it is also that many ppl that have ideas never bother realize the ideas because they cannot afford to take the risks that they will by accident infringe on someones patent
This is missing some information and makes your statement seem bigger then it really is. When a person get's sued for patent infringement they have to pay based on the profits they make. So if your invention makes you $100 you do not get sued for $1 million. People who come up with great ideas do not just say "aww f it cause I might get sued". What they can do is apply for a patent themselves. A lot of these submarine patents are people who come up with ideas, sit on it, never develop it and then when a big company creates a similar idea and makes money on it they sue. This is why you see big companies create a ridiculous amount of patents for simple ideas - cya.
it is a similar issue with countries where you are by law required to put your home address on your webpage (i.e. Germany),
Are you sure it is home address and not an address? So if I launched a website I could put a PO box or my business address? Also does it have to be on the website or on the registry for the domain name?
Blizzard imo. This judge is a moron who set very bad precedent - and now that they have precedent they can sue any company that uses this kind of registration. I see Adobe in the newspaper in the near future.
What is this more/. fud? Get a story posted on/. by saying "i am confused, I hate patents but I hate MS and this patent hurt MS". If you think patents suck then you should be defending MS in this case - otherwise you are a hippocrit. If you think patents are OK then you can cheer as MS got slammed.
Not knowing the exact nuances of this patent I think it is retarded and so is the judge for allowing a patent on preventing software frmo being installed on multiple computers. Well now this company is going to move onto other companies who do the same thing.
While that may be the case in the US, I'd like you to know that here in the Netherlands the law trumps any contract. So if you have any clauses in your contract that aren't in concert with the law they don't hold up in court. Even better, in many cases having 'unreasonably constraining' articles in a contract, everyone can safely sign the contract and simply ignore those articles, and when you try to get a judge to enforce them he will simply throw them out. I wonder if any retailers have contracts with WotC outside the US...
You are a flat out moron and should not represent your country. Then again if you are correct your country is full of shit and thank god I don't live there. Contracts are a set of legal rules set by at least two entities. It is made to fill in a void the gov't law does not answer. The only times contracts are not valid are when they break criminal law (e.g. a contract to have someone murdered would not hold up in court), or if they are used to supersede "dummy" laws. Dummy laws are laws, civil laws, used to protect (generally consumers) the public and they cannot be suppressed. For example if you sign an apartment rental agreement a dummy law (in Pennsylvania) states that your landlord may not enter your apartment without your consent or it being an emergency (fire, flood, etc). Some apartment owners have you "waive" that right in the contract, however, it is not legal.
However, it's still crap to screw over your retailer, and the customers who PAID for your product.
So other then the retailer who may have based his entire business model on those PDFs (poor business model) how was the retailer screwed by WoTC? You think this is the only time a company tells a retailer they are discontinuing a product?
How does the customer who PAID for this product get screwed? They still have the product.
You need to answer these questions before you can legitimately state WoTC screwed them.
This distinction has almost no practical value. If I bought something, I own it. If I leased something, I dont. "Licensing" fits neither of these two categories, as it basically says "you bought it, but its treated as a lease."
Actually you are wrong on all counts.
1) Licensing information has value. Many companies license material and while they are using it the material is providing them value (think eLearning)>
2) The difference between leasing/owning is that one you have to return at the end of some period and the other you keep
3) Licensing fits this category nicely. Per the licensing agreement you get to keep the product for a term of X where X can be "forever", however, unlike ownership you cannot do things such as make copies and sell/give those copies out to other folks legally (unless the license allows you do do it).
So you paid money to license it. Buy is just a generic/global term used at the store "Hey you bought a new book, congtulations"...except you are not allowed, by law, to copy and then distribute that book.
But if you think you are so correct I highly recommend you hire a lawyer (I am sure some public group would provide you with a free attorney) and make history. The person who can use your argument in a court of law and *win* would set massive precedent. You would definitely get your name in news and probably make a ton of money on the lecture circuit.
