 The scholarly communications librarian here at UCLA, that's a photo of me on the left pointing out the fact that we seem to have matched the day that I saw the Picasso at the Ontario gallery. So on the right, you'll see a number of different things that I work on here at UCLA library. But we're only going to really touch on a couple today. The first being copyright and fair use and then we'll also be looking at licensing for a little bit. So I do have a quick poll set up for you. So I'm going to go ahead and send that now. Two simple questions. First, what brings you here today. You can answer I love all things copyright my instructor here for the DND. And then the second question is how familiar are you with fair use. Right. So we'll go ahead and give everyone a chance who wants to respond to go ahead and respond to the poll it's completely voluntary it just helps me to know kind of who we have here in the room with us. Okay, we'll give it another 30 seconds for the poll if you'd like to respond please feel free to. So it's looking like half of you are here for all things copyright and just a little bit less than half are here for DND. So we'll get into all of those topics and I'll give you an idea of when we'll hit on those topics pretty soon. It looks like there's a few of you who are who are fair use is new to you, and few that have heard it before, and then there's probably one or two copyright fair use experts in the room. So I'm going to go ahead and end our poll here. So you can all take a look at the results that we have. So thanks for all of the responses to that poll. And without further ado we're going to launch into our content here. Okay. All right. So if you're here today. Hopefully you're in the right place and where you want to be and that's what the F you their use licenses and DND. Now, first is with many things that are law related a quick disclaimer. I'm not an attorney and I cannot offer legal advice. And even if I was an attorney I cannot and am not your attorney. So the following information here we're presenting today to educate about us copyright law in general terms. If you're unclear about your options when it comes to a specific legal issue related to copyright. We encourage you to consult with an attorney who has a background in copyright law. Right. Now that the disclaimer has been delivered on to the content says promise today's talk is going to involve some copyright. There will be a little bit of data science and then of course it'll be some DND for questions I'll pause at the end of each of these sections, and we'll also reserve some time at the end for questions. If you do have questions, please make sure to type those questions into the Q&A section that should be available in your toolbar for zoom. And if you do have any technical issues you can let us know in the general chat. All right. Thank you. So now we'll get started with some copyright and fair use. So for the purposes of this section, I will be generally sticking just to copyright, but I think it's important to place the context of copyright within this larger concept of intellectual property. And also to distinguish it from other types of IP, such as patents and trademarks, which we are not exploring today. So here the US Copyright Office says that creations of the mind form intellectual property. These are creative works or ideas that are embodied in a form that can be shared or can enable others to recreate emulate or manufacture them. You'll hear me talk about this again as tangible. There are four ways that intellectual property is protected patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyright. So again, we'll be only exploring the copyright aspect of things today, but all of these different forms of intellectual property do intersect with our daily lives on a regular basis. So what's copyright? Well, we're going to only be talking about copyright in the United States. And here in the US copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship. As soon as the author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. So, a type of intellectual property, we are all copyright users. And we're also all copyright owners. So everyone in this room here has used copyrighted material and everyone in this room has certainly either in their career as a student or as a librarian, or in another creative capacity created materials that have been eligible for and receive copyright protection. These are the standards for receiving copyright protection. For the US copyright protection actually is something that is very much linked to our historical roots, and it is in fact the first nation to have included a reference to copyright within its constitution. To quote, to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited time to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Now, these works need to be original works of authorship in order to qualify for copyright protection. They must be in a fixed and tangible medium of expression. There must be the result of some creative effort so they cannot just be a list that is a list of facts for instance. Right, and then another thing to note here with respect to copyright is really really looking at copyright from a perspective of it's a jurisdiction of use meaning the law that applies is a law where you're using the copyright where your location is physically so here for the context of our students, the only thing that we're talking about and all of the copyright law that applies is US copyright law. So what rights does a copyright owner get. Actually, they get a lot. It's a bundle of them. So, under copyright, you have the right to make copies. The rights create derivative