3 Seconds of Every TNG Episode Is a Wild Way to Experience Star Trek

https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-the-next-generation-every-episode-montage-wtf-1849927716


There’s a lot of Star Trek, and a lot of it is very watchable—especially in the iconic sophomore series The Next Generation, which helped truly catapult the franchise into the pop culture stratosphere. Asking a Trek neophyte to dive into over five days of TV is a daunting task, however. So why not just give them an  appetizer of everything?

This incredible mash-up of all 178 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation by Sentinel of Something condenses the seven seasons of boldly going done by Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise into a little over nine minutes… by giving you three random seconds of every episode. It’s unhinged and it’s perfect.

3 Seconds of Every Star Trek: TNG Episode

There’s an artistry to the consideration here. Do you pick an iconic visual, a perfect, but short enough line of dialogue, a joke, a sad moment, or a shot of action? Just how do you distill an entire episode of TNG, from the very best to the very worst, in just three seconds? The answer is that you not take Star Trek seriously, so what you get is three manic seconds of out-of-context weirdness, 178 times in a row.

Okay, it’s probably not helpful to a Star Trek newbie looking to shave some time off of a marathon. But for TNG fans, it’s a delightfully zany whirlwind trip through one of the best sci-fi TV shows of all time.


Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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December 26, 2022 at 11:04AM

Startup Claims It’s Sending Sulfur Into the Atmosphere to Fight Climate Change

https://gizmodo.com/make-sunsets-solar-geoengineering-sulfur-climate-change-1849931460


A startup says it has begun releasing sulfur particles into Earth’s atmosphere, in a controversial attempt to combat climate change by deflecting sunlight. Make Sunsets, a company that sells carbon offset “cooling credits” for $10 each, is banking on solar geoengineering to cool down the planet and fill its coffers. The startup claims it has already released two test balloons, each filled with about 10 grams of sulfur particles and intended for the stratosphere, according to the company’s website and first reported on by MIT Technology Review.

The concept of solar geoengineering is simple: Add reflective particles to the upper atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight that penetrates from space, thereby cooling Earth. It’s an idea inspired by the atmospheric side effects of major volcanic eruptions, which have led to drastic, temporary climate shifts multiple times throughout history, including the notorious “year without a summer” of 1816.

Yet effective and safe implementation of the idea is much less simple. Scientists and engineers have been studying solar geoengineering as a potential climate change remedy for more than 50 years. But almost nobody has actually enacted real-world experiments because of the associated risks, like rapid changes in our planet’s precipitation patterns, damage to the ozone layer, and significant geopolitical ramifications.

Make Sunsets did not respond to an emailed request for comment on this story.

Though we know that sulfur particles can reflect sunlight away from Earth and cool the planet, the unintended consequences of such an action are less understood and potentially catastrophic. Some studies suggest that sulfur injection over the northern hemisphere would lead to massive droughts in the Sahel, Amazon rainforest, and elsewhere. Conversely, adding sulfur over the southern hemisphere could dramatically increase the number of Atlantic hurricanes in the northern hemisphere.

Plus, if and when we get enough sulfur into the atmosphere to meaningfully cool Earth, we’d have to keep adding new particles indefinitely to avoid entering an era of climate change about four to six times worse than what we’re currently experiencing, according to one 2018 study. Sulfur aerosols don’t stick around very long. Their lifespan in the stratosphere is somewhere between a few days and a couple years, depending on particle size and other factors.

Presumably, while this theoretical geoengineering is happening, we’d still be adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as well as sulfur particles. If, at any point, the sulfur delivery system were to break down, all that CO2 and methane would rapidly catch up with us—heating up the planet super quickly, all at once. Ecosystems would be thrown extra out of whack, as animals and plants would’ve stayed in place under the artificially cooled climate. Ocean acidification would continue unabated. TLDR; it would be a clusterfuck.

Now, Make Sunsets founder, Luke Iseman, is apparently walking all of us Earthlings toward the edge of that proverbial plank without any sort of regulatory approval or international permission.

Rogue agents independently deciding to impose geoengineering on the rest of us has been a concern for as long as the thought of intentionally manipulating the atmosphere has been around. The Pentagon even has dedicated research teams working on methods to detect and combat such clandestine attempts. But effectively defending against solar geoengineering is much more difficult than just doing it.

