If I put the details of my campaign into this thread who owns it? Can I publish the setting as a third party or write a book based on it or does it become WotC's intellectual property?
"5.2.License to Wizards. By posting or submitting any User Content to or through the Websites, Games, or Services, you hereby irrevocably grant to Wizards a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such User Content (in whole or in part) in any media and to incorporate the User Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed. The foregoing grants shall include the right to: (i) exploit any proprietary rights in such User Content, including but not limited to, rights under copyright, trademark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction; (ii) your name, likeness, and any other information included in your User Content, without any obligation to you. You waive any and all claims that any use by us or our licensees of your User Content violates any of your rights, including moral rights, privacy rights, rights to publicity, proprietary, attribution, or other rights, and rights to any material or ideas contained in your User Content."
So don’t post it here, post a link to it here after posting it on a subsection of your website. That personal post grants you a copyright to it and they can’t use it without licensing it from you. However, posting it here afterwards is equivalent to granting them a license on their terms, not yours. So just post links to stuff you want to keep and control.
If I put the details of my campaign into this thread who owns it? Can I publish the setting as a third party or write a book based on it or does it become WotC's intellectual property?
There is a different agreement in the Term of Service here from the OGL conversation going on.
Posting anything here gives WotC the rights to use it without compensating you, if I understand the Terms.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
This is from their Terms of Service:
"5.2. License to Wizards. By posting or submitting any User Content to or through the Websites, Games, or Services, you hereby irrevocably grant to Wizards a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such User Content (in whole or in part) in any media and to incorporate the User Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed. The foregoing grants shall include the right to: (i) exploit any proprietary rights in such User Content, including but not limited to, rights under copyright, trademark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction; (ii) your name, likeness, and any other information included in your User Content, without any obligation to you. You waive any and all claims that any use by us or our licensees of your User Content violates any of your rights, including moral rights, privacy rights, rights to publicity, proprietary, attribution, or other rights, and rights to any material or ideas contained in your User Content."
Basically if you post it here, they own it.
So don’t post it here, post a link to it here after posting it on a subsection of your website. That personal post grants you a copyright to it and they can’t use it without licensing it from you. However, posting it here afterwards is equivalent to granting them a license on their terms, not yours. So just post links to stuff you want to keep and control.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Do not solicit legal advice on IP ownership from random people on an internet forum. Please consult a professional in all such matters.
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