable in there that I can modify. Did I get this correctly?
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Would you stop making stuff up? No one is saying that.
They're saying the path to preventing bad content isn't through revoking 1.0a (since they probably can't even if they want to), and that Wizards of the Coast specifically cannot be trusted, since they can't stop obviously lying and transparently pursuing anti-competitive behavior at the expense of the community and TTRPG industry.
Additionally, a good portion of the Free Speech folks are rightfully concerned that if control of the OGL fell into malicious hands - more malicious than WotC's current management, which doesn't seem impossible considering the backsliding of civil rights we've witnessed recently in the US - the same language being touted as protection for vulnerable groups could be used to target vulnerable groups that are considered by religious fanatics (or similar) to be 'immoral' or obscene.
1.0a doesn't have that weakness. It can't be co-opted by bigots down the line to target creators they deem 'undesirable' - 1.2 absolutely could if the wrong people took over at Hasbro/WotC. That is the giant gaping flaw in giving WotC - or anyone - absolute control.
This could all be avoided if WotC just wanted to do a little more actual work.
They can set up an editorial staff and review ALL submitted 3rd party content BEFORE they send a letter to the party authorizing them to use approved WotC logos.
Anything with an illegal logo can be sued by them. Its already in the law of every normal nation. If its on the internet most hosting services will be glad to comply and take down the illegal material. Those who do not can be blocked. Thus its all forced into the dark corners of the web and 90% of the world will NEVER see it.
Take out any way for WotC to publish, republish or sub license any third party content without an additional agreement from said third party. The third party might not want its material licensed to specific parties for what ever reason they have.
Take out the ability to cancel any agreement without legal recourse. Let the third parties go to court if they think WotC canceled the contract without due cause.
WotC can afford hundreds of legal battles. Third party content creators have one chance in court let them have it. In fact let them use their local court so they do not have to fly to Washington just to get it into a court.
Have a little trust and heart WotC.
My family owned a few copyrights. We routinely sent out form letter cease and desist letters along with form letter replies they could send back. If they did not reply they went to court. It cost us a stamp. 95% quit the problem activity and those who did not went to court.
Once again, the free speech folks do not get the simple reality that Wizards also has free speech—and that the creator’s free speech is the most important when it comes to a license, because they have the most foundational right when it comes to their own content. Never mind this has been pointed out over and over again to the same people - they will never listen and certainly never learn.
That’s because they fundamentally don’t care about free speech rights - they care about their own speech, Wizards’ foundational speech rights be damned. They don’t care that a licensor has a free speech right to decide how their content is used by the folks they license it to. They don’t care that Wizards is not actually limiting folks’ speech - they’re limiting folks access to Wizards’ speech and Wizards’ branding—they are still free to publish the Racist Guide’s to Racism (comparable with the biggest TTRPG), they just can’t use Wizards’ speech inside their bigotry.
None of that, of course matters to them - they either don’t understand free speech (hard to believe, since all this has been pointed out time and time again to them) or they simply don’t actually care about it.
That is dramatically more expensive than any gain they'd get from it. The reason things like fan content policies and open licenses exist is because you simply can't do prior review for the kind of content they license.
There are ways to keep any one party from having "absolute control" without leaving the barn door open.
Which is a big problem if their next hypothetical CEO decides that 'certain types of people' that aren't in a rock-solid protected class aren't kid or family friendly, and decides to axe content or creators that feature those sorts of people - 1.2 would allow them to cancel the licenses of anyone they wanted, because hey - Wizards free speech!
Except that 1.0a already solved that problem - there's nothing to allow the holder of the license to go after you for arbitrary reasons, and revoke your license. If they decide they don't like your content, they have to go after you some other way - like for violating a trademark, breaking the law, etc. Or, you can just be shut out of the actual distribution and sales process if you're trying to sell hateful content by the rest of the sales and distribution process, which is distributed and not subject to a single bad actor compromising it at any given step of the way.
