>Greyhawk Rebooted has been down for 2 months for "Trust and Safety"
>no contact with devs anywhere else (their facebook might have data? but the group is private)
>no explanation from Patreon
Why did they get shut down? Did WOTC file a false complaint against them?
What's going on?
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 Ape Out Shirt $21.68 |
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>Did WOTC file a false complaint against them?
Explain to me what would be false about the claim, exactly?
Greyhawk is, unambiguously, WoTC's intellectual property. When they bought TSR, they bought all the things TSR owned. There was no specific carve out for Greyhawk somehow not being acquired. Likewise, WoTC ran Living Greyhawk for eight years through the RPGA - during which no one ever disputed their ownership of it.
So, I'm trying to figure out where the false part of the false claim shows up. Greyhawk Rebooted wanted to sell shit that they did not have a right to sell - no licensing agreement, and no reasonable case for fair use. Pure infringement.
I have no idea of knowing if WoTC threatened to sue or not. I don't actually care if they did. But if they did, they are 100% in their rights to do so.
This is a fanwork available to everyone for free. The only part monetized was completely original content
>This is a fanwork available to everyone for free
While I used the term sell earlier, a better term would have been to distribute. Because even if it was distributed for free, the point actually remains. They do not have a legal right to do that. Greyhawk is not public domain. It SHOULD BE, but we don't get to live in the world where copyright lengths are reasonable. We live in the world where Sonny Bono has fundamentally destroyed our ability to replicate culture.
>The only part monetized was completely original content
That was using the Greyhawk branding, and was derived from Greyhawk. Outside of the copyright issues, there's ALSO a trademark issue.
>They do not have a legal right to do that.
What about this?
https://company.wizards.com/en/legal/fancontentpolicy
>Q: May I sell my Fan Content online or at conventions?
>A: No. We are fine with you producing Fan Content for your own enjoyment, to give away as a gift, or to post pictures of online. But we don’t allow anyone to sell Wizards-related content without our permission.
>Outside of the copyright issues, there's ALSO a trademark issue.
It's interesting because as far as I'm aware there haven't been any fanfiction trademark suits yet, even though the proliferation of Patreons clearly violate free use. Earlier donation methods probably did too, but somehow felt less egregious.
iirc they actually didn’t and tsr just ran out of money in court
I don't give a SHIT about nuTSR.
I'm talking about the ACTUAL TSR. Tactical Studies Rules incorporated, founded by Gary Gygax, Don Kaye and Brian Blume. The one that WoTC BOUGHT 1997
I think we're specifically talking about The World of Greyhawk and about how it's legally arguable if it's owned by Wizards/Hasbro - or even foremost if it even is in fact a legal challenge from Wizards/Hasbro that brought down Rebooted's Patreon.
For the crew to be so silent on it, including on their Facebook makes me start to suspect that it might be part of some kind of offer Wizards is making to get possession of it to publish themselves at some time in the future - or maybe there was some kind of #cancelled potential incident that they're trying to quietly resolve.
Or it might just be as simple as Patreon has told them that if they reveal any details about the review that it will negatively impact the review - kind of Orwellian but that's where we're at in 2023.
>be john
>”buy” a car from bob
>bob was leasing the car
>john doesn’t respect the lease because he “bought” the car from bob
>john doesn’t own the car
>When they bought TSR, they bought all the things TSR owned
Close, but no cigars.
Also, to make that clear for you:
WotC bought bits and pieces of TSR library - the ones they could afford, and the ones that TSR was selling, being the sole owner. TSR, however, was notorious for VERY poor copyright management, so it tend to split its rights over dozens of entities - to the point it contributed to their bankrupcy.
So what happened was WotC securing the fattest bits, and then playing dumb whenever illegally using any IP they didn't actually own.
Something very similar happened between Black Isle and Bethesda, where Bethesda bought just few things from them, then decided to illegally use everything else they pleased. In both cases (WotC and Bethesda) they then used their checkbook to drown whoever contested them with litigations. Then wait bunch of years and legalise things, so they pretty much took over by squatting. Part of the current re-release trend WotC is doing with "classic settings" is nothing more than trying to secure their squatter "rights".
I promise i'm not being a piece of shit when I ask for a source here.This is a rare effort post and my desire to know more has intensified.
