I'm going to wade in here with a post that will probably seem more negative than it is meant to be.
A few people seem to be defending the fan publication policy on the grounds that there is a need for Issaries to protect its intellectual property. Which is fine as far as it goes, but I don't see anyone claiming otherwise. I believe that objections to the policy are not based on its existence per se - I think everyone agrees that there is the need for some policy that protects Issaries rights. Rather, I think the objections are to specific clauses within the policy.
I'm aware of the following concerns, not all of which I agree with :
Now, hopefully in practice Issaries will engage in a dialogue with fan publishers that ensures that neither (a) nor (b) is ever the answer to any final product submitted for proposal. That'll take a certain amount of work, trust, and honesty on both sides. I've heard some discouraging comments on this, but I'll wait to see how it works in practice.
2. The policy requires all game aids to be sent to Issaries and not be made available to anyone outside the game. Specifically, anything posted on a website or "other Online Source" must be submitted for explicit approval. Taken literally this is crazy - do Issaries really want a copy of all my scribbled notes and scrawled maps? Do they really care that I use a mailing list to distribute odd bits of info to my players? Worse, this could provide another layer of bureaucracy for those writing games for cons to deal with, which is the last thing such people need.
Hopefully, common sense will prevail, and in practice this will in fact just be "stick it on your website and it counts as web publishing, print more copies than you need and sell them and it counts as a standalone publication". This isn't what it says though, which is worrying.
3. The concept use statement. My personal main objection. If I spend some time writing stories about "Vinga's little sister XXX" and Issaries then publish a cult of "XXX, Vinga's little sister" I expect to be credited as the creator. I don't think anyone would find that unreasonable - and encouragingly comments I've had from Greg suggest he thinks it is reasonable too. Yet, the "concept use" statement claims that Issaries can "use any Gloranthan concepts without credit". Is "reasonable credit where possible" too much to ask for?
4. The final objection I can see is that it doesn't appear to have been drafted by someone who quite knows what they're talking about. The "concept use" statement has Issaries reserving rights that would normally need to be granted to the corporation by the original author. There's an odd statement about top-level domains which implies that whoever wrote it doesn't know what a top-level domain is.
Summary time. There's nothing wrong with Issaries drafting a fan policy to protect itself and its intellectual property. I don't believe anyone is arguing otherwise. But people have some very real concerns that aspects of this policy are not the best way to do so.
Personally, I believe this policy haas some passages that are unreasonable, is open to abuse that hopefully won't happen (but so are most contracts...) and has some holes in it that simply shouldn't be there, and could cause problems in the long term.
Cheers,
Graham
-- Graham Robinson graham_at_... Albion Software Engineering Ltd.
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