Note: This page talks about the first Old School RPG Planet that I started in 2009 (see 2009-01-09 Planet Venus). I restarted it in 2018 (see 2018-10-16 Old School RPG Planet coming back).
2018-10-16 Old School RPG Planet coming back
Recently John Payne talked about distributing RSS feeds in eBook form on Google+. Interesting idea, and the resulting discussion of copyright and feed aggregation soon touched upon the *Old School RPG Planet*. Ian Borchardt correctly said “Just because the authors post their work to the web doesn’t mean they forfeit their copyright. If you collect this work into another form, you are violating their copyright.” Andy Standfield replied “This has all already been covered by many courts and legal experts. This is all considered fair use.”
I started to wonder. Many courts? I decided to google for some more information and found What’s the law around aggregating news online? A Harvard Law report on the risks and the best practices. This 2010 article said that *all the parties settled before a finding was made*. In the US, that would mean we don’t really know. The article also has a longer section about the Fair Use test and how to apply it. In addition to that, the situation would be different outside the US – possibly more restrictive here in Switzerland, for example.
Drinking my coffee I thought about it some more and finally decided to take the Old School RPG Planet offline. I wasn’t really using it anymore and I really dislike the idea of further discussions with annoyed blog authors. I also didn’t feel like contacting a hundred bloggers, most of whom don’t have their email address on the front page of their blog. The site should now redirect to the Legacy D&D section of the RPG Bloggers Network. It supposedly does more or less the same thing, except that the authors have to register their own sites. Too bad the RPG Blog Alliance doesn’t have categories.
#RPG #Copyright #Planet
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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Hey Alex,
Too bad that some idiots ruined the good thing you started. Thanks for all the hard work.
– Tedankhamen 2013-12-08 16:12 UTC
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Don’t worry, I don’t think that a particular person is to blame. I blame it on the copyright system we have and the companies and individuals pushing it, extending it, spreading their interpretation of it until we end up in the society we are living in.
– Alex Schroeder 2013-12-08 17:14 UTC
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Alex, This is a real bummer. I used your OS RPG Planet exclusively to keep me informed of what was going on. Legacy doesn’t seem to contain the same coverage of blogs and it was always handy using the Planet to check out those old dormant blogs. Well, it was good while it lasted. Thanks for keeping me up to date on the OSR.
– derv 2013-12-08 18:16 UTC
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Perhaps there are some alternatives available out there? --This is what I had listed on the wiki.-- Wow, the list contained a lot of dead links and a spam link, too.
If anybody knows more, leave a note! 🙂
– Alex Schroeder 2013-12-08 18:23 UTC
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I just want to say, it’s a gradation, right?
I follow several law and copyright blogs, and this is why we need them, because a lot of these situations aren’t clear cut. It’s a complicated issue.
– -C 2013-12-09 08:32 UTC
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Yes, of course. In addition to the situation not being clear cut, the particular elements I considered are particular *to just me*. There was my own lack of use, first of all, which made me unwilling to fight the slightest non-technical problem. As far as I can see, there were two big non-technical problems: The bigger problem was the law itself. I already knew that I was unwilling to fight a legal battle. I was unwilling to serve as a precedent. Let somebody else drink this cup. With me not being a US resident, the situation is even trickier. No thanks.
The lesser problem was the possibility of people complaining. Many months ago I already got a terse email from Alexis, telling me to remove his blog. The possibility of having my name dragged down into the gutters, of people calling a project of mine seriously a dick move or saying that it wasn't fair or honest currently make me very unwilling to do anything at all for people playing role-playing games. And not everybody would have had Alexis’ calm. M. W. Schmeer didn't want a private conversation at the time, for example. Ugh. No thanks.
didn't want a private conversation
I think I’m just going to run my games, write my blog... « Il faut cultiver notre jardin. »
But: if anybody is interested in running their own site, I can help! The first step is installing Planet Venus which requires an installation of Python.
The config file is also easy. Here’s what I used. The example config file in the Planet Venus distribution also comes with a commented config file. When I first started, I used the “musings” theme; later I wrote my own.
[Planet] name = Old School RPG Planet message = Collecting Old School RPG blog feeds for the curious. link = http://campaignwiki.org/planet owner_name = Alex Schroeder owner_email = kensanata@gmail.com cache_directory = /home/alex/planet/rpg log_level = INFO output_theme = /home/alex/src/old-school-planet-theme output_dir = /home/alex/campaignwiki.org/planet items_per_page = 100 activity_threshold = 120 filters = excerpt.py [excerpt.py] omit = strong em b i u width = 1000
If you are running Venus for yourself only, you might consider deleting the filters setting.