In Iseman’s rudimentary first trials, he says he released two weather balloons full of helium and sulfur aerosols somewhere in Baja California, Mexico. The founder told MIT Technology Review that the balloons rose toward the sky but, beyond that, he doesn’t know what happened to them, as the balloons lacked tracking equipment. Maybe they made it to the stratosphere and released their payload, maybe they didn’t. The weather balloon method has been previously proposed but not tested or demonstrated to be effective, according to an earlier 2019 MIT Technology Review report. Regardless, some scientists are alarmed by the attempt.

“To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” Janos Pasztor, head of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative and a trained nuclear engineer, told MIT Technology Review. “The current state of science is not good enough,” to justify such experiments or predict their outcome, he explained.

Iseman and Make Sunsets claim that a single gram of sulfur aerosols counteracts the warming effects of one ton of CO2. But there is no clear scientific basis for such an assertion, geoengineering researcher Shuchi Talati told the outlet. And so the $10 “cooling credits” the company is hawking are likely bunk (along with most carbon credit/offset schemes.)

Even if the balloons made it to the stratosphere, the small amount of sulfur released wouldn’t be enough to trigger significant environmental effects, said David Keith to MIT Technology Review. Keith is one of the most well-known names in geoengineering and is part of a Harvard research team that’s been trying to get its own sulfur tests off the ground for years. Nonetheless, Keith is worried by the prospect of privatized, for-profit geoengineering. “Doing it as a startup is a terrible idea,” the scientist said, highlighting the risks of runaway financial motivations.

Geoengineering will almost certainly be part of future climate-focused efforts, whether every expert gets on board or not. The Biden Administration officially approved research funds for solar geoengineering earlier this year. And as the consequences of unabated climate change accelerate, the idea has transitioned from the realm of speculation and science fiction into mainstream discussion. But to prevent solar geoengineering from becoming yet another human-caused climate disaster, much more (and much more careful) research into the strategy is needed.

The solution to climate change is almost certainly not a single maverick “disrupting” the composition of Earth’s stratosphere. But that hasn’t stopped Make Sunsets from reportedly raising nearly $750,000 in funds from venture capital firms. And for just ~$29,250,000 more per year, the company claims it can completely offset current warming. It’s not a bet we recommend taking.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

December 27, 2022 at 03:41PM

Frustrated United Customer Tracks Lost Luggage via AirTag While Claiming Her Bag Was ‘Held Hostage’

https://gizmodo.com/united-apple-airtag-air-travel-lost-luggage-1849943841


Bad weather, flight cancellations, and lost luggage have made traveling without incident over the holidays next to impossible.
Image: Anthony Kwan (Getty Images)

Traveling has been an absolute nightmare for many over the past few weeks, to put it mildly. Flights have been cancelled, airports have been mobbed, and luggage has been lost—or has it? A traveller’s lost luggage journey has gone viral on Twitter after she documented her belongings moving across Washington D.C. with an Apple AirTag, contradicting United Airlines’ claims to her.

According to her Twitter thread, Valerie Szybala claimed on January 1 that United Airlines lost her bag and was lying to her about its whereabouts. Szybala’s Apple AirTag that was attached to her luggage led her to an apartment complex where she found other bags (but not her own) from United Airlines flights near the building’s dumpsters, as seen in photos she shared on Twitter. After reaching out to United’s customer service via Twitter DM’s, and explaining that she tracked her back to a random apartment complex, Szybala was told to “calm down” and that United would deliver her bag to her since it was sitting “at the delivery service.”

In an update that same day, Szybala says that her luggage was moving for the first time since December 30 and was sitting near/in a McDonald’s outside of downtown Washington D.C. The AirTag then moved from the McDonald’s back to the apartment complex Szybala was first led to.

Yesterday morning, Szybala reported that her AirTag was moving again and was located 16 miles outside of Washington D.C. downtown, where she suspected it could be a part of a delivery from United. However, the AirTag did return to the same apartment complex again. Szybala says that after she returned to the apartment complex—with news crews who were documenting her story—she finally got her bag back, albeit under odd circumstances.

