[Rq-rules] *** JUNK MAIL ***Re: SRD, OGL.... How's it work?

[Peter Brink]

Gianni skrev:
 >
 > All--
 >
 > I've downloaded the MRQ SRD, but I'm still unsure as to
 > how this "open gaming licence" thing works (I've never
 > been into d20, so this is new to me).

OGL is unfortunately not a very easy legal text to digest. It contains 
grammatical errors, ambiguities and some parts are dubious from a legal 
POW (a European legal POW that is). Whenever someone asks how to use the 
OGL I usually reply by asking: Why do you think you need it?.

The first thing one need to realize is that the OGL is firmly rooted in 
US contract and copyright law. Parts of the license might be invalid or 
unlawful in other jurisdictions. The GPL suffers from similar problems; 
in France for example it was deemed necessary to create a new license 
(See http://www.cecill.info/faq.en.html#gpl).

Another thing one should know is that when the licensor (the one who 
issues the license) and the licensee live in different countries the 
applicable *contract law* might not be what either or even both parties 
assume. Let's take the Mongoose SRD as an example. Mongoose is a U.K. 
company. If A (who lives in France) becomes a licensee, then the 
contract law (according to EC law) becomes French law. The question 
would then become whether OGL is a valid legal document under French 
law, it very well might not... If A lives outside Europe and the US then 
things becomes quite a bit more uncertain...

The next issue is what copyright law that applies. After all if the 
Mongoose SRD is obviously not copyright protected then why use the OGL? 
For works published in Europe the rule is that it's the copyright law of 
the country in which the work has been published that applies. When it 
comes to works published on the internet the deciding factor (from a 
European POW) is an aggregate of the domain name, the nationality of the 
domain owner, the language of the website and the physical location of 
the webserver. If all of these points to the same jurisdiction then 
there's no problem, but if they point in different directions things get 
trickier.

IMO (being a law-school student), under at least Scandinavian copyright 
law, the texts of the Mongoose SRD clearly falls below the necessary 
level of originality required for copyright protection. I would be 
surprised if a French or German court came to another conclusion, what 
opinion a U.K. court would have is more uncertain, and even more so what 
opinion an US court might have. In any case a game system, i.e. the 
ideas that makes up a game cannot be copyright protected. If one 
describes those ideas with ones own words there cannot be a copyright 
infringement.

So my question to you, Gianni, is: Why do you think you need the OGL?

 > If I write, say, a rolegame about Imperial China using
 > the rules in the SRD
 >
 > Do I have to:
 > a) reference the rules without copying them, or

To do this you never need a license...

 > b) copy the rules within the text of my rolegame?

Provided that you believe that the Mongoose SRD is copyright protected, 
you would need a license to do this.

 > Or maybe there's even option c) re-write the rules and
 > mix them with my own?

No need for a license if you do this.


See Tom Zunder's mail for how you include the license with your work.


/Peter Brink