Unfortunately there's not much he can link (unless some new sources have popped up).
Last time I was doing research into this I had to use westlaw because no news agency was covering the odds and ends of what was happening in the legal proceedings.
Given I ain't paying for westlaw and no longer work in a place where I have access to it for free, I can't exactly go and print the suits to PDF to share.
But yeah as he said and as
nuTSR ran out of money, and WotC is now trying to squat on every single bit of IP that they can to ensure that if someone does come at them with enough money to challenge them, they can claim squatters rights.
newcome to the thread
people like you are the reason I still lurk here
thanks for the insights anon, do keep posting
So who, legally, is the owner of Greyhawk at this point - WotC, the Gygax estate, or someone else?
I'm reminded of a case some years back (admittedly under UK rather than US law) where the Metropolitan Police took the BBC to court, wanting years of fees out of them for use of their intellectual property: the police box, which was designed for the Met, but which the BBC had been using since 1963 (and licensing for merchandise) for Dr Who.
The court found that the Met had never tried to enforce their IP, had destroyed almost all of the boxes by the early 80s, and shown no interest otherwise. They also found that as the BBC had enforced use of the IP (at least in connection to Dr Who - there were certainly unlicensed police box items around, like model railway scenery) and had been collecting licensing fees and issuing C&D notices.
As a result, the court decided that the IP belonged to the BBC because they'd been actively using it, and the Met had effectively abandoned it.
I wonder if the same could be found here with an "abandoned" D&D-adjacent IP like the Greyhawk setting?
(I also believe US toy designer Bobby Vala did something similar in the last couple of years with "Action Force", a toy line name originated in the UK in the 80s by Palitoy, and briefly used to brand UK imports of GI Joe, before being dropped over 25 years ago)
That's the question.
nuTSR argued that they should be allowed to use it, or at least make deals with the people that oldTSR licensed the settings from.
WotC said "no, it's our IP"
nuTSR showed old contracts and argued that when WotC acquired TSR they acquired contracts under the same terms TSR had them, which included "we only own these products as long as we keep printing brand new novels and sourcebooks under the appropriate labels, and if we ever stop they're yours to do with as you wish again."
WotC did stop printing new stuff for every setting for a significant enough amount of time that their contracts should have resorted under those contracts, according to nuTSR.
The judge in the TSR vs WotC case said that he'd like to see more, and allowed the case to proceed, because on its face there are legal teeth here, but it needs to be hashed out. I suspect part of this is because it's also been alleged WotC has used their lawyers to bully some of these creators into not talking.
Unfortunately, by Washington state law, when a party to a case dies (or goes bankrupt) the case ends, and nuTSR running out of money because WotC prolonged the case for a few months, means the case is over, so odds are we will never see anyone challenge WotC again on this issue, and we'll never see the courts weigh in on how it should go.
>nuTSR running out of money because WotC prolonged the case for a few months
That sounds like every bit an abuse of process as SLAPP. The irony being, if nuTSR (was that one of the Gygax family?) had won and WotC had been on the receiving end of costs order... Copyright law has been getting increasingly complex in recent years, partly due to the efforts of Disney and others to keep protecting and profiting off legacy IPs that really should have passed into the public domain, and partly due to the way IPs and contractual terms are transferred (as with TSR and WotC). I doubt we'll get a resolution, but we need one - a fair one, at that, though it's unlikely.
Oh well. I'm not going to say it's for the best, but maybe (as much as we old grogs would love to see the old settings return and given proper love and attention) we need to just preserve what we've got and love the non-WotC settings we get. Put something cool together for OSR as a community project, jund of thing.
Looking good! Definitely want one of those if it ever happens.
>it might be part of some kind of offer Wizards is making
Could be, or could equally be a C&D with a restrictive term to prevent them disclosing it. Yes, I'm cynical about legal matters involving large corporations. You may also be right about Patreon.
This is another wacky area of law. In the UK, if you buy a car on finance and sell it to a third party, the third party acquires the debt along with the car. And yet if I buy anything else, whether it's a house or a laptop, using credit - if I resell it, I'm liable to pay my own debt to the creditor. What an anomaly.
>nuTSR (was that one of the Gygax family?)
The one and the same.
And you best believe WotC would be going fricking nuts about how "dangerous and bad this is for the community" if the case actually continued and they would try to turn the public opinion against it as best they can.
