As I mentioned in another thread, I really like Obsidian Portal. Great concept, very useful; I plan to transition as much of my gaming content as I can to it. Because of that, I *really* want Obsidian Portal to succeed as a permanent presence on the web.
So I'm a little concerned about copyright issues. I'm sure we all remember the rabid cease-and-desist letters from TSR back in the day. It hasn't been a problem with WotC, but you never know when the copyright bugbear will raise its ugly head.
To that end, I suggest some form of a copyright disclaimer page that's linked to from every page of the site. Basically a CYA for the site owners that explicitly places responsibility for copyright issues on the person who posted the copyrighted content, and something to the effect that any copyrighted material on the site is copyright of its respective owner and is used without permission, that sort of thing.
We are worried about this as well. Obviously, we're programmers, not lawyers, so we stumble our way through it.
We're working on a terms of use statement right now and expect to have it posted to the main site shortly. This should clarify what people are allowed to put up.
Also, thanks for the kind words. They really do mean a lot to us. My whole day can be made (or destroyed) by a single comment on the forums. Perhaps I should be a little more thick-skinned ;)
A fairly large portion of what would be posted here is open content, even referencing copywritten material such as Cormyr is legal as fair use I believe. I agree that a copy of the OGL statement would be a good idea, at least in regards to most of the D20 content.
Fair use is a tricky issue, and I'm no expert. Besides for a small time site like us, we can't afford a legal battle to prove anything. Basically, if a big fish decides to sue us over something, we get sunk by the legal fees.
So, in order to prevent that, we're trying to put up a CYA statement as Randolpho suggests. It should be up very soon.
Is it possible for us as GMs and content creators to have some sort of ability to control our generated content's license? Coming from wikispaces a wiki owner could decide what sort of license they are publishing their content under. At the moment it looks like I will have to tag the bottom of all my pages if I decide to publish the content of my campaign to the rest of the Obsidian Portal community. Is there a way to explicitly dictate the license I feel comfortable with (CC, GNU, generic, other)?
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So I'm a little concerned about copyright issues. I'm sure we all remember the rabid cease-and-desist letters from TSR back in the day. It hasn't been a problem with WotC, but you never know when the copyright bugbear will raise its ugly head.
To that end, I suggest some form of a copyright disclaimer page that's linked to from every page of the site. Basically a CYA for the site owners that explicitly places responsibility for copyright issues on the person who posted the copyrighted content, and something to the effect that any copyrighted material on the site is copyright of its respective owner and is used without permission, that sort of thing.
We are worried about this as well. Obviously, we're programmers, not lawyers, so we stumble our way through it.
We're working on a terms of use statement right now and expect to have it posted to the main site shortly. This should clarify what people are allowed to put up.
Also, thanks for the kind words. They really do mean a lot to us. My whole day can be made (or destroyed) by a single comment on the forums. Perhaps I should be a little more thick-skinned ;)
So, in order to prevent that, we're trying to put up a CYA statement as Randolpho suggests. It should be up very soon.
I'll take a look at what wikispaces does. I've got nothing against copying someone else's way of doing things...