works like translations or adaptations. The right to distribute which includes selling renting leasing lending, the right to perform in public, such as the play or public performance, the rights to publicly display a work this can be a painting, it can be a sculpture, a manner of different things. And then finally the right to digital audio transmission it's also sometimes called bright for broadcast. All of these rights collectively make up copyright. The right owner may decide that he or she or it, if it's a company wants to license the material to other parties to third parties. So when you see an older publications things like all rights reserved. They're referring to the specific rights here. How long does copyright protection last. Well, under the current law because copyright law has changed a bit since the founding of the United States in the later adoption of the Constitution. Works created on or after January 1 1978 enjoy a copyright status that's calculated as life of the author plus 70 years. So that's generally true for individually created works. There's a different standard for corporate works. And also, there's an exception for copyright protection when it comes to us government works. What if you're not a copyright owner. Well, copyright grants exclusive rights to the rights owner, but there are some exceptions and we're going to really focus on one today. The exceptions are fair use the first sale doctrine and exceptions specifically for libraries and archives. There are also options of licensing or obtaining explicit written permission to use copyrighted material. All right. So some of you mentioned or indicated in the poll that you knew a little bit about fair use but for others you mentioned that it was new to you. The important part of United States copyright law is the fair use doctrine because it permits the use of copyrighted content without need to seek permission of copyright owner if it meets certain criteria. So what is that. Fair use is a case by case test found in copyright law. When met, it allows a use of a copyright protected work without permission. For example, using a quote from a book in an article may be a fair use. The fair use concept is central to copyright law and helps promote freedom of expression and innovation. Let's look at some basic concepts. There is no formula to ensure that using a particular amount of work will qualify as fair use. Also, it's not as simple as declaring I think my use is fair. While the law gives some examples of things that are traditionally fair use, not all uses that fall under these categories are actually fair uses and some specific uses that do not fall under these categories have been found to be fair uses. Fair use is a case by case inquiry. We have to analyze each use of a work. Essentially fair use asks us to think through our actions. Federal law sets out four fair use factors. The first evaluates the purpose and character of the use. An educational non-commercial or transformative use is more likely to be considered fair. A transformative use adds new purpose, meaning or message not present in the original as opposed to merely replacing the original work. A use that merely replaces the original use or purpose of the work is less likely to be considered fair. The second factor considers the nature of the copyrighted work and will favor fair use if the work is factual or previously published. Here, consider copyrights purpose to encourage creative expression by providing exclusive rights to authors. The third factor evaluates how much of the original work is used. In addition, pay attention to the importance of what was taken from the work. Are you using a lot of the original work or the heart of the work? Taking too much when not necessary is less likely to be fair use. The fourth factor analyzes whether the new use harms the existing or potential market for the original work. Fair use requires an analysis of all the facts and factors. The factors may point in different directions and may not lead to a clear result. It is important when thinking about fair use not to jump to conclusions. Only a judge can make an official determination of fair use. This usually happens during an infringement case. Sometimes it can be hard to rely on fair use, especially if there isn't a lot of case law available. Finally, if you don't know if a use is a fair use, you can always ask for permission from the copyright owner. If you decide to rely on fair use, be thoughtful and deliberate and keep these core points in mind. To learn more about how fair use is applied in different situations, visit the Copyright Office's Fair Use Index. Does everybody feel prepared with fair use now? So just in summary to go over that again because there may be a reason to know this in a few minutes. Fair use doctrine is codified in the limitations on exclusive rights fair use in the Copyright Act of 1976. It's in section 107. And it allows for the use of copyright protected works without seeking permission of the rights holder. Purpose and character of use is really important to consider. So examples of potentially fair uses would be things like parody satire, political and scholarly commentary, reporting the news. And so something like a class paper would likely be an educational use and would also potentially qualify as more likely to be fair. In terms of nature of the original copyrighted work, there's a question about how creative or original was it? Was it just a list of facts or was there a lot of creativity involved? There, the amount and substantiality of the portion taken really looks at your use of the new of the copyrighted work within your work. Did you take what you needed? Was