I think nuTSR was shit run by idiots, but the fact they unearthed something that legally should have been unearthed and ruled on ages ago actually makes me wish they had enough money to continue being idiots.
>how "dangerous and bad this is for the community
WotC are, I think, more afraid of someone else producing anything that's identifiably D&D outside the terms of OGL. Especially under the TSR brand, because if there's a Gygax at the helm, there would be grogs (and whatever the RPG community equivalent of Hoxtonites is - you know, those trendy young people at the bleeding edge of culture, including the retro movement) who would buy from TSR in preference to WotC because TSR produces - to borrow a Chris-Chanism - the TRUE and HONEST Greyhawk.
Basically, whether they bought TSR's IP lock, stock and barrel or whether they bought it outright, Hasbro don't want anyone muscling in on their action.
I do agree that this is a legal issue that needs resolving - and as has been seen many a time, idiots will keep on being idiots, especially if they have the money to do so.
I'm reminded of the "Axanar" lawsuit, where a Star Trek fan film raised so much money and promised to put out a professional quality film that CBS took them to court. The fallout from that continues, but it's the same kind of point as Patreons based on others' IP (people who produce e.g. D&D material). CBS, as part of the fallout, issued guidelines for what fans can and can't do "in order to avoid objections" (i.e. avoid C&D or lawsuit). I suspect that WotC will either issue guidelines, or more likely, C&D everyone they can find producing D&D (non-OGL) material. Paramount did the same thing, I think in 1996, when their lawyers told them they had to enforce their IP on fan websites. The difference between that and Patreon is, those Geocities fan sites weren't making money... so this suspended Greyhawk Patreon might be the first shot in a larger war.
>because if there's a Gygax at the helm
The line of kings will be restored.
The ancient orders will be upheld.
Gloria in Excelsis.
TSR = True Sovereign Rule
It is an abuse, but it's also completely standard for big corporations in lawsuits. They wait to submit extensions and delays to 2358 the night before the deadline for delays so that the other side has to keep paying their lawyers and then wait to 2358 the night before the final deadline to actually enter the real case documents even though they had it all sorted and ready to go before the court even asked for it.
Sometimes we get delicious schadenfreude when their lawyers are themselves delayed or a system hiccups and they end up putting in their documents at 0005 or something and then the judge tells them tough shit, you had 6 months to put this in and failed to do it at the last minute, you lose.
>or someone else?
Anywhere between 12 to 50+ different legal entities, some of which might be dormant, at that. Last time I've checked, it was 2007 and it was split between 17 different entities, 2 of which were companies out of business by then and another 5 were still small, niche publishing houses, that are probably out of business now, too. Sso you would have to trace the split of those. Plus 16 years have passed, so you can also assume someone died/have kids and died/sold their share to someone else that died/have kids and died/was a company that went out of business.
There is no single owner, as the copyright was already split over bunch of people by the late 80s and it just kept splitting. One of the "joys" (for both better or worse) of the pre-modern corporate IP management, especially in hobbies, is the absolute clusterfrick of who owns what and what's their share of ownership. So what most corpo suits does is just squatting on rights that either can't be challenged or can't be easily won. Then there are litigations, the ultimate weapon of any corporation. You can be a rightful owner, but they have the checkbook to keep the case pending for years. Eventually, you either are left with no money to continue, or you spite them with some legal clusterfrick on your own, rendering the copyright impossible to enforce by anyone.
I'm going to wager that if this is the case, WotC cannot prove that they own the Greyhawk IP outright. In theory, would the list you had back then be enough to mount a legal challenge if WotC tried to enforce copyright against someone else?
(I know it's unlikely, and would still be expensive to defend... same problem as trying to acquire the rights from the numerous entities that currently hold them - but a nerd can dream)
Do you understand how and why the rights were split up in such a frustrating way?
This is in need of a revival. Although I believe there are now action figures...
>In theory, would the list you had back then be enough to mount a legal challenge if WotC tried to enforce copyright against someone else?
Not him, but in theory if you were able to say that you are rightfully making money off of something, even as limited as that rightfulness might be (like say getting permission from someone who honestly believes they have the right to give permission), and then WotC came after you for it, you could, again theoretically, force the courts to hash out who owns the rights to what, if anything.
