Copyright Clarification for the Mods

[Rallan]

1) It is against the rules to post Palladium Books Game Statistics or post a link containing Palladium Books Game Statistics of material copywritten by anyone other than Palladium Books.

what about CR material that's been published and given away free ?

case in point, I have dozens upon dozens of Forgotten Realms material that was put into PDFs and given off the WOTC website for free years ago.

you guys want to err on the side of caution and just say: "if it's CR material, don't post it period"

At a guess I'd say the fact that it's free doesn't change anything. Hasbro/WotC haven't thrown away their intellectual property rights on that stuff, they've just chosen - for now - to distribute it at no cost. It's still material that someone else has owns the copyright for, so Palladium's anally over-cautious standards almost definitely still apply.

[Jefffar]

Copywritten is copywritten - even if the material is distributed freely.

[DhAkael]

Copywritten is copywritten - even if the material is distributed freely.

I'll never understand the vaugeries of the Yankee copyright laws.
Even in Canada it's still kinda harsh...but nowhere nearly as bad as south of the border of the only nation that counts

[DhAkael]

you should see how lax it is over here......

That's the other end of the spectrum... too lax and you have anarchy, too much, and you have the Recording Industry Gestapo hauling away 14 yr. old girls to adult jails.

EVENTUALY all this crap will be settled (once the lawyers are all dead), and people can, y'know....get on with their lives without worrying about being sued up the ying yang / being ripped off

[Rallan]

Copywritten is copywritten - even if the material is distributed freely.

I'll never understand the vaugeries of the Yankee copyright laws.
Even in Canada it's still kinda harsh...but nowhere nearly as bad as south of the border of the only nation that counts

Ah America hasn't gotten around to screwing up copyright for the written word, it's mainly just digital media where they've gone all screwy (possibly because America's publishing industry just doesn't have the clout of the recording and electronics industries). So when it comes to books and such, you'll find that the general gist of copyright is pretty much the same on both sides of the border.

On this particular matter though there's nothing all that vague. Hasbro/WotC still own all the intellectual property rights to Forgotten Realms, and all they're doing right now is exercising their right to distribute some of it for free instead of exercising their right to charge whatever the hell they feel like for it. They haven't put it in the public domain, they haven't relinquished any of their rights to it, and they haven't given other people permission to distribute it or do whatever they feel like with it, they've just decided to attach a price tag of $0.00 to it for a while.

I doubt they'd actually mind people doing homebrew conversions of it to other game systems, but they've got every right to get uppity about it if they feel like it, and so Palladium aren't being any sillier than usual by applying their same no conversions policy to this free Forgotten Realms stuff that they apply to everything else that's someone else's intellectual property.