What follows is the list of blogs you want to subscribe to, with their names:
[http://nilisnotnull.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default] name = ((nil) is (not(null))) [http://www.msjx.org/feeds/posts/default] name = . . lapsus calumni . . [http://www.theskyfullofdust.co.uk/feed/] name = ...and the sky full of dust. ...
– Alex Schroeder 2013-12-09 08:57 UTC
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Ok, I know I’m not the best person to reply, due to my own knee jerk reaction. But I have this to say.
Your work is appreciated by the silent many. Also, me personally.
I cannot tell you the impact your comment to me about how many blog posts of mine you had favorited had. I still recall it clearly.
My point is, is that the people who are a--holes, also have that kind of impact. If you recall, there were a few dudes who were ON FIRE about the fact I was talking about how to run traps. Not Loomis, the guy behind Grimtooth, not any of the other publishers who made traps that I talked about. But just some person on the internet.
His random negative comment sapped more of my enthusiasm for blogging then anything before or since. But I learned something from it.
The more successful you are, the more certain insecure, jealous, and often untalented people will hate you for it. So what it means when you get a comment like that is that you are really doing something that is meaningful. Not that greatness is applicable, but every great thing ever done was hated by thousands. The hate isn’t what they remember. People don’t talk about that one guy who was pissed off. When my traps get mentioned, its as an appreciated resource.
What I’m saying is that what I learned, was a reaction like that is a sign that you are doing well, not poorly. I mean, as long as you are remaining introspective as the tone of this post indicates you are.
Thanks for your reply and the time it took to link those arguments. That situation sucked. I’m telling you thank you, and water off a duck’s back.
– -C 2013-12-09 09:47 UTC
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Thanks, -C. Very much appreciated.
– Alex Schroeder 2013-12-09 09:54 UTC
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Wow. OSRPG Planet was one of the first sites I checked every day. Sad to see it go. And, since I never said it: thanks for providing that service for so long, I really enjoyed it.
– Max 2013-12-09 12:37 UTC
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Thanks. I just had another thought: It should be possible to filter the RPGBA feed for blogs I consider to be OSR and republish that. Then again, somebody is probably going to say they only intended the RPGBA to republish their feed. I’d have to ask Jeff. Perhaps he’d host something.
– Alex Schroeder 2013-12-09 12:58 UTC
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I am incredibly sad to see this happen. OSRPlanet was one of my daily go-to sites for what was going on. It will be missed greatly. Thanks for all the hard work, Alex.
– Sniderman 2013-12-10 14:03 UTC
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Sorry to see it go - i get plenty of unauthorised feed sites leeching me your was only one i liked
– chris 2013-12-10 15:45 UTC
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Thank you.
– Alex Schroeder 2013-12-11 08:56 UTC
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On The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms there is a blog post talking about the situation. I totally understand all the points about copyright, licensing and all that. The only point I want to pick up is the closing paragraph:
In other words, you’d have to ask me first. And really, why *wouldn’t* you ask someone first before publishing their work? What is everyone afraid of?
I think the short answer is that asking for permission just doesn’t scale. It’s OK to ask one person, but asking a hundred people is not how I want to spend my time. The long answer is in the pages of the Free Culture book. Just search for the word “permission” and learn about the differences of permission culture and free culture. Here’s a paragraph from page 192f:
The building of a permission culture, rather than a free culture, is the first important way in which the changes I have described will burden innovation. A permission culture means a lawyer’s culture—a culture in which the ability to create requires a call to your lawyer. Again, I am not antilawyer, at least when they’re kept in their proper place. I am certainly not antilaw. But our profession has lost the sense of its limits. And leaders in our profession have lost an appreciation of the high costs that our profession imposes upon others. The inefficiency of the law is an embarrassment to our tradition. And while I believe our profession should therefore do everything it can to make the law more efficient, it should at least do everything it can to limit the reach of the law where the law is not doing any good. The transaction costs buried within a permission culture are enough to bury a wide range of creativity. Someone needs to do a lot of justifying to justify that result.
I recommend the book. It’s a long read, but I liked it. It also made me unwilling to spend time asking people for permission to do anything. I’d rather spend my time elsewhere.
So that’s my answer to “What is everyone afraid of?” I’d rather spend my time elsewhere.
– Alex Schroeder 2013-12-18 08:59 UTC
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Anybody coming to this page: Five years later, the RPG Planets are up again, but with one important change – I’m only adding people that explicitly ask me to add their blog. You can’t submit somebody else’s blog and I won’t add any blogs without explicit consent, either. See 2018-10-16 Old School RPG Planet coming back.
2018-10-16 Old School RPG Planet coming back
– Alex 2023-05-12 10:10 UTC