>how and why the rights were split
The typical reason is because that's just how things were done back then, if you weren't from a megarich family you couldn't fund everything by yourself, so you split it some with friends/co-owners who helped make it happen, and gave parts of the property to investors who helped make it happen as well.
These days corporate structures usually have contracts saying "you put in X amount and can get Y amount back, but I still own everything" because they don't want disputes like that.
>In theory, would the list you had back then be enough to mount a legal challenge if WotC tried to enforce copyright against someone else?
No. You would have to go case-by-case with each person from that list to see the current status of their copyright ownership, and track down the current offshots of each owner you've tracked. It's not particularly tough work, but it's the sort of shit that para-legals with a PI agency do - takes a lot of time, even more checking often obscure records and often physically tracking people that might not be even directly involved. Which is also part of the reasons why corporations hate securing copyrights that aren't tightly under wraps of a single, maybe dual legal entity.
Either way, it's pretty much a basic prep needed to even have a legal case and you can forget anyone is going to do it pro-bono. Too much work, or rather - too many work hours to do it for free, with seemingly no real payoff in the end.
I know, American legal system is fricked, but here is a clue - it's fricked everywhere else, too. And I can at least access most of the documents free of charge using the US legal system.
>Do you understand how and why the rights were split up in such a frustrating way?
Because, surprise, surprises, copyrights weren't always managed by big corporations. They exists first and foremost to protect the income of people who actually made the thing, or at least the company that made the thing.
Which meant that those rights tend to be broadly defined when handling group effort or companies made by partners. Companies go defunct, sell their libraries, partnerships end, etc. But everyone keeps their share of the copyright, or it simply is divided over vast number of entities for variety of reasons (defunct partnership companies after death of a single partner are usually the worst). Single legal entity IP management is relatively new thing, and it serves only corporations
>This is in need of a revival
Consult the filename
I guess copyright law wasn't drafted with nostalgia and legacy IP in mind. Which I suppose is why corporations came up with the concept of "work for hire", so - for example - TV scriptwriters can't easily enforce their IP rights against the series they wrote for, or authors who do a lot of licensed tie-in novels have very limited rights to what they wrote.
I still like the old D&D cartoon. Maybe it won't be revived in that form (and I wonder who they had to get the action figure licence from), but it was kind of a big deal and part of the zeitgeist back then. It's partly responsible for getting me into RPGs a few years down the road.
(And you just know if they did one these days, it would be animated with computers, lack the heart and soul of the original, and probably have that godawful bug-eyes look that's been taking over everything the last few years - more so since Rick and Morty became a thing. Please make it stop, it's about as funny as The Big Bang Theory.)
>I guess copyright law wasn't drafted with nostalgia and legacy IP in mind.
It was drafted with the idea in mind that the maker would keep making stuff without anyone copying him, and then when he died (or had enough time to make something new) anyone could do what they want with it.
In other words, a simpler age.
Pretty much.
It's important to remember that early US actually had enshrined in its founding documents that the idea of nobility (and making money off of something you had nothing to do with) was specifically outlawed.
Copyright laws being extended to ensure descendants can make money off of something their dad invented was one of the early signs of this being ignored for the sake of rich parties.
At the very least, it doesn't look like the mouse has the momentum to do it again. They seem to have pivoted from extending copyright into forever to wheeling out new versions of old stuff to control variants of it for as long as possible. Winnie-the-Pooh is public domain, but red shirt Winnie is still locked up tight.
>Winnie-the-Pooh is public domain, but red shirt Winnie is still locked up tight.
I seem to recall someone did a Pooh horror movie recently as proof of that concept. (And there's a YouTuber who's trying to build his own MCU, but around public domain superheroes from the pulp era)
Of course, this raises an interesting question. I believe - and I may be wrong - that there are some Sherlock Holmes stories that are in the public domain in the UK, but not in the US. What would happen if Greyhawk were to fall into the public domain in the UK, whilst its US ownership is still unclear (assuming WotC don't attempt to squat it) - could I theoretically start making money off it, and would I have to avoid selling to customers in the US?
Generally it's accepted that if you make it in the UK and distribute it within the UK it's fine.
If you send it to the US it could be problematic, but if you put it online it's still fine.