I think the missing part is because the spell is partly offensive? Get a purely healing ability and I don't think that is a problem? I could be wrong but I am not a cleric.
WIth regards to PDFs - if they are free a lot of people will opt to acquire them and NOT buy the books. I actually prefer PDFs to books. Yes books are easier to read, but they suck for storage and transport. Why try and lug 15-20 books to a game when I can bring my laptop? Why worry about storing 15-20 books in my home (i own a condo so space is premium) when i can use a laptop? I have no problem dishing out the money for PDFs (though they should be cheaper since production costs are cheaper).
I like this model where they only expect one person in the group to have a copy of a specific book (though many groups have multiples of each). So if I buy the hard cover I also get the pdf? But if they stop the pdfs this is no longer the case.
I don't mind the subscription model for the software (they come out with updates once/month) I mind that I have to resubscribe to get material that I previously got...Also backing up is not possible since when you reinstall you have to subscribe to make it a full version (again pay money).
Not being able to afford a lawyer should they try to assert ownership of my campaign setting (which I had available online at the time), I pulled it and none of it has ever been online again since. In fact, I haven't bought any D&D product since 2000, so Dancey sure did a great job at keeping us 1E/2E people excited about the game as they were getting ready to launch 3E. By the time the OGL came out, I had no faith left in TSR/WOTC/Hasbro and, as the post below illustrates, the possibility that they were still claiming ownership of my material if I used them anyway.
Many people have played 3x, 4e and not had any issues. The campaign I am in, the enWorld story hour is one of the most popular story hours. The DM writes our campaign so well and people go crazy waiting for updates. WoTC is not harassing us at all.
So you did not buy any product since 2000. Did you use any of their products since 2000? Did you use their OGL/SRD products?
They are not bankrupt, but what they are doing is shattering their core userbase into many different groups. This is not the same as 1st ed vs 2nd ed players, or the players (like me) who still play 2nd and 3e.
Hasbro/WotC completely dropped support for their OGL that they developed with 3rd edition, but many people still use that. There are many other new, creative RPGs that can easily give D&D a run for its money, and the old powerhouses like Palladium are still going strong.
They are still the number 1 gaming company. DnD is the staple for RPG
It's funny that everything you mention about 4e is in the sense of a dumbing-down or simplifying. WotC has always been obsessed with that concept but it is just not in sync with reality. Gamers love complexity and they want a system that has rich options. Why do you think WotCs attempts to turn RPGs into a kids oversimplified boardgame always fail, and the system inevitable ends up becoming more and more complex?
Simplifying stuff is good - makes gameplay go too fast. In 3x, at level 12+ we could spend an hour going through one round for a group of 5 people. That is insane. You can still have complexity with options - which magic items, feats, skills, abilities, classes, etc - but they are attempting to make gameplay go faster. I know people who avoid DnD because combat is stupid slow. They prefer GURPs due to the speed of that.
As for the actual content, well WotC will never be able to top the greats of 2nd edition; that is when there was true creative talent in the AD&D universe, with settings like Planescape, Dark Sun and Spelljammer as well as the more "traditional" fantasy settings on Toril, Krynn and Greyhawk. WotC has just been living off those great masterminds and reprinting books of lists (feats, skills, equipment, classes, whatever), not creating anything of its own.
That is 100% complete opinion. Each person has their own preferences. Besides nothing prevents WoTC from reprinting all of those settings (how did you throw in spelljammer, and planescape just barely made it into ad&d - it was more 3.0) in 3x or 4e and apply the new rules.
there was a lot of 3.0 -> 3.5 errata, and in fact you did not nede to buy new books becasue the difference were all laid out on TSR's web site.
Except there was so much errata try getting it all into the correct place. Imagine if you bought Windows XP and MS said "we have patches for it, it's on our website. You can d/l it, but you are going to have to drop the files into the correct sections. You will have to delete the appropriate files before you drop in the new files. We won't help you with this. Or you could buy our NEW version which is really just the fixes to the OLD version". I would have been happy if they offered some discount "send us your old books and get 10-25% off the new ones"
that's 11 movie tickets. Spread out over a few years.
