DGP stuff?

[Blue Ghost]

I hate to start another of these threads as we've beat this horse to death, but did the DGP Mega Traveller dilemma ever get sorted out, or are we still without all the DGP addons save for the books that are on the MT CD?

Thanks for any reply.

 

[Vargas]

If the DGP stuff ever sees the light of day again you'll know it from all the screams of delight among those interested in such things. There's no way it'll stay below the radar for long.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Heh, well it's been how many years now?

 

[Fritz_Brown]

At what point does the "we never really intend to publish this again" rule kick in? You can't realistically refuse to publish it for 30 years, then claim "oh, yes, we have a right to stop publication of that material because it will materially harm us."

Disclaimer: I don't know if the stupid DCMA changed that rule. It changed a lot of other common sense rules for the worse.

 

[tjoneslo]

At what point does the "we never really intend to publish this again" rule kick in? You can't realistically refuse to publish it for 30 years, then claim "oh, yes, we have a right to stop publication of that material because it will materially harm us."

Disclaimer: I don't know if the stupid DCMA changed that rule. It changed a lot of other common sense rules for the worse.

That rule is gone, along with a whole bunch of other common sense things. Say Thank You to Walt Disney corporation for never wanting Micky Mouse to fall out of copyright.

This mirrors an interesting debate about the Vilani empire's take on intellectual property.

 

[Sir Brad]

I think it's 50 years, because non-intent to publish dose not rule out Financial Gain by licensing or sale of publishing rights or the sale of archived materials to the collectors market.

we had something like that down hear, a band got screwed on their contract in the 70's, in the late 2000's a couple of band members where dieing and a couple more where flat broke, they wanted to put the band back together for (I kid you not) the "Broke & Dieing" tour the Label wouldn't even let them do Covers of their own materiel. the Band members had letters from the record company that they never intended to re-release the bands stuff again.

a few years later the guys that where dieing where dead leaving their Wives and Kids with doctors bills that wiped out their estates and one of the broke guys had committed suicide, the Record Company was cleaning up after releasing the back catalog on I-Tunes, licensing songs for use on period TV shows (and releasing the songs on Soundtrack) a Rock Musical and recycling the songs with their current artists. on top of that their where some held back records in their archives that the Label was trickle feeding to the collectors market and getting .

happens all the time in Literature, Music and Cinema. the Publisher waits for the Residuals to die (often with the original artist or any chance of them reviving their careers) then they clean up with a Copyright they have bean maintaining for years. Hasbro has done it with Toys and Games and of late with RPG's.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I'm not really interested in copyright laws. I'm interested in what happened to that big batch of material that Roger used to own, and if he ever figured out that discretion is the better part of valor and decided to be a good guy, or hold out for more zeros to the left of the decimal point.

*edited for tact*

 

[LiamKerrington]

May I humbly ask for a brief and precise explanation or defintion of what exactly DGP is - just out of curiosity?

 

[SanDragon]

Digest Group Publications, I think?

 

[LiamKerrington]

Digest Group Publications, I think?

Hi there.

Thank you very much. That was quick. And google-fu seems to support your translation. Google-fu the Great lead me to the traveller-wiki or other pages describing pretty much what DGP was and did and what situation has evolved in the early 90ies ... Now I understand your discussion.

Best wishes!
Liam

 

[aramis]

I'm not really interested in copyright laws. I'm interested in what happened to that big batch of material that Roger used to own, and if he ever figured out that discretion is the better part of valor and decided to be a good guy, or hold out for more zeros to the left of the decimal point.

*edited for tact*

To be blunt: unless you have a grasp of copyright laws, any such explanation will make no sense.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Anybody got a simple answer?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

For those in the know, what is the copyright/legal status of the DGP material with regards to recovery and republication by FFE/Mr. Miller? I am not asking about emotions, personality conflicts and greed factor. I have read some of that here over the years. Can the rights of this specific material revert due to the passage of time ever or death of the current owner? Things like that.

Are there other intellectual property issues? As an example, Star Fleet Universe material is published, from my understanding, because the owners television show essentially did not have an ironclad IP on all elements of the of the original show like the design of the Enterprise or its appearance in a Technical Manual or some such. They did better later with the new shows. I have read this several times over the years. And recently over on the Mongoose boards, it was suggested to us not in the know to restrain our points to only the old show when referencing the Traveller Prime Directive project as this may cause the SFU owners difficulties.

Even if I have the specifics incorrect on the example above, what if any legal issues would be caused by DGP material and rights reverting?

I do not *know* current copyright law, but I am willing to listen and learn. My knowledge of US Copyright is little and out of date (they talked about it once in 8th grade, 30+ years ago. I knew it as republish after 34 years, for copyright over 78 years. If I am wrong, see?
'splain it to me Lucy...