“Hello Valerie, I hope you re [sic] having a happy and blessed holiday season,” a text message Szybala received said from a person who claims to be associated with a company called DCA Couriers United. “I’m delivering the luggage missing from your flight with AA/UA. I want to apologise [sic] for the inconvenience that you’ve had with your bag. Imma deliver it to you today. The issue was that the bag was given to me under a different passenger and I delivered your in a different address and had to go back to that place and pick it up.”

After calling the number associated with that text message, Szybala says she was greeted by a man that “looked a little surprised” to see her with the news crews. While skeptical of the circumstances around the text message, Szybala was excited to have her bag back, but is still interested in answers around why the bag spent so much time moving around the Washington D.C. area while returning to a residential apartment complex.

Szybala and United Airlines did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment. This lost luggage debacle comes as many travelers have started using AirTags to help keep track of their bags.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

January 3, 2023 at 09:22AM

A College Student Created an App to Detect If Essays Were Written by ChatGPT

https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-ai-essay-detector-college-princeton-edward-tian-1849946535


Photo: rafapress (Shutterstock)

A college student has created an app to help us humans decipher whether text was written by a human or generated by OpenAI’s crazy new chatbot, ChatGPT.

Edward Tian, a computer science and journalism student at Princeton, says he created the program, which he dubs “GPTZero,” to help combat academic plagiarism generated by the new AI-powered chatbot.

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s new large language model bot, has been stunning audiences with its ability to spit out human-like text. Here at Gizmodo, we have used the program to do a number of things, including pen an entire science fiction story and write one of our blogs for us. The tech has impressed a lot of people—but it has also worried them. In particular, critics fear that the chatbot will potentially doom the college essay, lead to a swell in disinformation, and prove otherwise disruptive to major media industries.

Thus, Tian’s program—which analyzes text for complexity and “randomness” to assess whether it was spawned by a human or machine—seems like a pretty good thing.

The college student shared links to his creation on Twitter this week, explaining how it was designed to “quickly and efficiently detect whether an essay is ChatGPT or human written.”

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GPTZero seems to work pretty well. In my initial run with the app, I plugged in some text from a recent conversation with ChatGPT and, within seconds, it accurately deduced that the copy was “machine generated.” Next, I plugged in some writing from a recent blog of mine, and, again, it quickly figured out that it was written by a human. The more text you plug into the program, the better the results seem to be—so it helps if you add at least several paragraphs of copy for an accurate readout.

If you’re curious about how the whole thing works, you can head to Tian’s website to check it out for yourself.

GPTZero is pretty cool—though it just goes to show that, in our dystopian present, not only are machines writing stuff for us, but they’re also telling us whether they wrote it or not. Will humans maintain any cognitive abilities in the future or are robots going to do literally all of our thinking for us? In short: things seem pretty grim for future IQs.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

January 4, 2023 at 11:27AM

New York City Schools Ban ChatGPT to Head Off a Cheating Epidemic

https://gizmodo.com/new-york-city-schools-chatgpt-ban-cheating-essay-openai-1849949384


Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty Images)

The ChatGPT backlash has officially begun. On Wednesday, New York City public schools officially banned teachers and students from using the AI-powered chatbot, apparently fearing that it would lead to a tsunami of cheating.

The ban was originally reported by Chalkbeat New York, which wrote Wednesday that the city had blocked the program on school internet and devices.

Why are the Big Apple’s schools putting the kibosh on America’s new favorite chatbot? In a statement provided to Gizmodo, New York City Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle broke it down like this:

“Due to concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content, access to ChatGPT is restricted on New York City Public Schools’ networks and devices. While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success.”

Roughly translated, what the city seems to be saying is: students are definitely going to use this thing to cheat on tests, to “automate” their essay-writing, and to otherwise avoid learning how to write anything themselves. NYC Public Schools’ statement also seems to make reference to ChatGPT’s accuracy problem(the chatbot’s answers are often full of factual errors and it has a penchant for making shit up). Of course, New York’s administrators aren’t the first to express concern for how OpenAI’s chatbot might impact local education and students’ learning experience, but they’re the first in the country to actually do something about it.

More and more people seem to be waking up to the darker implications of ChatGPT’s technology. While the chatbot has so far managed to impress users with its ability to spin up a wealth of creative material (its short stories and screenplays are admittedly pretty wild), concerns persist over how it will inevitably be misused. When it comes to education specifically, many have predicted that ChatGPT will be used to cheat, to automatically fabricate college essays, and to otherwise hamper students’ ability to learn and do things for themselves.