Considering the books can be found for under 20 bucks, it's even better.
Bad analogy to compare movies to books. Also, price is not the issue (nor finding them under retail). People had the "option" of getting the fixes for free (and constantly having to reference them which slows up game time...and time is money) or buy the new material at full price which was a fix to mistakes WoTC made.
And yes, WotC didn't hire Ninjas to sneak in and destroy all previous version
I beg to differ. They hired gnome ninja's and their move silently, hide in shadows, and forgery skills are epic!
Unless, of course, you don't. Things happen, stuff breaks, and when it does, you now lose access to your legitimately-purchased work.
If the place you purchased it from offers free downloads in case your computer busted it up then you need to take it up with them. Most places do not offer such a service. So if they do not offer the service it sucks for you (l2backup). If they did offer you a service then they are bound by your contract with them to replace your material or provide you a refund. That has nothing to do with WoTC.
Manufacturers can tell retailers to cease and desist from selling their products - electronic or otherwise. If they had a contract which said "Retailer is paying WoTC in advance for 100 licenses of our material for X dollars" then the retailer could say "sure we will stop selling it, but we only sold 20 so you owe us the cost of 80". Otherwise they have no recourse. Yes someone could come up with a lawsuit "I spent 40,000$ creating an ecommerce site specifically for your product which you no longer allow me to sell...you owe me money". But it all depends on the contract they signed. If WoTC had in their contract "we can tell you to stop selling our products at anytime without recourse then you must do so and you can't sue us" well it sucks for the retailer. It all depends on the contract - but to say "that is crap...." without knowing the contract is baseless.
I love it when people scream "sue" without knowing the facts.
Never take legal advice from Uncle Louie or Usenet. Ryan aint a lawyer
and others have disagreed with him about fan material. Besides, Wizards
has put up a liberal use policy on their site, one vetted by their pet
shysters. It comes down to honor, but lots of folks have decided to take
Wizards at their word. Compare the number of Star Trek sites with the
number of DnD sites sometime.
Until an experienced copyright lawyer, specifically with intimate knowledge of this license/situation, says otherwise I feel confident that WoTC was not malicious when they created the OGL license. Again, do you think publishers like Mongoose press would spend so much money to create VERY competative products (I believe they are the biggest competator to WoTC who utilize the d20 rules set) if they knew WoTC could just swoop in and take it? Remember these guys *CAN* afford lawyers. They also reference OGL, SRD, and Core rules books in their publications.
So it's not entirely clear but one could claim that under these terms, any game played with any DnD book that used OGL material is in fact OGL licensed, kind of like the GPL.
No offense meant to you, but if it is "not entirely clear" then this is a weak argument. There are MANY big name publishers who produced hard-bound books based on the 3x rule-set using the OGL license. Actually the OGL license was hailed as a break-through in the gaming industry to allow other publishers to add-on material utilizing the same rules set. I highly doubt publishers like Mongoose would create works that WoTC could then swoop in and steal it. I am more willing to bet this means that any subsequent materials they produce is covered in the OGL. So they are not relinquishing the copyrights to the rules but are allowing people to use them. WoTC produces the 3 core books under the OGL. They also produce 100 supplemental books. They want to make sure the OGL does not infringe on their right to not release the 100 supplemental books in the SRD format (which they do not).
Why do these arrogant companies think they can take back what they've sold without compensation? This is ripe for a lawsuit.
Your statement makes no sense. If they sold you a PDf you still have it on your computer. WoTC is not demanding you delete it from your computer. They are telling stores they cannot continue to sell the PDFs. Typically places that sell PDFs pay royalties to the company which owns the information (in this case WoTC). So for every PDf they sell they give x% to WoTC. WoTC is now saying "no more". They are not taking what a customer paid for away from them. Is their decision smart? I don't know - time will tell. Is it "ripe for a lawsuit" absolutely not. They can decide not to have their content sold anymore. If you honestly believe this is "ripe for a lawsuit" then you have no idea what you are talking about.