>What if copyright for X phases in a, but not in b yet?
You will know the answer soon, since Disney is in the middle of a legal firefight over Winnie-the-Pooh.
And in few years, bunch of stuff will hit public domain in Belarus, because they never signed the papers to extend the copyrights into their current international forms, so expect a big-ass shitshow by late 2020s, which is still all uncharted ground right now, and nobody knows how it will play out
>bunch of stuff will hit public domain in Belarus
Hands up anyone who wants to form a Belarus-registered company called TSR, and start publishing Greyhawk material?
I think the country these days with the most lackadaisical attitude to IP is China. They produce counterfeit just-about-anything, including notoriously poor-quality Lego. There was also once a bootleg Apple Store - almost identical to the real thing - selling bootleg Apple products. Apparently getting the Chinese legal system to deal with IP violations is nigh impossible, especially where the IP holder either does not have a registered business in China, or does not have the legitimate goods on the Chinese market. Naturally, Disney has begun to pander to China in recent years...
(I wonder if there are any Chinese-created RPGs. And if not, why not?)
The apple store was more than just a bootleg. It was selling real Apple products that were made in the real apple sweatshop using real apple parts and specifications on the real apple assembly line, but they were made after contract hours were up so apple didn't know that any of that inventory existed. The employees at the fake apple store also didn't know it was a fake store because it was thoroughly authentic in every detail including training materials for staff.
But yes, China is unconcerned with IP law. You can't even do business in China to begin with, even the big companies like Disney or Blizzard need to have Chinese companies handle all of their business there. They are not allowed to do business directly by law, and the courts are highly protective of Chinese businesses when sued by foreign businesses, plus they have endless loopholes.
For /tg/ related stuff, manufacturing that goes wrong often has molds stolen or products not delivered, but the cost of hiring a Chinese law firm to handle the court case (remember, no foreign business allowed directly, if you got an American law firm to do it, they'd have to subcontract a Chinese law firm even if they are familiar with Chinese law) is more than the losses and even if you win, the company you're suing will have gone bankrupt long before your case was all the way through court. Then you'll be awarded the proceeds from selling the company's assets, which includes one (1) office chair and one (1) plywood desk (drawers removed). All that fancy machinery? They were renting that, you can't have it. The building? Rented. Owner? Not liable.
>Hands up anyone who wants to form a Belarus-registered company called TSR, and start publishing Greyhawk material?
Learning Polish as we speak.
>(I wonder if there are any Chinese-created RPGs. And if not, why not?)
There isn't really a sizable roleplaying game scene in China currently. There might very well be some Chinese roleplaying games that are floating around but nothing has really managed to bubble up into being a known commercial product. However, we know the community exists because there are roleplaying books being translated into Chinese to sell to a Chinese audience.
A lot of what's there is kind of an offshoot of the Japanese roleplaying game community. Which means that you're dealing with a lot more Call of Cthulu.
I'm surprised they haven't made a xianxia RPG yet. Cultivators and PCs share many stereotypes. The endless grind for more power by killing progressively stronger beings and looting all their cool shit while pretending that any action you take is morally correct because you were the one to take it is endemic to both.
What's the copyright situation in Moldova? That might be better place to start business at since the country is EU-candidate (while Belarus isn't).
>since Disney is in the middle of a legal firefight over Winnie-the-Pooh.
No they're not?
Like by all means, show me a case that proves me wrong. But Disney isn't in the middle of a legal fire fight over it.
The closest you get is that Disney has made people understand that while the character of Winnie The Pooh is now public domain, their version of him is not. If you want to use Winnie the Pooh for something, Disney can't stop you. However, if you want to use a Winnie The Pooh that is wearing a red shirt, looks a particular way, and is always trying to get "hunny" out of a jar? THAT is still protected under copyright.
>there are some Sherlock Holmes stories that are in the public domain in the UK, but not in the US
Not as of January 2023. The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes's copyright expired at the start of this year, and those were the last hold outs among Sherlock Holmes rights.
Also, with regards to this whole conversation about Greyhawk, I would like to bring some attention to something. A lot has been talked about the copyrights surrounding Greyhawk. And that's all very well and good. HOWEVER, there is a problem for anything selling itself as Greyhawk that hasn't really been touched on.