your use excessive or was it necessary to use the amount that you used in order for you to make your point? And then finally, the fourth one is sometimes known as the market effect. And that really looks at the commercial impact that your use of that copyright protected material had on its market abilities. Did you profit commercially? And did that commercial profit actually impact the market of the original? So these are all things to keep in mind. Now, these four factors happen to emerge out of a court case of Folsom v. Marsh in 1841 and really very little has changed since then. Judge Joseph Storey's four factor fair use test is in fact what we use today and what courts use today to determine whether or not a potential use or use case is fair. Now, show of hands, yes or no. How many of you have heard about public domain? We sometimes hear from people, students, faculty, everyone really that they found something online. So, does that mean it's a public domain? It looks, yeah. Okay, great. Looks like some of you have heard about public domain, but public domain has a very specific meaning when it comes to copyright. And in this context, public domain means something that is not or is no longer protected by copyright in the United States. This applies to works that were produced before 1927. There are some exceptions that apply due to changes in US copyright law that was brought on by us adopting the burn convention. But in most cases, this general rule of thumb would apply. Now copyright protection has expired or was never eligible for those things that we consider to be in the public domain. And when I was mentioning different works earlier, one of the exceptions to works that have copyright protection is US government publications. So, this one also has a little bit of an asterisk in that if you are a government contractor, you may potentially have negotiated a contract where you're allowed to retain copyright. In most cases, most US government documents that are directly produced by the government do not have copyright protection. This means that these types of documents can be good ways or good sources rather for you to utilize in research and remix and reuse purposes. The other thing to keep note of is simply being able to find and access something online does not put this item in the public domain. When it comes to copyright, if you're looking for something in the public domain, it's going to enable you to be able to use it for any purpose without restriction under copyright law. But again, it's because either the copyright protection has expired, or the object was never eligible for protection in the first place. The public domain is appears form of open and free reuse since no one owns or controls the copyrighted material in any way. Just a quick note here, if we're not sure about who owns work, but it was published after 1927 and presumed to still have copyright protection. Just because we're unable to at the moment identify the entity of the copyright owner does not put that work into the public domain. Unfortunately, they get another name which is a little bit sad but it does describe the state that they're in where they're called orphan works. So, just keep that in mind not being able to determine at the moment who a copyright owner is does not place an object immediately into the public domain. In most cases copyright protection would still apply. So are you all feeling comfortable with fair use yet, because I think it's time for a little test. So, you be the judge here, I'm sure that many of you have seen this poster it's sometimes referred to as the Obama hope poster. And this poster was created by shepherd fairy in 2008. It's also a challenge here. Should it be considered a work by shepherd fairy, or is it in fact, either something that should be copyrighted to the Associated Press, or does it violate or infringe upon the copyright of the Associated Press. So I'm going to ask you to determine whether or not you think this poster is a fair use or not a fair use let me give you some additional information. I'm sure that the copyright office video stated that only a judge in a court of law can make that official determination. So, let's play judge here. I'll give you the facts and you'll be able to determine and make a vote as to whether or not you think the help poster is a fair use. It's a little bit complex in this case because when it comes to things like images there can be multiple entities involved, and it's not always immediately obvious who owns copyright. Why do I say that. Well, because here the photograph that I'm showing you was photographed by freelance photographer Manny Garcia. However, the copyright for this image is owned by the Associated Press, the reason being that Garcia created this photograph as a work for hire. What does that mean. Well, in copyright works for hire created by an employee as part of their regular duties, or they occur when a certain type of work is created as a result of an express written agreement between the creator. In this case that would be Manny Garcia, and a party especially ordering or commissioning it. In this case that would be the Associated Press. So when a work is made for hire the co hiring or commissioning party is considered the author and therefore the copyright owner. So, let's take a look here. And we can actually see a progression. I'll give you a little bit more information about what we're looking at. So, very began selling the Obama poster, the Obama hope poster in 2008. And it ended on design on the photo that was taken by Manny Garcia. However, it took until January of 2009 for the Associated Press to determine, in fact, that the photograph that was used