OA677: Our Critical Hit (Piece) On the Gizmodo's Critical Hit (Piece) on Wizards of the Coast

Thank you Andrew! I love listening to you nerd out on the law; it helps me to listen to someone who loves the law as much as I love computers.

Fame and fortune guaranteed in the state of Tintucky

I still think Andrew is wrong in his first criticism of the Gizmodo article. The article says that the new OGL “significantly restricts the kind of content allowed,” and Andrew said that’s false because 1.1 and 1.0 have pretty much the same restrictions on the use of WotC IP, like mindflayers and such. I think that’s a misread of what the article was saying - as it went into later on, it was talking about OGL 1.1 being restricted to books and static digital files. That is a significant restriction on the *kind* of content allowed - I’m sure going to be sad if this means we won’t get further Pathfinder video games, for example. Andrew seemed to take WotC at their word that the OGL was never intended to cover anything like that, but that’s simply not true. For example, they specifically covered the issue in their FAQ for it and said that you could develop software under the OGL 1.0a. I thought Thomas was about to address this on this episode, but then he said the argument was that restricting nazi stuff was the content restriction the article was talking about. That sucked to hear. It’s a shame that that’s the argument that he saw, because it’s pretty weak and I still think this was serious flaw in their criticism of the article.

Some Guy Some Where

This is a nice episode. I enjoyed it.

That's not your Lawn Tiger

I like the discussion opened up towards the end exploring legal decisions in regards to games, copyright, trademark, and licensing. Seemed to move towards an interesting issue in protecting games. For instance, they mentioned Tetris, but what about other games or sports? I also enjoyed learning that Pac-Man’s knock-off had a first and last name. Either way, no idea what the controversy was about. We might need another episode to explore the controversy in full (kidding).

Rawls’s OG Position

Parol is Norman/French for verbal. Get those Saxons out of there.

TheEthicalJerk

I get why they feel they have to make episodes like these, but they are always among my least favorite episodes they do. Invariably they come off as defensive and/or ranty, and focused largely on themselves rather than an interesting legal topic.

I know that the discussion is supposed to be in the FB group, but I tried it and it is too far left for me as a leftist Finn :) I think Andrew is confusing a particular license (GNU General Public License) with Open Source licensing in general. There is no hard and fast rule that an Open Source license must be "viral" in the sense that GPL is, or that you can use choose the license version you want to use. See eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License for details on an open source license which is very different from GPL.

It makes me so happy that people have been sending Andrew the Book of Erotic Fantasy. Now, I want to hear Andrew's analysis of the copyright law principles surrounding transformers porn games (disappointingly, not named transporners). https://lewdninja.com/search/animation?genre=Transformers

Stormy Decisis

Great, so criticism of this or any episode, should only be directed in a forum where they have awful moderation and claim to not even run the group? I don't have respect for people who don't bother to learn the issues either.

TheEthicalJerk

I actually saw some of the twitter garbage. It was aggressive and abusive. I've no respect for comments whining about having this argument on patreon or Facebook and moderators. It's a podcast and a podcast topic. It's work for Andrew and I really have no time for people making accusations about the integrity of the podcast over this. No accusations were made by Andrew. No insults were thrown at anyone. But the abuse and absolute snottiness of people who can consume this podcast for free but feel entitled to attack hosts is very dissapointing. Thanks guys.

Lala Del Bray

Making Wordle into a board game is pretty abusive.

TheEthicalJerk

Obviously, you have to know an entire company's history with their competition, their customer base, and the public before you can comment on a specific legal document from that company. Silly Andrew -- don't make the Internet re-evaluate things they are already confident they know! I've been told a bunch lately that Hasbro/WotC has a long history of abuse of their player base. Now I'm learning a new OGL will anger a thriving, enthusiastic player base. I'm starting to suspect the Internet by and large doesn't know what it's talking about... Keep up the good work, guys :)

Peter Navarro is a big poop head, allegedly

As a long time OA listener, Patron, and D&D player and GM, thank you for both of these episodes. I feel the D&D community gets very upset when Wizards does something remotely profit-motivated, so I deeply appreciated your perspective on the legal and business side of the OGL.

You've saved yourself the hassle of being insulted by their moderators.

TheEthicalJerk

Without further comment on the OGL stuff: as someone who doesn't use Facebook, I have to say that I'm a little sad that the discussion about this episode is entirely relegated to a Facebook group I won't be able to access. I completely understand not opening it to the floodgates of Twitter or the like, but inviting discussion on Patreon alongside Facebook would have been nice.

Tavernaut

Disingenuous to claim the OA Facebook group is unmoderated. It is full of awful moderators and this kind of statement really damages the show's credibility.

TheEthicalJerk

I am fully expecting this episode to be Thomas reading comments and Andrew calling them dumb, wrong and embarrassing for 76 minutes straight.

Viktor Arthuis