Wizards of the Coast LLC has released a kit containing trademarked images and logos pre-approved for use on fan websites. In order to download the kit, you first must agree to their terms of service. These terms not only cover how the images may be uses, as would be expected, but the type of content that you may and may not post to your fan site. Suggested content for a fan site includes posting your character sheet, writing fan fiction, and posting original artwork. What the terms specifically forbid are free games, modules (one asumes they means adventures), or applications for all of Wizards' brands, including Dungeons & Dragons.
There are a couple of questions that arise from this. First, the term "fan site" is never defined. Is a blog or online magazine that occassionally discusses D&D a "fan site"? Are forums fan sites? Is a wiki devoted to creating and sharing Old School gaming material for out-of-print editions of D&D a fan site? The second potentially troubling question is that the word "application" is not defined. Would a new monster, power, or class be considered an application? Reading further, the terms do indicated that if you wish to produce material that would be covered under the Game System License (GSL), then you should be using the GSL.
This could be interpreted as a back-door method of getting fans, including bloggers and forum posters, to adhere to the GSL and waive their rights to Fair Use. By using the provided graphics, you're agreeing to adhere not only to the GSL, but the Wizards website terms of service as well. Those terms include the following paragraph:
By posting or submitting any text, images, designs, video, sound, code, data, lists, or other materials or information (such User-submitted content, collectively, "User Content") to or through a Site, including without limitation on any User profile page, you hereby irrevocably grant to Wizards, its affiliates and sublicensees, a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and fully sub-licensable license, to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such User Content (in whole or in part) in any media and to incorporate the User Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed. The foregoing grants shall include the right to exploit any proprietary rights in such User Content, including but not limited to rights under copyright, trademark, service mark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction.
By agreeing to the fan site toolkit terms of use, are you agreeing that the content you're providing on your fansite can be claimed by Wizards as their property? It could be interpreted that way. At the very least, agreeing to the fan site terms of service could strengthen Wizards' legal standing should they decide to pursue legal action against you based on the content you provide on your site.
There is a lot of discussion going on right now among members of the RPG Bloggers Network as to what this means to them. Most are going to forego using the fan site toolkit on the assumption that it does weaken their right to fair use in creating compatible content. Some see it as an attack on RPG bloggers and various fan forums. A few, typically blogs that only offer occassional coverage of D&D and other Wizards' products, are considering discontinuing any coverage of Wizards' brands as a way of both covering themselves against a company that's essentially declaring its intentions to be litigious and as a form of protest again what they consider to be a fan-unfriendly policy.
Whether this turns out to be a tempest in a teacup or the next volley in an ongoing struggle between Wizards and its fan remains to be seen. It does, however, continue to foster the impression that Wizards is more interested in protecting its intellectual property rights than in pleasing its fans.
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