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View Full Version : My character sheets are underattack



Sombrenote
2008-04-05, 12:21 PM
Do you remember me? I am Mr. "Character Sheets - color coded - all class compatible"

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=13168491#post13168491

Tens of thousands of you have downloaded my Character sheets. Whether it be from my torrents, or from my account on Scribd.

I had spent months designing and working on my sheets. They were created completely from scratch, and designed by me from the ground up, to be FREE to everyone who wants to play this game.

Now someone has gotten in their head that they want to steal what is mine, and force me and everyone else who would like to use my sheets to pay for them. For MY WORK, the work I spent for you all who wanted to smartly designed sheet.

I know nothing about copywrite laws, I just know that to find open licensed stuff on the internet and steal it is wrong. And that there is nothing wrong with custom character sheets, because it is allowed by the open licensing agreement for WoTC D&D rpg.

I need your guys help. I want as many places as possible to host my character sheet, for all of you to which can never been taken down by greedy American corporation.

D&D v3.5 - Character Sheet - All Class Compatible v2 - Fillable - BETA2.pdf
http://www.mediafire.com/?z26tjd0t2gg

D&D v3.5 - Character Sheet - All Class Compatible v2.pdf
http://www.mediafire.com/?m1jerz3gypp

D&D v3.5 - Spell sheet.pdf
http://www.mediafire.com/?1nm15xenbad

Rion
2008-04-05, 12:58 PM
The first link doesn't work, and shouldn't this be in Gaming?

Sombrenote
2008-04-05, 01:07 PM
Well this is homebrew I thought.

Rion
2008-04-05, 02:11 PM
I'm not sure it should be in Gaming. It's just that I thought Homebrew was for when you made some new thing to use in DnD (or any other PnP RPG) itself, like a class or a feat. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Bhu
2008-04-06, 02:40 AM
Who's trying to sell them?

InnerLight
2008-04-06, 10:58 AM
you also could create a torrent of a whole bunch of open source homebrew stuff and seed it for forever. that way, you'd be spreading more homebrew stuff and it would spread faster, most likely.

RS14
2008-04-06, 11:48 AM
Yeah, I remember you at least. Welcome back. :smallsmile:

The first link is broken because of the "..." in the url. Fix that.

The problem with just having everyone host it is that it makes you look like the infringing party. Besides, most people aren't going to go on BitTorrent looking for character sheets. People will still buy them from them as long as they're for sale, no matter what you do to distribute. Look at major AV programs like Spybot S&D that apparently still get spoofed.
If the files are still hosted and haven't been challenged by this company, you probably don't need to worry about hosting the files in many places though; they'll probably not make a serious legal challenge. If they do, you really need a lawyer more than a forum.

If you do want to fight back, the best way to do so is probably to file a DMCA takedown notice (If they're in the US, at least). Now would be a good time to speak to a lawyer as well, but technically it can be done without. Just read up on copyright first. You'll need to document where they're hosting the sheets, document your copyright on them, etc. Also, you'd better make sure you've not signed away any rights to them by hosting them on Scribd. Sadly, I think that there's probably some provision in their Terms of Service that makes it so, and that puts you completely out of luck. A false takedown notice can have serious consequences. This article at arborlaw (http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/02/05/dmca-takedowns-and-cd/) seems very relevant, though.

And in the future, place any works under a Creative Commons license or similar.

I am not a lawyer. If in doubt, speak to one. I am only an amateur copyright nerd.

Edit: I've got to ask, but how do you know that these sheets are exactly the same?

Edit2: Ok, just looked at the thread over in Media; it looks like I was misunderstanding this. If they've taken down your sheets, they clearly believe they are infringing on their copyright, and it is probably foolish to challenge them without a lawyer.

Sombrenote
2008-04-06, 02:24 PM
The first link is broken because of the "..." in the url. Fix that.

Should be fixed.