I appreciate Graham's service to the community and agree that he should not be burdened with having to enforce an over-restrictive policy. Now that we agree on that, let's get rid of the policy.
> I am interested to know what others in the GTA feel
> about this. We will set up a site on the GTA pages
> for discussion for people who have an opinion.
> I don't think this is the place for GTA business.
Fine, I'll weigh in there when it becomes available. I have lots of other points to make, but won't make them here. I will make here only those points needed to respond directly to what you said.
> For myself: people have paid money to become
> insiders, with acccess to this information.
Including myself, with no warning that quoting a single fact would be considered misuse of that access. The "benefits" page certainly says nothing of the sort. I'd feel ripped off if the policy is so limiting that I can't, for example, use information from those pages in a game, or in a discussion with friends.
> To distribute it otherwise seems to be a violation
> of the agreement that everyone has made.
Two points here:
First, it is not fair to call what Terra did "distribution". It makes it sound like he posted an entire file to the group. He cited one fact. The word "distribution" carries overtones of copyright inringement, which is certainly not indicated by the facts.
Second, none of us made any "agreement" to keep information and ideas secret. We sent money for a membership that granted us access to materials. (It certainly did not grant us the right to copy or distribute those materials, but that's not at issue here.) There was no requirement stated at the time that we keep the information secret. See, e.g., the "benefits" page.
The GTA Newsletter (which followed, not preceded, our memberships) says "the material on the site (as with all other GTA benefits) are for your personal use only, and should not be shared with anyone". This clearly refers to "material" rather than ideas or information. Terra did not share any file from the GTA site; he shared one piece of information. He even snipped off the remainder of the sentence to narrowly tailor what information he did share to the issue at hand. (Or would you say that it is a "material" because he quoted it, rather than paraphrased it? Surely not, since that would open the entire thing up to free paraphrasing.)
You then "ask" us on the GTA access page not to discuss the particulars on mailing lists, usenet groups, or other mediums. Although what "discussing the particulars" might mean is ambiguous, we all (as far as I know) keep away from discussing anything that might undermine the market for Gloranthan products, out of respect and because we trust you to set up limitations that benefit us all through more Gloranthan goodies.
However, that's not an agreement. That's community spirit. I don't think Terra's single, isolated quote of a part of a sentence from a document of over 100 paragraphs, when the quoted portion proves only a relatively insignificant detail about Glorantha, is contrary to that spirit. If it is, I have trouble distinguishing it from using the information in a game or an e-mail discussion with friends, which seems to be an "other medium". They are equally unlikely to have any negative effect on the market for Gloranthan products.
I would feel differently if he had quoted the key fact to a regional story arc that only Heroes have access to, or if he had quoted all or an extensive portion of one of the articles on the GTA site. But he didn't. I know there's a fuzzy line between them, but I've not heard of any instances in which anyone really abused their access, so it seems self-policing.
GTA members trusted Issaries with their hard-earned cash to fund, speculatively, the restoration of Gloranthan products to the marketplace. I would think that you could trust us not to do anything that would undermine that market, without the need for overbroad policies.
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