I don't know if Wotc did but it would be smart for them to do it and smarter for the bookstores to sell it (gauranteed sales). I doubt Wotc did - WoTC is not in the habit of buying their products. More then likely it is someone who wanted to do the same thing as you.
You may want to try ebay, amazon, borders, etc.
Doing a quick search on amazon dungeons and dragons 3.5
There are no shortages of books. You can also get it cheaper online.
Great you just gave WoTC a new business model. Whenever you buy one of their books you must buy the installation package which will have a WoTC technician come out and nail the book down into your coffee/gaming table.
Never heard of that...do you have a link to some articles? Considering they have their OGL and SRD information which is free to the public to use I don't understand how this claim came about.
No it isn't. I've been playing since 2nd edition. So far 4e is pretty decent. Yes it has some annoying aspects (daily abilities, more limited abilities to choose from) but it also has some nice ones (when you raise your stat scores you get to raise two of them instead of one, magic items are simpler, healing is simpler, etc). So it has it's positive traits and it's negative traits but overall it's not bad. It's also a much faster combat system.
While I hate buying the books over and over again I also realize that WoTC needs to do that every so often to get more sales. I was annoyed from 3.0 to 3.5 because that was a sham (3.5 was fixing 3.0), but 4.0 is a complete revamp so warrants it. There is still plenty of 3.0/3.5 material that you can play that. There are some companies that didn't even change and will continue with 3.5 material.
People will just do what happened BEFORE WotC started selling their rip-off priced pdfs (pdf should not cost as much as the hard-bound book) they will scan them in and put them online.
The moment you release your information to the public you open it up to be copied.
BTW their 4e application (a nice piece of software) requires a subcription to update it (that is fine) my beef with it is if your computer gets reformatted you MUST resubscribe (pay money) to get a full version of it. I think that is crap. If I paid for the software to utilize and decided not to pay for my monthly subscription renewal then I should not have to pay again to reinstall the software.
And in those 2-3 weeks they keep the person in a steril room devoid of any potential bacteria/virus' that could harm the person.
Hopefully they will be able to run positive clinical trials in the future. So far this is only effective on mice on relatively simple procedures (skin grafts, and pancreatic transfers). Kidneys, hearts, lungs are huge deals. I'm assuming if this hurdle is passed the doner would only need to have a blood-type match? That would be awesome and would make the waiting list that much simpler.
Are there real threats? Yes, of course there are. But when enough scaremongering is mixed into them, you get the reaction that the OP AC shows: Cry wolf once too often and people will ignore you.
Also, there are a few things that I'd consider a lot more dangerous and worrysome that you don't hear about at all. Intentionally or not, your decision.
I disagree with your cry wolf. Lets say someone says there is a threat and everyone needs to be prepared and we are going to invest tons of resources to stop the threat. Now we stopped the threat before anything happened. Does that mean we cried wolf? I am willing to bet you a lot of people, including a hell of a lot of people here, would say "CRY WOLF CRY WOLF" when in reality - the threat was stopped due to our efforts. Then again, if we didn't stop the threat people would say "why didn't you do anything? We had evidence this was going to happen and you ignored it. Shame on you" That situation could...oh wait, it did happen...9/11. Has anything like that happened since? No. Does that mean it can't ever happen again? No. Maybe part of the reason is due to our increased security, maybe just luck, and maybe because our gov't thwarted those events. We don't get to see the whole picture all the time. While this may hurt your feelings, it is necessary (I am sure there have been times in your life you avoided telling someone the whole truth for their own good).
Is there fear mongering? Yes. Are there people who want to spend more money to line their pockets and nothing else? Obviously. Does that mean we should not take every possible precaution to help save people's lives? Hell no. I would rather spend too much money and potentially save a life then spend too little money and potentially lose a life.