by shepherd fairy was the one that they had the copyright to. In 2009 by July of 2008, there had been more than 200,000 vinyl hope stickers that have been created 75% of which had been given away to support the Obama presidential campaign. The image became one of the most widely recognized symbols for the Obama campaign, spawning many iterations eventually appearing on different items of swag. And it was also commissioned in some cases by the Obama campaign for additional production. fairy had reached out to the Obama campaign for permission to use a photo, but fairy never contacted the Associated Press to license the image that he used. So, looking at here, you can see that there are a number. There are two photographs that were taken over Obama that appeared to be very similar. However, it was later determined that it was the top photograph the Manny Garcia AP photo. That was the basis of the hope poster. When the AP made this determination, they began to negotiate with shepherd fairy for compensation. What happened is a little bit interesting, rather than going to court and waiting for fairy waiting for himself to be sued, he actually sued the AP first and asked for a declaratory judgment from a judge to confirm that his use of the photograph was a fair use. So fairy went to the judge and asked him to say, Hey, my use is fair. Can you just give me that judgment so that I don't have to give the AP any royalties. Well, the AP showed the image that I show you here, and they maintained that all of the same angles of Garcia's photograph were maintained, and the general coloration of the photo was also inspired by the composition that Garcia created. Or they claim that fairy and fenged on their copyright. So what do you think, is the hope poster a fair use. You should be able to select a yes or no option in zoom. If not, folks who think it's a fair use can just give me a thumbs up. Let's see what you all think. Seeing a couple saying that the use is fair. Anybody else wants to chime in. Do you think that it's a fair use. All right, it looks like about half of us think that this was a fair use, and maybe the other half either are abstaining or think that it's not a fair use well. As I said, only a judge in the court of law can render a verdict on whether or not a use is officially fair. And so in this particular case, we don't quite get there but we get very close. Because what actually happened is the judge in this case told the two parties to settle out of court, because he felt that going further in trial would mean that the AP or the Associated Press would win the case. This means that the judge did not think that shepherd fairies use of the many Garcia photograph was a fair use. While we have no official verdict on the question of fair use, the statement strongly suggests that this failed the four factor test. So there's a little bit of information that came out after this settlement. And this sometimes happens with copyright suits and IP related suits. There's just a little bit of trivia here, which is that in the following year in February of 2012 shepherd fairy actually ended up pleading guilty to destroying and fabricating evidence showing that he had used the AP photo. In that period of time, it was revealed that yes he had in fact used many Garcia photo it was not a fair use, and he was actually sentenced to two years of probation and 300 hours of community service along with a fine of $25,000. And interestingly, because this case did generate a lot of interest and attention. They went back to the original photographer and he was quoted as saying that he was so proud of the photograph. And of the work that fairy did artistically with it and the effect and impact that it had, but quote, he did not contain take people taking things just because they can off the internet. The way from all of this is just because you find something online does not make the work of work in the public domain. So are there any other questions about copyright and fair use before we move on to the next section. All right, we'll be moving on to licenses. Here that I'm talking today about licenses in terms of explicit written permission there is another part of copyright law, where licenses refer to compulsory and statutory licenses this only applies to recorded music so we will not be talking about that context, in terms of copyright and licenses. So for today, a copyright owner can give another party a third party or multiple third parties permission to use their copyright at work. This permission is granted through what we call a license and it gives explicit explicit written permission, and usually in exchange for monetary payment. So, the thing to note here that's emboldened is that written permission is necessary verbal agreements do not work for copyright. I'll copyright related licenses must be executed in writing. If you want to use someone else's copyrighted work, especially if there is that commercial purpose remember that's related to that fourth factor in the fair factor for factor fair use test, you'll usually need to obtain a license in order to exploit the work commercially. So, there are things that licenses can do generally speaking they'll do what we have here listed at the top which is that they will grant an individual who is not the copyright owner, more rights than they would normally have under fair use so they would be able to exploit one or more of that bundle of rights that we talked about earlier. But licenses can also sometimes restrict and grant fewer rights than an individual might have under fair use. This is not a typical use case, but there are examples that exist and I'll show you one at the end. As we talk about