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On a related note, a college student spent New Year’s Day creating an app that can decipher you decipher what content was written by a human and what was spawned by ChatGPT—because that’s a thing we apparently need now, an algorithm telling us if something was written by an algorithm. Hoo boy, the future sure is going to be weird.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

January 4, 2023 at 04:43PM

U.S. Approves First Vaccination of Honeybees

https://gizmodo.com/honeybee-vaccine-american-foulbrood-usda-1849952784


Honeybees are a crucial piece of the global ecosystem, but a bacterial infection called American foulbrood can destroy an entire colony.
Image: Joe Raedle (Getty Images)

The bees are having a rough go of it, and that’s news bad for humans—we need bees to pollinate our crops. Now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has given the green light to a biotech company to vaccinate honeybees against a fatal infectious disease, one of the major threats to these creatures.

Dalan Animal Health developed the vaccine, which recently received a conditional license from the USDA and is designed to protect honeybees against infections of American foulbrood. American foulbrood is a fatal disease caused by the bacteria Paenibacillus larvae; it can kill honeybees in the pre-pupal or pupal stage of their life cycle. The disease is spread through bacterial spores and can take down an entire colony.

“We are committed to providing innovative solutions to protect our pollinators and promote sustainable agriculture. Global population growth and changing climates will increase the importance of honeybee pollination to secure our food supply,” said Dalan Animal Health CEO Anette Kleiser in a press release. “Our vaccine is a breakthrough in protecting honeybees. We are ready to change how we care for insects, impacting food production on a global scale.”

It would be a challenge to give shots to baby bees, so a dead version of the bacteria will be added to the food eaten by worker bees. Those bees then pass the vaccine into royal jelly, a milky secretion that is fed to the colony’s queen. From there, the vaccine will transfer to the queen’s ovaries, granting immunity to developing larvae.

“This is an exciting step forward for beekeepers, as we rely on antibiotic treatment that has limited effectiveness and requires lots of time and energy to apply to our hives,” said Trevor Tauzer, a board member of the California State Beekeepers Association, in the company’s release.

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Honeybees pollinate everything from blueberries to avocados to agave. But bee populations are on the decline, potentially threatening the world’s food output and delicate ecosystems.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

January 5, 2023 at 09:15AM

Dungeons & Dragons’ New License Tightens Its Grip on Competition

https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-gaming-license-1849950634


The new Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License, a document which allows a vast group of independent publishers to use the basic game rules created by D&D owner Wizards of the Coast, significantly restricts the kind of content allowed and requires anyone making money under the license to report their products to Wizards of the Coast directly, according to an analysis of a leaked draft of the document, dated mid-December.

Despite reassurances from Wizards of the Coast last month, the original OGL will become an “unauthorized” agreement, and it appears no new content will be permitted to be created under the original license.

What is the Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License?

The original OGL is what many contemporary tabletop publishers use to create their products within the boundaries of D&D’s reproducible content. Much of the original OGL is dedicated to the System Resource Document, and includes character species, classes, equipment, and, most importantly, general gameplay structures, including combat, spells, and creatures.

The creation of the OGL version 1.0, which was originally published in 2000, has allowed a host of outside designers and publishers, both amateur and professional, to make new products for a game that remains entirely owned by Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast (WotC). While this arrangement sometimes created products that directly competed with WotC publications, it also allowed the game to flourish and grow thanks to the resources created by the wider D&D community.

In 2022, when WotC announced plans to develop a revised edition of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, codenamed One D&D, the company said it would update the OGL as well. The OGL has been tweaked multiple times since its 2000 release, and WotC has at times transitioned to other royalty-free licenses, but the original OGL 1.0 had essentially remained intact until the company said it would develop OGL version 1.1.

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What is in the new OGL 1.1?

A lot, actually. While the original open gaming license is a relatively short document, coming in at under 900 words, the new draft of the OGL 1.1, which was provided to io9 by a non-WotC developer, is over 9,000 words long. It addresses new technologies like blockchain and NFTs, and takes a strong stance against bigoted content, explicitly stating the company may terminate the agreement if third-party creators publish material that is “blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, trans-phobic, bigoted or otherwise discriminatory.”