Slashdot Mirror
it is also that many ppl that have ideas never bother realize the ideas because they cannot afford to take the risks that they will by accident infringe on someones patent
This is missing some information and makes your statement seem bigger then it really is. When a person get's sued for patent infringement they have to pay based on the profits they make. So if your invention makes you $100 you do not get sued for $1 million. People who come up with great ideas do not just say "aww f it cause I might get sued". What they can do is apply for a patent themselves. A lot of these submarine patents are people who come up with ideas, sit on it, never develop it and then when a big company creates a similar idea and makes money on it they sue. This is why you see big companies create a ridiculous amount of patents for simple ideas - cya.
it is a similar issue with countries where you are by law required to put your home address on your webpage (i.e. Germany),
Are you sure it is home address and not an address? So if I launched a website I could put a PO box or my business address? Also does it have to be on the website or on the registry for the domain name?
Defendents get to pick trial by jury or judge. So MS' dumb fault for selecting Jury. Judges dumb fault for not overriding them.
basically every DRM that uses online activation?
Blizzard imo. This judge is a moron who set very bad precedent - and now that they have precedent they can sue any company that uses this kind of registration. I see Adobe in the newspaper in the near future.
It's hard to take sides on this one,
What is this more /. fud? Get a story posted on /. by saying "i am confused, I hate patents but I hate MS and this patent hurt MS". If you think patents suck then you should be defending MS in this case - otherwise you are a hippocrit. If you think patents are OK then you can cheer as MS got slammed.
Not knowing the exact nuances of this patent I think it is retarded and so is the judge for allowing a patent on preventing software frmo being installed on multiple computers. Well now this company is going to move onto other companies who do the same thing.
While that may be the case in the US, I'd like you to know that here in the Netherlands the law trumps any contract. So if you have any clauses in your contract that aren't in concert with the law they don't hold up in court. Even better, in many cases having 'unreasonably constraining' articles in a contract, everyone can safely sign the contract and simply ignore those articles, and when you try to get a judge to enforce them he will simply throw them out. I wonder if any retailers have contracts with WotC outside the US...
You are a flat out moron and should not represent your country. Then again if you are correct your country is full of shit and thank god I don't live there. Contracts are a set of legal rules set by at least two entities. It is made to fill in a void the gov't law does not answer. The only times contracts are not valid are when they break criminal law (e.g. a contract to have someone murdered would not hold up in court), or if they are used to supersede "dummy" laws. Dummy laws are laws, civil laws, used to protect (generally consumers) the public and they cannot be suppressed. For example if you sign an apartment rental agreement a dummy law (in Pennsylvania) states that your landlord may not enter your apartment without your consent or it being an emergency (fire, flood, etc). Some apartment owners have you "waive" that right in the contract, however, it is not legal.
However, it's still crap to screw over your retailer, and the customers who PAID for your product.
So other then the retailer who may have based his entire business model on those PDFs (poor business model) how was the retailer screwed by WoTC? You think this is the only time a company tells a retailer they are discontinuing a product?
How does the customer who PAID for this product get screwed? They still have the product.
You need to answer these questions before you can legitimately state WoTC screwed them.
This distinction has almost no practical value. If I bought something, I own it. If I leased something, I dont. "Licensing" fits neither of these two categories, as it basically says "you bought it, but its treated as a lease."
Actually you are wrong on all counts.
1) Licensing information has value. Many companies license material and while they are using it the material is providing them value (think eLearning)>
2) The difference between leasing/owning is that one you have to return at the end of some period and the other you keep
3) Licensing fits this category nicely. Per the licensing agreement you get to keep the product for a term of X where X can be "forever", however, unlike ownership you cannot do things such as make copies and sell/give those copies out to other folks legally (unless the license allows you do do it).
So you paid money to license it. Buy is just a generic/global term used at the store "Hey you bought a new book, congtulations"...except you are not allowed, by law, to copy and then distribute that book.
But if you think you are so correct I highly recommend you hire a lawyer (I am sure some public group would provide you with a free attorney) and make history. The person who can use your argument in a court of law and *win* would set massive precedent. You would definitely get your name in news and probably make a ton of money on the lecture circuit.