the dungeons and dragons situation. So, there are two general categories of licenses. They're what we call exclusive licenses, which only the licensee can use the work in the manner that's described in that license during the period of time in which it's valid. This means even the original copyright owner is not able to use that work in the manner that's described, unless the licensee also grants permission for that individual to do so because they are the exclusive licensee of that particular manner of use. There's another type of license and that's what we would call a non exclusive license this means that you can give the same right to multiple entities multiple individuals multiple corporations if you want to be able to use a copyrighted work in a specific manner that the license describes. Here the copyright owner can also exercise those same rights during that period. There's no restrictions on them to do so. And one big thing to note here, and also a reason why it's important to maintain a relationship with the copyright owner, even if you're the licensee is the fact that only a copyright owner can pursue infringement claims so if you have a license and somebody is violating the license you need to have the original copyright owner pursue that violation with you. That's something to keep in mind. As we go on. Now we're going to talk a little bit about what we call public copyright licenses. Has anybody in this room heard of public public copyright licenses. If you have, you can raise your hand or send a thumbs up. This is a term that most people are not as familiar with, but tends to be something that there's some degree of interaction that we have with, especially if you're working in an academic context. So, all right, I can see there's a couple of you that have. Okay, great. Thanks. So a public copyright license grants additional rights to the general public. So there's not going to be just a specific named licensee as it would be in a normal license rather this license makes this work available in a particular way to all of the general public. There's no additional action that needs to be taken by the copyright owner to do this the in other words they don't need to execute a separate license. And the public does not need to do anything in order to take advantage of the effects of the license either public licenses grant permissions for certain rights that would otherwise be normally considered most likely copyright infringement. So, here are some examples of some more popular models of public copyright licenses, there's the new GPL license. There's also the Creative Commons license we're going to take a look at both of those in a bit by no means are they the only public copyright licenses, but there are quite a few, particularly with those who are involved in open source and freedom and free software movements. So, you'll see these types of public copyright licenses being utilized. There's a subset of public copyright licenses that are what we call free and open licenses. And so these actually in most cases, reserve almost no rights. And the only thing that they really typically asked for is attribution. So, in these cases, there's an acknowledgement that you make as the user of that copyrighted material, and no other permissions are necessary for you to remix reuse the material as you see fit. So, here I list two different Creative Commons licenses that would qualify as free and open the first being CC by SA SA standing for share like by standing for the attribution requirement. And then the second is CCO or CC zero, which is a complete waiver by the individual of all of their natural copyrights to that creative work. There is another license that is the CC public domain license that that one really just declares that the item is already in the public domain. And so as you'll remember, as we talked about earlier, public domain is either expired or never eligible for copyright protection to begin with. So it's a little bit different from you, affirmatively giving up any of your copyrights, which is what the CC zero one does it's a waiver license. So we'll take a look here on this next slide you can see here is a GPL. And it's really important to note that there are some foundational tenants essentially for these licenses with GPL that they're specifically for use for software for any purpose it does not matter if it's educational use or commercial use or personal use you can use it under all of those conditions. There's a freedom to change the software as needed so you can essentially hack that or jailbreak depending on what the circumstances of the item that you're using. There's freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, there's no, you bought it, you're the only one the copy sort of restriction like that at all. And then there's the freedom to share any of the changes that you made as well so this is an incredibly open license to make what we would call free software. In academic context probably what you're more familiar with is the Creative Commons license. This is a license that does not wave copyright there is sometimes that misconception here copyright protection does exist with items that are licensed with a CC license it really depends on here the degree, because what you're doing is you're publicly conferring a particular permission or right to the public without them having to contact you for permission so we're skipping. That permission step and making things more readily available for reuse here. So you can see here pictured is actually the license tool that helps individuals to select the level of openness that they want for the license that they're going to confer on the creative work that