 

[Drakon]

Copyright law in US

I do not *know* current copyright law, but I am willing to listen and learn. My knowledge of US Copyright is little and out of date (they talked about it once in 8th grade, 30+ years ago. I knew it as republish after 34 years, for copyright over 78 years. If I am wrong, see?
'splain it to me Lucy...

Wiki fu: original works produced after 1978 "are granted copyright protection for a term ending 70 years after the death of the author." I.e. Life plus 70, no renewal. No registration is required, but is helpful if there is any litigation.

"If the work was a work for hire (e.g., those created by a corporation) then copyright persists for 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is shorter."

The DSG material appears to be derivative, and potentially a "work for hire" which confuses things considerably. As I understand it, Marc is the original copyright holder for Traveller. He has licenced the right to produce derivative works to various groups over the years. Without knowing the specific of the license agreement its difficult to go any further, but this is US copyright law as of today.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.

 

[aramis]

The DSG material appears to be derivative, and potentially a "work for hire" which confuses things considerably. As I understand it, Marc is the original copyright holder for Traveller. He has licenced the right to produce derivative works to various groups over the years. Without knowing the specific of the license agreement its difficult to go any further, but this is US copyright law as of today.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.

DGP materials are derivative, not work for hire. (Marc already has published the work for hire materials - those were the MT core rules.)

A very few of the later DGP works carry a GDW copyright notice.

I don't know the specifics of the license, but under the rules for derivative works, without a license in place, Roger cannot sell, reprint, nor make profitable use of the DGP materials he does own.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Which makes one wonder why he's still holding onto stuff he's not using nor plans on using, and is stuck with unless he shifts his position.

To me true success is doing something you like doing and helping others achieve that. This situation does not fall into that description, but that's just me editorializing. Oh well.

 

[Rraurgrimm]

What baffles me most about the situation: with Print-on-Demand or even PDF-publishing at virtually no (additional) cost for the then self-publishing holder of the material, it should be quite simple to offer it again for the certainly interested market. It may be a much smaller market than Mr. Sanger might hope for - but at least the material would generate a bit of income and mayhaps even satisfy customers. I am one of the lucky few who does own the original DGP works (well, most of them) - yet I know of quite a number of people in my vicinity alone who'd appreciate getting their hands on some kind of copy as well; f.e. the Alien guides or the Starship Operators' Manual.

As the Traveller editions since he got hold of the material were briefly interested but unwilling to pay what might have been demanded - why strive for the proverbial dove on the roof when You already have the sparrow in Your hand?

 

[Blue Ghost]

What baffles me most about the situation: with Print-on-Demand or even PDF-publishing at virtually no (additional) cost for the then self-publishing holder of the material, it should be quite simple to offer it again for the certainly interested market. It may be a much smaller market than Mr. Sanger might hope for - but at least the material would generate a bit of income and mayhaps even satisfy customers. I am one of the lucky few who does own the original DGP works (well, most of them) - yet I know of quite a number of people in my vicinity alone who'd appreciate getting their hands on some kind of copy as well; f.e. the Alien guides or the Starship Operators' Manual.

As the Traveller editions since he got hold of the material were briefly interested but unwilling to pay what might have been demanded - why strive for the proverbial dove on the roof when You already have the sparrow in Your hand?

Precisely. I think it would benefit everyone, and no one would have to break out the lawyers an everything else that went with it. That's just me talking though.

Circa 93 or thereabouts I got rid of a host of DGP stuff to some fat old lady who ran a game shop in San Francisco, and literally gave me pennies on the dollar for it. I was holding onto it hoping to use it for writing references and inspiration, but it was hogging up closet space. So I got rid of all but a few select books. It sure would be nice to see some of the other publications again.

 

[Spaceresearcher]

It really is a shame. Personally I feel that the owner should allow this out via Marc's traditional method. This along with the Seeker Games and Group One material, would easily make a CDROM. The DGP material should see the light of day because the authors of that material deserve to be recognized and remembered. If nothing else it's great publicity for NEW material which does have a strong market, even if only small print runs or digitial pdf's are offered.

I'm sure most of us wouldn't mind paying say an extra $5 for the CDROM, where that extra $5 goes to the current owner of the material to keep them happy and ultimately everyones happy. I'd certainly pay $40 for a Traveller/Mega Traveller Apocrypha CDROM, actually even as much as $70 if it would help because it saves me a lot of expensive postal charges to obtain the printed material and further more to that, a lot of it (like the Group One material) is so scarce you just can't find it anywhere. Even on ebay not all of the Group One material has ever surfaced for example.

 

[McPerth]

Just one more question:

what be the legal matters should someone want to publish more MT material? Should he talk to MWM? to mr Sanger? to both of them?