I think the missing part is because the spell is partly offensive? Get a purely healing ability and I don't think that is a problem? I could be wrong but I am not a cleric.
WIth regards to PDFs - if they are free a lot of people will opt to acquire them and NOT buy the books. I actually prefer PDFs to books. Yes books are easier to read, but they suck for storage and transport. Why try and lug 15-20 books to a game when I can bring my laptop? Why worry about storing 15-20 books in my home (i own a condo so space is premium) when i can use a laptop? I have no problem dishing out the money for PDFs (though they should be cheaper since production costs are cheaper).
I like this model where they only expect one person in the group to have a copy of a specific book (though many groups have multiples of each). So if I buy the hard cover I also get the pdf? But if they stop the pdfs this is no longer the case.
I don't mind the subscription model for the software (they come out with updates once/month) I mind that I have to resubscribe to get material that I previously got...Also backing up is not possible since when you reinstall you have to subscribe to make it a full version (again pay money).
Not being able to afford a lawyer should they try to assert ownership of my campaign setting (which I had available online at the time), I pulled it and none of it has ever been online again since. In fact, I haven't bought any D&D product since 2000, so Dancey sure did a great job at keeping us 1E/2E people excited about the game as they were getting ready to launch 3E. By the time the OGL came out, I had no faith left in TSR/WOTC/Hasbro and, as the post below illustrates, the possibility that they were still claiming ownership of my material if I used them anyway.
Many people have played 3x, 4e and not had any issues. The campaign I am in, the enWorld story hour is one of the most popular story hours. The DM writes our campaign so well and people go crazy waiting for updates. WoTC is not harassing us at all.
So you did not buy any product since 2000. Did you use any of their products since 2000? Did you use their OGL/SRD products?
They are not bankrupt, but what they are doing is shattering their core userbase into many different groups. This is not the same as 1st ed vs 2nd ed players, or the players (like me) who still play 2nd and 3e.
Hasbro/WotC completely dropped support for their OGL that they developed with 3rd edition, but many people still use that. There are many other new, creative RPGs that can easily give D&D a run for its money, and the old powerhouses like Palladium are still going strong.
They are still the number 1 gaming company. DnD is the staple for RPG
It's funny that everything you mention about 4e is in the sense of a dumbing-down or simplifying. WotC has always been obsessed with that concept but it is just not in sync with reality. Gamers love complexity and they want a system that has rich options. Why do you think WotCs attempts to turn RPGs into a kids oversimplified boardgame always fail, and the system inevitable ends up becoming more and more complex?
Simplifying stuff is good - makes gameplay go too fast. In 3x, at level 12+ we could spend an hour going through one round for a group of 5 people. That is insane. You can still have complexity with options - which magic items, feats, skills, abilities, classes, etc - but they are attempting to make gameplay go faster. I know people who avoid DnD because combat is stupid slow. They prefer GURPs due to the speed of that.
As for the actual content, well WotC will never be able to top the greats of 2nd edition; that is when there was true creative talent in the AD&D universe, with settings like Planescape, Dark Sun and Spelljammer as well as the more "traditional" fantasy settings on Toril, Krynn and Greyhawk. WotC has just been living off those great masterminds and reprinting books of lists (feats, skills, equipment, classes, whatever), not creating anything of its own.
That is 100% complete opinion. Each person has their own preferences. Besides nothing prevents WoTC from reprinting all of those settings (how did you throw in spelljammer, and planescape just barely made it into ad&d - it was more 3.0) in 3x or 4e and apply the new rules.
there was a lot of 3.0 -> 3.5 errata, and in fact you did not nede to buy new books becasue the difference were all laid out on TSR's web site.
Except there was so much errata try getting it all into the correct place. Imagine if you bought Windows XP and MS said "we have patches for it, it's on our website. You can d/l it, but you are going to have to drop the files into the correct sections. You will have to delete the appropriate files before you drop in the new files. We won't help you with this. Or you could buy our NEW version which is really just the fixes to the OLD version". I would have been happy if they offered some discount "send us your old books and get 10-25% off the new ones"
that's 11 movie tickets. Spread out over a few years. Considering the books can be found for under 20 bucks, it's even better.