they have permission to make a license for. So, the important thing to know here is for CC, you must have, you must be the copyright owner in order for you to create a license for your copyrighted work you cannot use a CC license on someone else's copyright work. Because you don't have the legal permissions to do so. The other thing that's really important to know about copyright and Creative Commons licenses is that Creative Commons is an irrevocable license so once you make the determination of which license you want to use. That's it. That's the license that goes on to that particular version of that work in perpetuity. Really important things to keep note of. So if you're not sure which license you should use for a work that you want to give a Creative Commons license but there may be some considerations that you'd like to walk through. This is definitely something that you can reach out to us at the library to help you with. So, with that, are there any other questions for licenses. Either Creative Commons or otherwise in this section, because we're about to move on to Dungeons and Dragons so any last questions for licenses. All right. Okay, so we're moving on to what half of the room really wants to hear about so thanks for bearing with me hopefully we have now the foundation to understand what's really been going on the past several months related to Dungeons and Dragons. So first, a little bit of background from for the folks in the room about DND. So DND or Dungeons and Dragons, sometimes with the letter and then sometimes with the ampersand. It's easier when talking about DND to use a letter and particularly when we're talking about technical things like having it appear in URL since the ampersand doesn't really work in that context. So this is going to come up a little bit later. So Dungeons and Dragons was and is a very popular tabletop role playing game or TTRPG. It was first published in 1974 by TSR. The copyright and intellectual property were then assumed by Wizards of the Coast, which has been publishing and maintaining DND since 1997. So DND was designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and it's currently in its fifth edition. But as you can see kind of from the image, hopefully on the right that red box. It's now also been licensed and associated with some different other commercial IP. This is especially true since its incorporation of Wizards of the Coast into Hasbro in the reorg that took place in 2021. So in this particular example here, I'm showing the DND version that is affiliated or licensed with Netflix's Stranger Things. In fact, the relationship between these two properties is arguably really intertwined and I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment, but more information about the evolution of DND. So the popularity in just three years after its release, 1977, it was so popular that it was decided that we should split DND into two different versions, a basic DND, and then an advanced version. So sometimes called a DND for those who really, really love the rules. Now for anybody who's played DND, you'll know that there are a lot of rules and in fact, that's kind of the core of the publication of the game is that there are these big rule books that explain the game mechanics and how it works by a show of hands. Is there any folks in this room who are fans or players of DND? I'm seeing quite a few. Don't be afraid to self indicate. So, I'm sure there are a couple of DMs maybe in the room as well. So here, basic Dungeons and Dragons, it's going to be really important that we understand that the split occurred because it will have something to do with the controversy that happens next. So the popularity of DND for those of you who play in for those of you who don't really spawned a lot in the world of gaming, especially in tabletop gaming, both in terms of encouraging free materials to be created and commercial. So you can see here at the right, there's on YouTube, a couple of YouTubers creating resources for folks who want to make their own custom stylized D&D maps, and also folks who are learning how to create 3D printed minis or custom miniatures. So that kind of information is made freely available by these creators on their respective social media and YouTube channels. But in the background, you'll also see a big array of dice. And DND in particular is very famous for that 20-sided die. And you can see there are a few in that photo there on Etsy and other marketplaces. There are a lot of options these days for customizable D&D dice. Some of these have been the subject of very successful Kickstarter campaigns that have raised a lot of money to create custom paraphernalia just for D&D. All of this will become very important in just a moment. Now here's a bit of the data science. So here's a Google Trends analysis of the popularity of D&D tracking from the beginning of the service of Google Trends, which is 2004 to the present. We're looking specifically at the trends, interest levels of D&D on the web. And you can see here in this particular chart that D&D appears to experience a gradual increase in popularity starting roughly around 2015. But for folks who were around earlier and also fans of Stranger Things, you'll note that D&D was extremely popular in the 1980s. So 2015, an increase in popularity in D&D. By the following year in 2016, a lot of Hollywood was either secretly or openly playing D&D and hosting sessions with many A-list and B-list and C-list celebrities. Here's an article about that very thing in the Hollywood reporter that appeared in 2016. And then, what about Stranger Things? Well, set during the 1980s, the series really reflected the popularity of the