First Inklings of Debate: ---------------------------------------------------------------- After TSR's announcement hit the net, a number of people began openly discussing whether Internet users should accept the company's position. Five important points raised at this early stage: (1) Can we trust them? What if TSR takes all this stuff sent to (or taken by) MPGN and begins to publish it for profit (perhaps online, perhaps via CD-ROM)? What if MPGN closes off anonymous ftp and begins charging for access? It is important to note that TSR has a long and somewhat infamous legal history, going back to the inception of the company when the Tolkien Estate sued over the inclusion of Balrogs and Hobbits in Classic D&D, and later, when Dave Arneson sued over his copyrights being violated when AD&D was published (clearly a derivative work of Classic D&D of which he was the co- author), and still later when TSR was forced to remove the Elric, Grey Mouser, and Cthulhu Mythos sections from the Deities & Demigods publication, due again to copyright violations. Because of incidents like these, many netters hold a strong distrust for TSR, particularly as it concerns matters of creative intellectual property. (2) Censorship. Since all submissions must now go to one site (MPGN), that gives the site administrator (Rob Miracle) the ability to censor. Usenet is essentially a wide-area community devoted to the free exchange of ideas and information. Creating a bottleneck only promotes censorship and everything Usenet stands against. (3) Does TSR have the right to make these edicts? TSR apparently succeeded in its ability to threaten the fanzines into submission. Many years ago, numerous small-time magazines grew up around the roleplaying hobby, and many of these focused on AD&D. Fans would send their own creations to supplement the game (adventures, adventure settings, monsters, spells, magic items, non-player characters, and even stories). TSR told the fanzines to stop publishing such material, asserting that the only thing the fanzines could legally publish is reviews. Apparently, TSR got its way. People disagree as to whether this is because TSR is legally in the right or whether they simply threatened the small- time zines into submission by virtue of being a big corporation with lots of money and the ability to unfairly wield the courts as a weapon against perceived competition. (4) Does TSR have the ability to enforce such edicts? Clearly, they have the ability to threaten the FTP sites into closing. Could they also threaten internet backbone sites into dropping certain newsgroups (such as rec.games.frp.dnd)? Also, how do international trademark and copyright laws differ around the globe? What impact does this have on the legality and enforceability of TSR's position? (5) Is TSR doing this because it must in order to protect its copyrights and trademarks? There are people on both sides of this issue, some stating that TSR is only doing what it legally must in order to protect is intellectual property. Other people counter that the company is going well beyond this point. Because TSR has a nasty reputation as being sue-happy (Mayfair and GDW being two well-known examples of what many people view as TSR-mischief), some netters wonder if there is a hidden agenda at work. Perhaps TSR has plans for the net (such as reaching customers through it and making more money), but that in order for these plans to work, the company must force its own fans into submission. A third group of people take a less sinister stance, noting that TSR may simply be afraid of competing against hundreds of fan-authored products. Since the Internet is growing so rapidly, there is no telling just how many fan-authored products may exist in the future, or just how many of these will be of "good" quality. Linux, a freeware product by UNIX enthusiasts on the Internet, is already taking sales away from OS producers. Might the same situation happen for publishers of roleplaying products?