No one is selling your example 'racists guide to racism' anywhere a normal, reputable person is going to see it.
Oh yes, no one whose first name is an anagram for "Tenser" tried to use a homebrew of a WotC property as a vehicle for his racist hate speech, and is now in court because of it.
First, no version of the OGL, existing or otherwise, could have prevented that situation. Its not involved, at all - and bad actors can just publish license free to begin with.
Second, that is exactly my point. They found an avenue to go after them. And no reputable store should be going to carry Star Frontiers now that everyone in the world knows its racist trash.
Yes. That would be a problem. No, it would not be a free speech problem. That’s what you fundamentally don’t understand (along with apparently the limitations of the law under 1.0 or how hypothetical work) - free speech is content neutral, and Wizards has their speech rights regardless of what they publish with those rights. It’s the same reason the ACLU will defend abjectly horrific people’s right to speech. Heck, I’ve done some of that myself in my practice, standing up for speech that I find outright evil because it was necessary to protect the very concept of free speech itself.
So, either you fundamentally don’t respect free speech or you are fundamentally making the wrong argument, using “free speech” to mean something that it decidedly does not mean.
It's not about prevention, it's about allowing WotC to explicitly divorce themselves from such content when it's produced. Under the old OGL, that is not possible, and as the past couple threads here have aptly demonstrated, plenty of people are willing to believe WotC is willing to do anything and everything, so they understandably would rather not let the court of public opinion sort the issue out.
There is nothing in the world they can do currently to prevent someone from making a product 'compatible with Dungeons and Dragons' using their game mechanics - OGL or no OGL. Revoking 1.0a does absolutely nothing to give them the power to stop that - 1.2 (or any OGL) doesn't magically change the fact that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, and I've seen reliable sources confirm that the 'compatible with' language is fine by trademark law. They literally cannot 'explicitly divorce' themselves from such things - for better or worse, they're stuck.
What changes is that if legitimate third parties want to work within the rules WotC set, 1.0a protects them from Wizards, and assures them Wizards has relatively little power to arbitrarily cripple their business. 1.2 (and other documents likely to descend from it if they insist on deauthorization) does not offer these protections. It in fact strips rights from people who would choose to use it, and protects Wizards.
OK. You win. The Hateful Conduct exclusion is entirely necessary. Lets implement it, but go a step further, and allow a third party independent body decide what is or isn't in contradiction with the Hateful Conduct exclusion, so it's based upon an impartial review of the circumstances and not subject to Wizards, or any other potentially biased actors interpretation. There's no avenue for misuse.
Now that the major hurdle is overcome, can we retain the rest of the OGL, and refrain from any limitation placed on TP VTT's or compatible rule expansions?
You well and truly don’t get it, do you? Like, it has been said to you numerous times, and you just can’t get it. Let’s say this as simply as possible.
Wizards is not trying to protect the game from all racism - they know they can’t do that if the person managed to avoid violating Wizards’ IP rights.
Wizards is trying to protect the game from Wizards’ licensed content being used in racist content.
Wizards should be able to control how their own content is used - it is THEIR content. They can’t do that under 1.0. They can under 1.2.
And they are not stopping anyone from exercising their speech. They are only stopping folks from using Wizards’ speech in ways that Wizards, exercising their own speech rights, find disagreeable.
And that’s all I have to say about that. If you still don’t get those distinctions, well, I don’t think there’s anything else I can do to help you understand such a basic idea as “Wizards is trying to control the use of Wizards own content; not the speech of everyone under the sun.”
So essentially you believe a spell effect that is made on a VTT is an NFT and is controlled by Wizards and Hasbro.
To Me this is a no....just nope I really hate this it was a good step in the right direction but you seem to want to control all VTT and my guess is that is because of the company working on their own VTT.
This new one will hinder DnD players on Owlbear, on Talespire, and so on unless they pay money to Wizards for an idea. The images I understand but you can not own fire...everyone can make fire even if its digital to show an effect. That is not making it a video game or NFT its called an effect.