Bad analogy to compare movies to books. Also, price is not the issue (nor finding them under retail). People had the "option" of getting the fixes for free (and constantly having to reference them which slows up game time...and time is money) or buy the new material at full price which was a fix to mistakes WoTC made.
And yes, WotC didn't hire Ninjas to sneak in and destroy all previous version
I beg to differ. They hired gnome ninja's and their move silently, hide in shadows, and forgery skills are epic!
Unless, of course, you don't. Things happen, stuff breaks, and when it does, you now lose access to your legitimately-purchased work.
If the place you purchased it from offers free downloads in case your computer busted it up then you need to take it up with them. Most places do not offer such a service. So if they do not offer the service it sucks for you (l2backup). If they did offer you a service then they are bound by your contract with them to replace your material or provide you a refund. That has nothing to do with WoTC.
Manufacturers can tell retailers to cease and desist from selling their products - electronic or otherwise. If they had a contract which said "Retailer is paying WoTC in advance for 100 licenses of our material for X dollars" then the retailer could say "sure we will stop selling it, but we only sold 20 so you owe us the cost of 80". Otherwise they have no recourse. Yes someone could come up with a lawsuit "I spent 40,000$ creating an ecommerce site specifically for your product which you no longer allow me to sell...you owe me money". But it all depends on the contract they signed. If WoTC had in their contract "we can tell you to stop selling our products at anytime without recourse then you must do so and you can't sue us" well it sucks for the retailer. It all depends on the contract - but to say "that is crap...." without knowing the contract is baseless.
I love it when people scream "sue" without knowing the facts.
Never take legal advice from Uncle Louie or Usenet. Ryan aint a lawyer and others have disagreed with him about fan material. Besides, Wizards has put up a liberal use policy on their site, one vetted by their pet shysters. It comes down to honor, but lots of folks have decided to take Wizards at their word. Compare the number of Star Trek sites with the number of DnD sites sometime.
Until an experienced copyright lawyer, specifically with intimate knowledge of this license/situation, says otherwise I feel confident that WoTC was not malicious when they created the OGL license. Again, do you think publishers like Mongoose press would spend so much money to create VERY competative products (I believe they are the biggest competator to WoTC who utilize the d20 rules set) if they knew WoTC could just swoop in and take it? Remember these guys *CAN* afford lawyers. They also reference OGL, SRD, and Core rules books in their publications.
So it's not entirely clear but one could claim that under these terms, any game played with any DnD book that used OGL material is in fact OGL licensed, kind of like the GPL.
No offense meant to you, but if it is "not entirely clear" then this is a weak argument. There are MANY big name publishers who produced hard-bound books based on the 3x rule-set using the OGL license. Actually the OGL license was hailed as a break-through in the gaming industry to allow other publishers to add-on material utilizing the same rules set. I highly doubt publishers like Mongoose would create works that WoTC could then swoop in and steal it. I am more willing to bet this means that any subsequent materials they produce is covered in the OGL. So they are not relinquishing the copyrights to the rules but are allowing people to use them. WoTC produces the 3 core books under the OGL. They also produce 100 supplemental books. They want to make sure the OGL does not infringe on their right to not release the 100 supplemental books in the SRD format (which they do not).
Why do these arrogant companies think they can take back what they've sold without compensation? This is ripe for a lawsuit.
Your statement makes no sense. If they sold you a PDf you still have it on your computer. WoTC is not demanding you delete it from your computer. They are telling stores they cannot continue to sell the PDFs. Typically places that sell PDFs pay royalties to the company which owns the information (in this case WoTC). So for every PDf they sell they give x% to WoTC. WoTC is now saying "no more". They are not taking what a customer paid for away from them. Is their decision smart? I don't know - time will tell. Is it "ripe for a lawsuit" absolutely not. They can decide not to have their content sold anymore. If you honestly believe this is "ripe for a lawsuit" then you have no idea what you are talking about.