That problem is Trademark serial number 87154116 - Wizards of the Coast LLC's trademark on the term Greyhawk.
>Trademark serial number 87154116 - Wizards of the Coast LLC's trademark on the term Greyhawk.
Okay, this is where my IP law knowledge goes vague. Can you trademark something that you don't own the copyright to in that way? Can it be circumvented (e.g. WotC trademark Greyhawk, nuTSR trademark "World of Greyhawk")?
>Call of Cthulu
>Japan
Typical. Tentacles.
Makes me wonder if TTRPG is fairly new in China, something that's only come about since it became more capitalist and opened up to importing these brands. Maybe there is something cultural that discouraged or precluded developing games earlier (perhaps the Communist ideology?), or perhaps there just wasn't a driving need. Oh well... maybe they'll spawn a huge hit of some kind in a few years when the neckbeards want a better wuxia game.
The Pooh horror movie is part of a kinda shitty trend where popular things that fall into the public domain tend to get really shitty "subversive" interpretations. It's just so predictable.
Why am I not surprised?
Okay... that explains an awful lot about how Chinese websites manage to be full of things like action figures that are way better quality than any bootleg ought to be. Star Wars, GI Joe, even the new D&D cartoon ones. I'm guessing it's a combination of "made after contract hours" and "slight seconds that the US company will never know went astray".
In some ways it's utterly ingenious. And the west has made a rod for its own back by slowly killing off manufacturing because it was cheaper to outsource it overseas...
Yep. There are Chinese sellers of the new Battletech models that basically just snip all the okay-ish parts off of sprues that fail QA and assemble the models out of the less dodgy bits after hours, then sell them online as individual models while CGL only sells groups of models in box sets.
If it helps you sleep better at night, it's not an American thing. In fact, States for a loooong time had a very lackadaisacal attitude to copyrights in any form, and had a whole lot of special laws to make sure they pass out and get dormant, entering public domain.
Then Disney corporation figured out that in about next few years, most of their early stuff will start to get into public domain. And back then, that was their only source of income (since we are talking about tail end of the 70s). So they've poured whatever they had to lobby to simply "adhere to the international law" (since non-US copyright laws at the time were tighter and kept the residues for longer).
And they never stopped from there.
WotC did not buy "pieces", they bought the whole thing. Either post proofs or gtfo.
>they bought the whole thing.
>post proofs or gtfo.
Ironic
Let me show you something that apparently WotC bought. After all, they got the whole thing, so clearly, they have this, too... right?
The answer to that one is complicated partially because we don't know the exact details of the contracts.
We know that WoTC has the belief that they have some level of ownership, because when they made their 2016 Heroes of the Realm card, Dungeon Master was amongst them.
Now, what's probably the case is that the ownership of this is probably split between Disney and Hasbro. Originally it was a coproduction between TSR and Marvel (with Toei contracted out to do the animation. The D&D cartoon? Technically an anime.) Disney owning the marvel part of things takes a weird, circuitous route because of Marvel selling off their cartoons to Saban who were then bought up by Disney.
One of those things where the exact details of who owns how much and who's allowed to use what parts is probably buried in a contract somewhere, but neither party is particularly interested in checking.
They sort of reference this in the movie with the game in the arena. There's a party dressed like these guys.
Yes, they do. They have been making a comic line with the characters in it, have used at least some of the characters in the recent Starter Set (and used them in a book back in 3e), and even have action figures of them out you can buy, as well as having them cameo in the recent live action movie. No one, not one, has come forward saying WotC does not own the cartoon, its characters and its overall IP
Rumor is plagiarism, but I doubt it. Creator must have directly sassed Wizbro and they got pissed about it.
Anyway, please repost work so all can enjoy.
https://mega.nz/folder/eUJy2SjL#_VtulDPRj0nI5KznVCRSWg
What happens in Ulek, Ulek and Ulek?
GhR creator didn't kill himself.
My proof came
Remember, only 13 years left until the Comprehensive Advertising ban of 2036.
nuTSR are a bunch of fricking grifters who do not understand IP law like most people in this thread
Thank you for your insightful contribution to the conversation, anon. Here's your (You).
that's a shame, was some of the better content i consumed for my homebrew greyhawk game
i really liked how the author approached the world from an anthropologist's perspective
https://www.patreon.com/RVNCREATIVE