Legal/copyright stuff

Thoughts on the legal/copyright rules, particularly the bit about not using other people's material? Does that seem reasonable to you? Is anyone going to be affected?

Slight rethink to the legal bit. Please give me your views - remember, this isn't enshrined in Pro's rules yet, but if nobody offers changes, it will be.

Will this be a good solution, bad or OK? Will it make you more or less keen to play at Pro or MB?

Candy and Snog in particular, haven't heard from you on this question so will you tell me what you think, please? And Ree, I know I'm rehashing what we've already talked about, but did I miss anything?

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So, the rules on copyrighted content...

Profusion
The rules about copyrighted characters at Pro are the same as before. If you're prepared to change your character to take out the proprietary bits, you can play the character at Pro.

However...

MoonBurnt
Remember that our sister site does allow RPG characters. The admin, Ree, does ask that MoonBurnt members have at least as many original characters as they have copyrighted/RPG/fandom characters.

Twine
The Twine Encyclopaedia is shared between Pro and MB, so it's fine to list any character you play at either group in Twine.

However, you still can't put copyrighted stuff up on Twine. Mentioning that a character is a Jedi, Tremere etc. is fine, but you can't put any bits from sourcebooks or put in long lists of your character's ability names.

• Describe the character instead of reeling off jargon and numbers. Stats are useless because:
  • we don't use stats to determine fights and things: you and the other writer will be deciding the outcome based on both characters' abilities and the results you want for the scene
  • some of the people reading might not know anything about the game/fandom in question, and it's not their duty to learn; you need to give a good general idea of your character's appearance and abilities
• We have a general entry for WOD and will do the same for other RPGs - link to that page, which has external links so that people can read more if they like.

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Pro/MB?
MoonBurnt and Pro have plenty of overlap in membership and genre. I hope most of us will be playing at both places. Here are the main points about both groups.

Profusion is for original writing, both plotted and freeform, mainly in the sci-fi and fantasy genres (but with no restrictions on sex or horror), with emphasis on big group projects, cross-world storylines and worldbuilding, and also solo or small group work.

Moonburnt is for roleplay, mostly freeform but some loosely plotted, mainly in the sci-fi, fantasy and horror genres, some RPG and fandom-based characters allowed, and emphasis on cross-world storylines.

Feedback please. Even if it's just "I agree with you so much that I'm speechless" or "I don't care, that's why I'm not commenting".

The rules will be finalised on Saturday (8th July). After that I won't be pushing you all for opinions about them again, unless for some reason they need changing in the future.

Sounds good. About time we had something like this.

The rules make sense to me. Ruling out proprietary characters refocuses Pro back on writing over roleplaying, in my mind.

I have to point out, though, that I don't plan to allow fandom characters at MoonBurnt. To take the anime Inu Yasha as an example -- canid half-demon? Sure, bring him in, just make sure he's not a renamed character rip. Inu Yasha himself or another character from the show/manga? Hell no.

I have 2 things to say:

"I agree with you so much that I'm speechless"
-and-
"I don't care, that's why I'm not commenting"

(ya wanted feedback, yesh?) ;-P

Seriously, the rule changes sound fine to me. I don't think anything needs to be added/subtracted.

Sarina and Sweets - thanks. ;p

Ree - so just to clarify, nothing from fandom universes? (I was thinking of people like Erin's old Zara, the Jedi, when I assumed some fan-charries were allowed.)

Fandom universe is fine, though wholly original characters are encouraged. But it still has to be an original character, not Luke Skywalker or something. (Sidebar: Jaina's ship is probably of Corellian, Star-Wars-universe design, and she's attempted Force meditation and lightsabre use before.)

That was what I meant to say. I'll try to make that clearer - hopefully I did say it clearly enough in Twine's page?

Works fine for me.

I don't tend to published universes anyway....

Mutt, that bit looks so good that I may cadge it for MoonBurnt's character policy. Only with your permission, of course.

Of course!

I've just taken out the "under discussion" notice and edit-locked the page.

(edit: and added a positive rule about worldbuilding)

P.S. Ree, you might find it easier to use the updated Pro legal page instead of the Twine page. The wording's different.

I've just noticed the legal page has stopped working. Probably caused by my upgrading the board software. Fixing with all due haste. Twine's legal page (basically the same thing) is still working.

Fixed! I unironically love this software.

I've added a bit to the legal page disallowing us from adding things to the boards that are available under viral/copyleft licences, because obviously we can't follow the terms of these and release all our stuff under an identical licence.

Please bear in mind that Wikipedia is GPL, which is viral, and so we shouldn't be using text from there unless under fair use/fair dealing law, which in the UK is pretty strict.

(Just to avoid confusion, of course you can still link to such things.)

Also added a bit to the "you can't play something from someone else's book at Pro" bit to say "unless a Pro member wrote it, in which case, talk to them!"

I haven't heard anything about MoonBurnt in a while. I'm wondering whether to comment out those bits. Ree?

Mutt, you may as well comment them out. I want to get it going someday, but it doesn't look like I'll have the time and energy in the near future.

Updates today to the legal page. No pre-consultation for the reason that I haven't added anything that restricts you - in fact the opposite, in that it's making extra rights/permissions/powers explicit.

Old text of section 1.0:

1. What's the deal when I post something at Profusion?
When you add something to the Pro messageboards, whether it's a post to a story or to an OOC area, you are giving Profusion and its admin permission to display, copy, publish, show off etc. your writing.

You still hold the copyright to your own intellectual property (like your characters, or planets or species you invented) and of course you can also post or publish your contributions elsewhere.

We may archive, delete or, in very unusual circumstances, edit your postings at our own discretion, although if possible, you'll get a warning before anything major disappears. If the edit or deletion is because of a disagreement, we'll give you every chance we can to work out a solution with the other member before taking action.

New text, changes emphasised:

1. What's the deal when I post something at Profusion?
When you add something to the Pro messageboards, whether it's a post to a story or to an OOC area, you are giving us permission to display, copy, publish, show off etc. your writing.

You still hold the copyright to your own intellectual property (which covers pieces of writing as well as the characters, planets and species you invent) and of course you can also post or publish your contributions elsewhere. You're also free to edit and revise it, which we consider natural parts of the creative process. Old backups may contain pre-edited versions and our software tracks edits. These are for our records in case of any disputes.

We may archive, delete or, in very unusual circumstances, edit your postings at our own discretion, although if possible, you'll get a warning before anything major disappears. If the edit or deletion is because of a disagreement, we'll give you every chance we can to work out a solution with the other member before taking action.

Notes:

a: The purpose of this rule is not to re-use your work in ways you wouldn't want. It's to make you aware that your contributions will be readable on the web, backed up and other things necessary to running a normal collaborative website.
b: Pro's data is hosted on servers located in the UK and there are no plans to change that.

(nb the "us" in the first para is newly defined further up the page, see the following)

New notes added to top of page:

a: In this guide the words "we" and "our" are used informally to refer to Profusion's moderators and admins.
b: This guide is written as if addressing questions from a new or prospective member, but the same rules apply to all members and anyone using content from Profusion (see section 2).

Other minor changes to other bits of the page for clarity, along the lines of (and I think this is the longest such change):

Choose a short excerpt. If the piece of writing is fairly long, then one or two paragraphs' worth of text is a reasonable excerpt. You can use a cool extract to show why you liked it: we'd just prefer people to read the whole thing on our site.

Any problems, holler here or by email if you prefer.