Sorry if this ends up turning into a monster flamewar here, but it seems like a pretty big topic that hasn't been touched upon yet.
The full text is here, but the gist of it is that the Wolf is telling people that at any one of their games in which actual money changes hands (even in a non-profit, cover-our-costs way), the Storyteller must be a member of their club (at a cost of $20.00 per year), and if this game is an ongoing chronicle, all the players must be as well. Obviously, this hits live-action games pretty hard, sicne a fair number of them rent space, but according to the specific wording of the announcement, you're in violation if you run a game at home and have the players chip in for pizza.
They're not requiring any sort of interaction with the Camarilla club's continuity, whether in the tabletop or live-action sense, but they do require you to adhere to their code of conduct...defining what this means is tricky, though, since nearly everything in the CFC's handbook relates specifically to their live-action chronicle instead of general rules of conduct.
So, discuss...I expect the overall reaction to be the same here as it was on the Wolf's own forums, but I wanted to make it known to anyone who's thinking about getting into Mind's Eye Theater specifically, since these requirements are definitely not made known to anyone buying the books. In my mind, this is basically unenforceable and will either be forgotten by the Wolf or actually rescinded around the time it claims to go into effect, but only time will tell, i guess.
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Last edited by Martial Controller; 07-07-2005 at 12:40 AM..
I'd love to see them enforce this. (in a tone suggestive of watching the local alkie take over chemical delivery in downtown after happyhour). But it is likely there for when someone drops a dime so WW can do something, uhm in practice I am not sure about their larger strategy.
chances are someone from WWGS will drop by to both justify, clarify, and condescend.
Place your bets
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Last edited by martikhoras; 07-06-2005 at 10:36 PM..
Unless you enter into a contract with them agreeing to this (and, no, buying one of their books even if the terms are somewhere in it almost certainly doesn't count), this almost certainly exceeds any power that WW has. Now, if you are "selling" the sessions with their trademarks, there may be a legitimate trademark interest (or not, under nominative fair use and other doctrines), and if the performance is "public" as defined in the copyright law, there might (especially if a packaged adventure is being run) arguably be a copyright interest, though, if that is the case, any public "performance" of a copyrighted module without a license is a breach of copyright, as commerciality isn't a requirement for "public performance".
But I think that running a session based on a module is only dubiously anything like "performance" as imagined by the copyright law, and if the players are members of your family or your or their social acquaintances, whether they are paying or not, it is not "public" as defined in the copyright act, and only public performance is a protected right that copyright owners have a right to control.
Specifically, if you get together with your regular group already playing the game, decide to move your game to a better facility than your basement -- and rent a conference room somewhere, and you pay for the use of the venue and collect money from the participants to cover it, whatever WW claims in their policy, they have absolutely no legal right that I can see to charge you money for it. You aren't marketing with their trademark. You aren't publicly performing the work, even if running a game with their rules is a performance, which I have a feeling no court would buy. Their assertion that they gain some legal right to control by the fact that money changes hands is, as best I can tell, completely without any legal basis.
OTOH, if they can find people willing to pay them money to do something they are free to do anyway without paying, well, that is pretty clever business for them.
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Chris Dicely
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
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I'm willing to bet this is standard legal gumf to cover themselves, and they have zero intention of suing you for running a Vampire freeform at LocalCon 2006.
I'm willing to bet this is standard legal gumf to cover themselves, and they have zero intention of suing you for running a Vampire freeform at LocalCon 2006.
Convention fees are explicitly excluded, so I'm guessing you're pretty spot-on there. I think it's mostly to avoid any spillover litigation from a hypothetical LARP involving booze, minors and unhealthy conjunctions thereof or something of the sort.
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Convention fees are explicitly excluded, so I'm guessing you're pretty spot-on there. I think it's mostly to avoid any spillover litigation from a hypothetical LARP involving booze, minors and unhealthy conjunctions thereof or something of the sort.
Take it from me - if the Wolf has Professional Indemnity and/or Public and Products Liability insurance, they're probably required to do this sort of shit.
(well, they probably would in Australia, anyway ).
I don't see a problem with this either. it's like at a disco - if there's an entrance fee, the organizer has to pay into the fund for the producers of the music.
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I don't see a problem with this either. it's like at a disco - if there's an entrance fee, the organizer has to pay into the fund for the producers of the music.
It is rather indisputable that what a disco does is public performance of copyrighted music, as described in the copyright law.
It is rather less clear, to say the least, that the range of things WW purports to have a right to demand payment for here are either "public" or "performance" as described in the copyright law.
So the two situations, I would say, while descriptively perhaps similar in a broad sense, are not really the same.
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