This section also concerns me.
"(f) No Hateful Content or Conduct. You will not include content in Your Licensed Works that is harmful, discriminatory, illegal, obscene, or harassing, or engage in conduct that is harmful, discriminatory, illegal, obscene, or harassing. We have the sole right to decide what conduct or content is hateful, and you covenant that you will not contest any such determination via any suit or other legal action."
So people from all the info provided have no way to stand up and fight back should their content be deemed bad in the company's eyes in anyway. This means that Wizard Hasbro wants control and if the wrong person in the higher chains does not like you cause you spoke out against hasbro they could consider it hateful. We need a way to stand up for if we are deemed as such. People have a right to a trail not to have their job yanked out from under them at any moment. Speaking of that...
"3. WHAT YOU OWN. Your Licensed Works are yours. They may not be copied or used without your permission. You acknowledge that we and our licensees, as content creators ourselves, might independently come up with content similar to something you create. If you have a claim that we breached this provision, or that one of our licensees did in connection with content they licensed from us:
(a) Any such claim will be brought only as a lawsuit for breach of contract, and only for money damages. You expressly agree that money damages are an adequate remedy for such a breach, and that you will not seek or be entitled to injunctive relief.
(b) In any such lawsuit, you must show that we knowingly and intentionally copied your Licensed Work. Access and substantial similarity will not be enough to prove a breach of this Section 3. "
So if someone finds you stole things and proves it in court they still can not stop you from selling it later...isn't this considered allowing you to steal anyways just like before?
Also finally this is the big kicker in my eyes
"MODIFICATION OR TERMINATION
(a) Modification. We may only modify the provisions of this license identifying the attribution required under Section 5 and the notice provision of Section 9(a). We may not modify any other provision.
(b) Termination
(i) We may immediately terminate your license if you infringe any of our intellectual property; bring an action challenging our ownership of Our Licensed Content, trademarks, or patents; violate any law in relation to your activities under this license; or violate Section 6(f). (ii) We may terminate your license if you breach any other term in this license, and do not cure that breach within 30 days of notice to you of the breach."
Section 5 is Content control on what the person using the license owns, and section 9 is miscellaneous. To me this with it's wording means you can't alter any of the other parts of this document. So essentially Wizards indeed wants control over the VTT and over having the right to say who can and cant sell using the license.
This was a somewhat good step forward but the things I brought up are quoted specifically so I can get my voice on how this looks. The same stuff will be provided in the feedback if it allows us to.
This provision means you cannot seek an injunction (denial of ability to publish the content moving forward), but you can seek monetary damages. So, while they can still use your content, they have to pay you for that content. That is going to take two forms - you can ask for payment as if you were an author in the book and you can ask for damages in terms of your lost revenue because Wizards took your property and sold it in your place.
That is a massive change from the 1.1 version, where they could use your content freely.
There is good reason to prohibit injunctive relief - injunctions are obscenely expensive. Reprinting versions without the content, possibly changing release schedules, and ultimately causing other financial harm to Wizards and (more importantly) delays to expected releases or the removal of already purchased content harming players. There also is the risk of a preliminary injunction - a judge prohibiting content release during the pendency of a lawsuit (which can take months or years), greatly delaying all manner of things, hurting players and Wizards alike.
Now, while I am all for prohibiting injunctive relief due to the massive harm it can cause, I did suggest one change to this language—asking that content creators be allowed to sue for the “specific performance” (legalese for “I want them to be ordered to do something) of providing authorship credit. After all, if it is proven the content was stolen, I think they deserve to at least have the right to ask their name be put in the book, in addition to being paid for their work.
If they allowed that then I would have no issues with it.
The intent of the VTT one is probably in part to limit the field for VTT's so they can try and come out with their own later with animations, but also to clearly define what they acknowledge as a VTT and what is a video game; on the surface this sounds ridiculous but keep in mind that there is almost definitely no pre-existing legal definition they can fall back to, so if someone tries to pass what is obviously a video game by claiming it's just a VTT, they'd have to spend a lot of time and money in court fighting over the issue and might not even win. Personally I don't see it as a huge issue; I've yet to participate or see a VTT that uses animations like that.
