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White Wolf Applying License to Indie Games
Enigma23 writes "White Wolf, Inc. has decided to enforce a licensing system upon those who run their games in their World of Darkness. Here is the full text of the license. The Licensing process will force those who have not already joined the Camarilla, White Wolf's official fan club, to pay a yearly $20 fee. They're not going to go after games that don't charge money for the event, but the wording is such that they can legally sue those who don't comply even if they only charge enough money to cover costs. The practical upshot is that technically the WW Stormtroopers could raid your house merely if everyone chips in a few quid for pizza. This is evidently doubly so if anyone in your gaming group is under the age of 18, which is against the membership policy of The Camarilla. There is a further discussion on RPG.net about the various issues involved." The BoingBoing discussion is interesting, as well.
It's a dismal failure as a trademark license, given that 1) gamers are likely only engaging in nominative uses, which are perfectly legal and desirable anyway, and 2) there doesn't seem to be a quality control and auditing system, which actually jeopardizes WW's rights. They seem to be engaging in naked licensing, which is pretty bad.
In the copyright realm, it's also pretty lousy. You can't copyright game rules (you need a patent for that), so all they can stand on is the setting. Merely playing the game doesn't involve reproduction, distribution, preparing derivative works, or actionable public display. You could argue public performance based on the setting, but I think it'd be insulated by fair use, if not estoppel.
Personally, I'd ignore the hell out of them. Of course, the d20 license is stupid too -- if you're careful, it's perfectly legal to make unauthorized modules and such for the commercial market.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
They might want to look at Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, a Supreme Court decision that said that a copyright owner can't impose arbitrary restrictions on the purchaser under the guise of a license.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"Q. All I charge my players is a share of the fee the facility where we play charges us. Do I still need this license?
"A. Yes. Even though you aren't making a profit, you are still collecting and disbursing money -- money earned through the use of White Wolf games and settings."
I said it before and I'll say it again: We need to seriously fix the problems caused by the notions of "Intellectual Property" soon or it will destroy our society faster than we think. Sure something like this is unenforceable and would be laughed out of court, but not until after having financially destroyed some poor gamers.
And sooner or later some idiot judge (it seems like there are no other kinds these days) is going to side against common sense and start giving corporations the power to actually force their customers to do things like this.
I know some people out there are going to somehow take this as a pro-piracy rant, or switch into "IP makes the world go round" mode, but this kind of crap has gone way, way too far for far too long. Intellectual Property laws have to be seriously reworked. If we keep going the way we've been going for the past few decades. We're going to self destruct as not only a nation, but as a society.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
This is what I posted over there... interested in seeing if it stays:
There are only four things that White Wolf can hang this license: Patent, Copyright, Contract Law and Trademarks.
Note... I'm not a lawyer, but I make a living off of software which means I have to deal with all of these issues all the time. That said, this isn't legal advice (if you plan on taking a legal action may I suggest you talk to your lawyer instead of using random Internet posts as your basis).
Patent: If White Wolf had a patent on the rule system they have total control over the use of the same. A quick search of the patent databases show that they own nothing of the sort, so we can discount this as a "patent license".
Copyright: Copyright covers a very limited (but powerful) set of controls. The long and short of it is that a copyright protects *replication* of a work. If a group were to recite the rulebook and fictional pieces therein, White Wolf would be within their rights to stop this from happening. However, as people in the board game industry painfully know, people *playing* your rules do not trigger copyright. (A similar thing happens in software: technically running software requires copying it into RAM... because this is required as a "fundamental step" to using the copyrighted materials this replication is permitted by law). Only patent can control game *rules* as ideas.
TSR attempted this type of control, claiming that being compatible with or working with a given rule set made something a derived work back in the bad old days. They failed miserably, except at intimidation (you can't *afford* to fight this). To exert this kind of control would be akin to writing a text book on a subject and then saying "using this knowledge is forbidden unless licensed" (assuming the knowledge was not covered by a patent, which is independent). Copyright does not give this sort of control.
In particular, the information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbs-Merrill_Co._v._ Straus is interesting because it shows that copyright law does *not* allow any restrictions (beyond replication) after the "first sale" of a work. The software industry has been angry for years about reselling "used" console games and rentals of the same (it cuts into profits *big-time*), but every lawsuit brought on the matter has fallen on the side of "no further restrictions beyond the first sale". The companies have tried the "you don't own this, you just license it" thing in the past will no effect... because of the doctrine of first sale. (Note, this limitation doesn't apply to big corporations who buy software in bulk: they actually sign a contract.)
Contract: That brings us to contract law. When you bought the book, you didn't sign anything, so any claims based on contract law are nonsense. Even printing a contract in the book won't work... only if you *negotiated* a contract *as equals* (i.e., you have the ability to reject terms and negotiate) and then signed the contract would the contract be binding. "Click wrap" licenses in software are on some pretty shoddy legal basis themselves and have been successfully avoided in quite a few lawsuits and this "retrofitting" of a contract onto a book is absurd to contemplate in terms of contract law.
Trademark: So that leaves us with trademark law. This seems to be what prompted the whole nonsense. Note the comment about "rights in terms of trademark and so forth"... trademark is the *only* framework that requires protection of rights to be proactive, so you can just delete "and so forth". (People who use the term "Intellectual Property" are talking about patent, copyright and trademark... there is nothing actually called "Intellectual Property" in law). However, if this is a trademark license then the whole issue can be safely bypassed by not *using* the trademarks in question. You can run a "Modern era live RPG featuring vampires"... even with White Wolf systems as the core
Sig under construction since 1998.
"We don't need to pay you royalty fees."
WHITE WOLF STORMTROOPER: "We don't need to collect their royalty fees."
"These aren't the sourcebooks you're looking for."
WHITE WOLF STORMTROOPER: "These aren't the sourcebooks we're looking for."
"We can go about our roleplaying."
WHITE WOLF STORMTROOPER: "You can go about your roleplaying."
"Move along."
WHITE WOLF STORMTROOPER: "Move along. Move along."
RPGer: "I thought we were dead."
"The Kindred hold many powers over assholes and the weak-minded."