CTRPG. That was true through that period of time in which it was set. You can see here in this trend graph from October, actually from July of 2016 to May of 2022, there are several spikes that I show here with red arrows. They happen to correspond roughly to the periods of the season releases of Netflix Stranger Things show. There's July 15th, that's that first leftmost arrow. There's a little spike there. Then October 2017, then again in July 2019, and then in the summer of July, I mean summer of 2022. So you can see here, there appears to be some correlation where there's a little bit of a spike every time Stranger Things seems to drop another season. But in 2019, during the innocence of our pre-pandemic days, D&D was already getting extremely popular. It had been growing since 2015, 2016. By 2019, there were live action role playing groups that were playing D&D sort of in person in real life in a way. And so there was ever more popularity of the game or so it seemed. But the period of COVID isolation actually did not hurt D&D. In fact, popularity of D&D peaked around the summer of 2022, which is that first leftmost red arrow, which was within a month or two of the dropping of the fourth season of Stranger Things. One could also argue that the popularity went up as well with the pandemic raging on. But here we can see there was a very visible drop in popularity at the beginning of 2023. In fact, we can precisely take the crash in popularity and identify its cause, which was between January 5th and January 13th of 2023. So does anybody in the room know what I'm alluding to? I'm assuming some of you probably do. If you know what happened in January of this year that caused an impact on D&Ds and dragons, please raise your hand. If not, I will show you in just a moment. Yeah, something definitely happened and the data certainly backs it up. So what actually happened? Well, corporate greed is what happened according to this article. Dungeons and Dragons fans faced, prepared to face their greatest adversary, corporate greed. And this is an article that appeared in the New Republic. But why? What actually happened? Well, what happened was Gizmodo leaked or received a copy of a license. So we're coming full circle now. We're going back to licenses and now we're going to talk about two very important licenses. There are two important license events that occurred in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. The first being the dropping of the original open gaming license in the year 2000. So this came out in 2000 and it came out along with the D20 system manual. So this was all released together. The 900 word open gaming license was a quote perpetual worldwide, non exclusive license. I don't know if you remember what I said earlier about Creative Commons licenses being perpetual and irrevocable. So they're kind of the similar idea here in that these things when you put them out into the world, really, you can't change them or so we think. The OGL allowed independent publishers to use basic D&D. Remember I told you that SWIT would be important and they were able to take that D20 engine and incorporate that into a lot of other games. Because the OGL allowed companies other than Wizards of the Coast to create new properties, this also meant that new games could just be created that did not belong to Wizards at all. This effectively made the D20 engine, if you will, the core of the tabletop RPG industry. It also helped to establish careers for thousands of writers and streamers as a result of this because many folks started to comment and create content around D&D. The license also contributed to the growth of the universe of accessories for D&D like the materials that I showed you earlier, as well as the development of gaming YouTube channels that focused largely around this D&D world. But all of that was shaken up on January 5th of 2023. When Gizmodo published in Linda Kodoga's article Dungeons and Dragons new license tightens its grip on competition, an exclusive look at Wizards of the Coast's new gaming license. It showed that in a 9000 word long 1.1 version of the OGL that there were going to be a lot of changes. Independent publishers were now being asked by Wizards to register. This is something that you would not normally have to do even if you were using the materials under fair use. But they were being told that whether you were large or small, if you were a creator of content related to D&D, if you were an independent publisher, you needed to register with Wizards of the Coast and tell Wizards how much money you were making off of the D20 system or anything related to D&D. Wizards also was asserting in this 1.1 version license this right to siphon off a portion of their revenue of these third party creators. And finally, because of this type of language, it effectively revoked the original OGL. And they don't say in this 1.1 version license that this license OGL 2000, the 1.0 version is revoked, they just basically tell you that you can't use it anymore period, no exceptions. So effectively that's kind of the same thing. And looking at a couple of the other differences that are significant between the two licenses is that in the original open game license rules could be used in new tabletop RPGs without paying any sort of royalties. And in fact, we know that this happens. So games like Pathfinder, for instance, use that D20 engine have nothing to do with Wizards of the Coast and have never paid royalties to Wizards. And so because of the fact that publishers were building this content around it, the D20 engine essentially became the dominant way that TT RPGs were basically being played out in real life. The January 5th