Quote:
Originally Posted by azomboid
Copyright was brought up in this discussion and I want to know how a program like Fantasy Grounds seems to have the same digital distribution deals with the same companies as Hero Lab so I assume RW as well, however please correct me if I'm wrong, yet are not breaking copyright law or losing their deals due to an easy export feature of everything from character sheets to rulesets.... So, I guess I'm asking if possible for a little clarification on how it's okay for them but not for RW and why if copyright is indeed the concern.
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Before answering, I’m going to clarify the language used in this thread by differentiating between “copyright” and “intellectual property”. To be clear, I’m not an expert on this stuff (we have a lawyer on retainer to help us navigate the legal issues when necessary), but this clarification is important.
- Copyright is the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.: works granted such right by law on or after January 1, 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 70 years after his or her death within the U.S.
- Intellectual Property is property that results from original creative thought, as patents, copyright material, and trademarks.
I’m going to use the term “intellectual property” (or IP), as it covers copyrights, trademarks, and other areas of concerns for most publishers.
Your two questions appear to be the following:
- Why can users export characters and character creation details (like spell/ability descriptions) from tools like Hero Lab and Fantasy Grounds if it’s a publisher’s IP?
- If publishers are fine with exporting characters and character creation details, why would they have a problem with exporting content through Realm Works?
I can speak to Hero Lab, as it’s our tool, but my answers likely apply to Fantasy Grounds as well. For the game systems for which we have a license, the publishers knew what users could export/print when we came to an agreement. They came to the same realization that many users have arrived at – Hero Lab does not replace the rulebooks. You could try to play Pathfinder (or another supported game system) with just Hero Lab and without the rulebooks, but you would be missing a lot of context and you wouldn’t truly understand the game or your character. Running a game with just Hero Lab would be even harder. That’s because Hero Lab is mainly game mechanics, and
complements the rulebooks. Because of this, our publishing partners have licensed their intellectual property (specifically, the IP needed for character creation) so that we can use it in Hero Lab.
Realm Works is very different from Hero Lab. Whereas Hero Lab is mostly game mechanics, the Realm Works Content Market will sell rules content, campaign worlds, adventures, and similar intellectual property. This material, if exported, could be used by some people in place of the official books because of the way it is presented and compiled – it’s essentially the entire book reorganized, augmented with things like plot diagrams and map pins, fully indexed, and extensively cross-linked.
As an example, we sell the Rise of the Runelords encounters through Hero Lab. These encounters include all of the monsters & NPCs present throughout the official Pathfinder Adventure Path. Someone could technically print all of the monsters & NPCs to PDF and put them on their website. However, they’re not that valuable by themselves, because you don’t know the story details (the context) behind their character sheets.
Now imagine we sold Rise of the Runelords in Realm Works, and that we had some sort of print to PDF feature. While it might not be organized the same way as the official PDF or printed book, suddenly someone could print the Rise of the Runelords story, put it on their website, and anyone could grab it for free. You can imagine that Paizo (the publisher behind Pathfinder) would not be very pleased with us, especially since they’re still selling Rise of the Runelords. Angering one of our partner companies would not be a good business move for us.
I hope this makes it clear that the content exported or printed from Hero Lab is fundamentally different from the content that could potentially be exported or printed from Realm Works, and so it really cannot be compared.