I don't know if Wotc did but it would be smart for them to do it and smarter for the bookstores to sell it (gauranteed sales). I doubt Wotc did - WoTC is not in the habit of buying their products. More then likely it is someone who wanted to do the same thing as you.
You may want to try ebay, amazon, borders, etc. Doing a quick search on amazon dungeons and dragons 3.5
There are no shortages of books. You can also get it cheaper online.
You didn't own the pdfs, you licensed them. There is a difference.
realizing people pirate anything not nailed down
Great you just gave WoTC a new business model. Whenever you buy one of their books you must buy the installation package which will have a WoTC technician come out and nail the book down into your coffee/gaming table.
Never heard of that...do you have a link to some articles? Considering they have their OGL and SRD information which is free to the public to use I don't understand how this claim came about.
No it isn't. I've been playing since 2nd edition. So far 4e is pretty decent. Yes it has some annoying aspects (daily abilities, more limited abilities to choose from) but it also has some nice ones (when you raise your stat scores you get to raise two of them instead of one, magic items are simpler, healing is simpler, etc). So it has it's positive traits and it's negative traits but overall it's not bad. It's also a much faster combat system.
While I hate buying the books over and over again I also realize that WoTC needs to do that every so often to get more sales. I was annoyed from 3.0 to 3.5 because that was a sham (3.5 was fixing 3.0), but 4.0 is a complete revamp so warrants it. There is still plenty of 3.0/3.5 material that you can play that. There are some companies that didn't even change and will continue with 3.5 material.
People will just do what happened BEFORE WotC started selling their rip-off priced pdfs (pdf should not cost as much as the hard-bound book) they will scan them in and put them online.
The moment you release your information to the public you open it up to be copied.
BTW their 4e application (a nice piece of software) requires a subcription to update it (that is fine) my beef with it is if your computer gets reformatted you MUST resubscribe (pay money) to get a full version of it. I think that is crap. If I paid for the software to utilize and decided not to pay for my monthly subscription renewal then I should not have to pay again to reinstall the software.
And in those 2-3 weeks they keep the person in a steril room devoid of any potential bacteria/virus' that could harm the person.
Hopefully they will be able to run positive clinical trials in the future. So far this is only effective on mice on relatively simple procedures (skin grafts, and pancreatic transfers). Kidneys, hearts, lungs are huge deals. I'm assuming if this hurdle is passed the doner would only need to have a blood-type match? That would be awesome and would make the waiting list that much simpler.
Are there real threats? Yes, of course there are. But when enough scaremongering is mixed into them, you get the reaction that the OP AC shows: Cry wolf once too often and people will ignore you. Also, there are a few things that I'd consider a lot more dangerous and worrysome that you don't hear about at all. Intentionally or not, your decision.
I disagree with your cry wolf. Lets say someone says there is a threat and everyone needs to be prepared and we are going to invest tons of resources to stop the threat. Now we stopped the threat before anything happened. Does that mean we cried wolf? I am willing to bet you a lot of people, including a hell of a lot of people here, would say "CRY WOLF CRY WOLF" when in reality - the threat was stopped due to our efforts. Then again, if we didn't stop the threat people would say "why didn't you do anything? We had evidence this was going to happen and you ignored it. Shame on you" That situation could...oh wait, it did happen...9/11. Has anything like that happened since? No. Does that mean it can't ever happen again? No. Maybe part of the reason is due to our increased security, maybe just luck, and maybe because our gov't thwarted those events. We don't get to see the whole picture all the time. While this may hurt your feelings, it is necessary (I am sure there have been times in your life you avoided telling someone the whole truth for their own good).
Is there fear mongering? Yes. Are there people who want to spend more money to line their pockets and nothing else? Obviously. Does that mean we should not take every possible precaution to help save people's lives? Hell no. I would rather spend too much money and potentially save a life then spend too little money and potentially lose a life.