While the hateful conduct one could theoretically be abused, all that would do is torch the brand. The community has made it abundantly clear that if WotC were to attempt any kind of draconian clamp down, they'd walk. I expect their first quarter report is already going to be pretty painful to go over. This is not a unique provision to the new OGL either; if you reviewed the terms for submitting content on YouTube, Twitch, or any art hosting site for example, you would find similar provisions, as a license is a direct connection between a brand and a licensed product, and as such the brands want an option to sever that connection if someone uses the license to tie them to content that runs contrary to their image. Granted, most of those do have a review/appeal process, but that is because they often reply on user reporting of violations to bring issues to their attention, and so the process is a check on report trolling, and it is ultimately left to the company to decide what is acceptable. As WotC will be the ones initiating things on content they feel violates this provision, it would serve no purpose. Again, this is unlikely to be widely used; I rather doubt they'll hire a team solely for the purpose of searching through and parsing over the entirety of all 3PP's created under the license, and as I've said on the off chance they did decide to go on some insane crusade with it, it would simply drive their consumer base away from them.
For the point about what happens if it is found that content was stolen, I agree it's not a perfect resolution, but from what we know of their creative process they are very adamant that their creators avoid all fan content specifically so they cannot deliberately or unintentionally steal anything, and once again if they start abusing this it just means they drive off the people they're hoping to sell to. Yes, it will suck if someone's work gets stolen and I've seen a lot of people saying that part should be modified to include adding an acknowledgement of the original creator to the work their creation appears in, but I get from a business perspective why they really don't want any injunctive measures, and (though I know I'm gonna get people out for my blood by saying this) it's not necessarily unreasonable. Suppose, for example, it came out that the knot tying rules from Xanthar's were cribbed from a 3PP. Is it reasonable to insist that they have to cease production of the whole book until they remove that portion and write off all copies produced but not sold to retailers as a loss over three short paragraphs? It's an imperfect solution, but as the saying goes, this is also an imperfect world, and frankly screwing over the company just because you got screwed over is retribution, not justice or resolution.
They can, and did do this - when they created 1.0a, and insulated it from their own future interference. 1.0a is control over how others can use their content, and while they may regret some of the possibilities - they can't go back in time and undo it. They made sure of that, so people could trust it. They may not have done that well enough, but they absolutely tried and you can't deny that.
Beyond that, 1.0a does allow them to reserve stuff as Product Identity, in order to protect their IP and brand if they want.
And even in ancient year 2000, they had plans for separating bad content from their brand - its why the d20 logo was a separate license, which they had their own standards with much greater control over.
They're 'evil' in this case for using it as a pretense/smokescreen for trying to restrict Video Games and VTTs, and grant themselves a eternal license to kill off third party publishers at will.
I don't believe their intent for a second so long as the above is being added to the future license. If they dropped that, I could be convinced their intent was benevolent - I don't think it'd change what they can do with 1.0a, but I'd at least admit there was possibility their 'noble intentions' were valid and laudable.
I fully support them trying to inhibit hateful content. The way they're going about it doesn't suggest they particular care about the best way to do that, and does suggest they like the idea of using it to justify other anticompetitive behavior.
Or to summarize in simpler terms, I don't care at all about a legitimate attempt to suppress hateful content. Go crazy, its a good cause. I do care about them using quasi-legal chicanery to tell people they suddenly can't build character builders, VTTs and video games using the favorable terms they've supported for 20+ years and promised would always be an option for doing so even if they came out with less favorable terms later.
I don't know if someone brought this up ( too many pages), but the document references that they will follow some policies outside of the OGL, which can change constantly. So, in other words, I'm not changing the OGL, but I'm placing a variable in there that I can modify. Did I get this correctly?