OGL leak said, and this is a quote directly from the language of that 9000 word license only allows for creation of role playing games and supplements in printed media and static electronic file formats. This does not allow for anything else, including but not limited to things like videos, virtual tabletops or VTT campaigns, computer games, novels, apps, graphic novels, music, songs, dances. And if you wanted to do a pandemonium in your larping session sorry but you can't do it. That's a pretty extensive list of restrictions. You may engage in these activities only to the extent allowed under the Wizards of the Coast fan content policy, which is a separate policy that is viewable online, or separately agreed between you and us. In other words, or if you don't follow the fan content license and you need something more you need to execute a new license with us directly. Well, what happened next. I call it revolts. Here's an article from the Guardian people are leaving the game, Dungeons and Dragons fans revolt against new restrictions. Wizards of the Coast which owns the game is preparing to change long standing licensing rules. Again the license that was originally in place the OGL, the literal OG is from 2000. More than 20 years have passed with those particular licensing terms in place, and many would argue that the world of DND has only grown and expanded as a result of that. What else happened as part of the revolt. Well, it's interesting. Of course, social media was involved social media users urged other players to go ahead and cancel their paid for subscriptions to Wizards online portal, DND beyond so this was a portal that's the official digital tool set of the game. It's a companion for the DND fifth edition, and it is owned by Wizards. So if you wanted additional functionality you had a paid subscription and a lot of serious DND fans did. Secondly, there was also a major open letter that was created by a group of D20 developers that called Wizards of the Coast quote, the dragon on top of the horde willing to burn the thriving village if only to get a few more gold pieces. And it characterized the version 1.1 OGL as an attempt to dismantle the entire RPG industry. So if you got from those words that people were furious, you are correct. And what happened next was not what Wizards or Hasbro wanted. In fact, so many people rushed to cancel their DND beyond subscriptions that a lot of things happened like they crashed the server for DND beyond. So if you can see here, what I call the Exodus and the continued Exodus, so many fans cancel that it crashes the page following backlash, and many many gaming related online magazines and publications reported on this particular news. It was definitely the talk for the first two three weeks of January of this year at least so this is relatively fresh. And what we are seeing here in this particular talk. Well, I mentioned also there was that open letter with that colorful language about a fire breathing dragon destroying and thriving village. Well, the cancellations, the irate folks, the folks who signed on to the open letter of which there were more than 77,000 players of DND. So that got Hasbro's attention and Wizards of the Coast chose to fully reverse course and revoke any of the 1.1 license. In fact, the current license that's still in play now is still OGL. The other thing that also came out of this that's a positive and also refers to some of the other things that I've mentioned in this talk is that the entire 5.1 SRD is now available under a Creative Commons license so the desire for players to have open access in some way to some of these different elements that were granted to them in that original license that they followed and that they insisted that the Wizards of the Coast follow really did have an impact. So we're getting very close to the end here I only have a couple of slides left, but what I wanted to reiterate here is that when we started at the beginning of this talk early in the slide I told you that we were all copyright users and we were all also copyright owners. And I also want to leave with you the fact that I hope you will exercise your voice as a member of the creator community because when we're all owners and all users this also inherently means that we're also part of the creative community and the creative commons. So because of this, you have a voice and as was demonstrated in this big revolt in Exodus with respect to D&D against a massive corporation like Hasbro, the users one. And I think we rolled a 20 so if you have any questions comments about that. I see there is a comment here in the chat. Alright, and I'll leave us with here this last slide with content which is we hope you'll exercise your right to fair use support open public licenses and we do have a guide for creators here so that's the URL for our guide for creators. And there's also an email address if you have any questions related to copyright. If you want us to help you navigate a potential fair use license. Please take advantage of those things and get in touch with us. So I did really prepare the talk to last just an hour I know we have a little bit of extra time both just in case folks might have questions but I do want to thank you for all of the attention and participation that you gave today. Thanks so much. And we hope that you will join us for the rest of Fair Use Week. If you're available tomorrow at noon. So I'm going to stop my screen sharing. If you'd like to ask any questions in the chat. We can definitely try to address those but again I want to thank you for you coming today and for your attention and interest in this topic. Right. We can go ahead and stop the recording.