One of the biggest changes to the document is that it updates the previously available OGL 1.0 to state it is “no longer an authorized license agreement.” By ending the original OGL, many licensed publishers will have to completely overhaul their products and distribution in order to comply with the updated rules. Large publishers who focus almost exclusively on products based on the original OGL, including Paizo, Kobold Press, and Green Ronin, will be under pressure to update their business model incredibly fast.

This is no mistake. According to the document procured by io9, the new agreements states that “the Open Game License was always intended to allow the community to help grow D&D and expand it creatively. It wasn’t intended to subsidize major competitors, especially now that PDF is by far the most common form of distribution.”

This sentiment is reiterated later in the document: The “OGL wasn’t intended to fund major competitors and it wasn’t intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear.”

Paizo Inc., publisher of the Pathfinder RPG, one of D&D’s largest competitors, declined to comment on the changes for this article, stating that the rules update was a complicated and ongoing situation.

Chris Pramas, founder and president of Green Ronin Publishing, said that despite the fact that one of their own products—Mutants and Masterminds—was published under the Original OGL in 2002, and is still available today, they had not seen the Updated OGL, and they do not believe there is “any benefit to switching to the new one as described.”

Wizards of the Coast declined to comment for this article or answer specific questions about the leaked OGL document. A spokesperson directed io9 to a blog post the company published in December, which reassures the community that this OGL will not materially affect the majority of people working in the industry.

What will happen to the original OGL?

The original OGL granted “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license” to the Open Game Content (commonly called the System Resource Document) and directed that licensees “may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.” But the updated OGL says that “this agreement is…an update to the previously available OGL 1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement.”

The new document clarifies further in the “Warranties” section that “this agreement governs Your use of the Licensed Content and, unless otherwise stated in this agreement, any prior agreements between Us and You are no longer in force.”

According to attorneys consulted for this article, the new language may indicate that Wizards of the Coast is rendering any future use of the original OGL void, and asserting that if anyone wants to continue to use Open Game Content of any kind, they will need to abide by the terms of the updated OGL, which is a far more restrictive agreement than the original OGL.

Wizards of the Coast declined to clarify if this is in fact the case.

Who will be affected by the new OGL 1.1?

If the original license is in fact no longer viable, every single licensed publisher will be affected by the new agreement, because every commercial creator will be asked to report their products, new and old, to Wizards of the Coast.

Additionally, while the original OGL did not specifically outline what kind of content third-party creators could make available and profit from, the updated OGL is very specific: The updated license “only allows for creation of roleplaying games and supplements in printed media and static electronic file formats. It does not allow for anything else, including but not limited to things like videos, virtual tabletops or VTT campaigns, computer games, novels, apps, graphics novels, music, songs, dances, and pantomimes. You may engage in these activities only to the extent allowed under the Wizards of the Coast Fan Content Policy or separately agreed between You and Us.”

The Fan Content Policy can be read here, but in broad strokes, it allows for free content “based on or incorporating our IP. Fan Content includes fan art, videos, podcasts, blogs, websites, streaming content, tattoos, altars to your cleric’s deity, etc.”

The leaked OGL 1.1 draft indicates that WotC may not give licensees a a lot of time to adjust and agree to this new policy: The document reads, “if you want to publish SRD-based content on or after January 13, 2023 and commercialize it, your only option is to agree to the OGL: Commercial.” io9’s source indicated that the final version of the document was originally intended for release on January 4, which would have given companies and creators seven business days to agree and comply.

What’s changing in the new OGL?

The Updated OGL is divided into Non-Commercial and Commercial agreements, and the rules are slightly different if you’re making money from direct sales or access to your work. The biggest change between the two sections is a Tiered Earning system (more on that later), new royalties, and rules for the use of crowdfunding. There is some clarity given about Patreon and tips—basically if your content is available for free elsewhere, but people can support you voluntarily without having their access affected, you are considered non-commercial.

Additionally, all creators will need to clearly and deliberately distinguish “their content” from “licensed content.” The new document reads that this must be done “in a way that allows a reader of Your Licensed Work to understand the distinction without checking any other document.” The Updated OGL suggests a different color font, asterisks on the page, “or putting a separate index or list in the back of Your Licensed Work that lists out what, exactly, You used from the SRD.”

Other parts of the new OGL document create a tiered system of categorizing licensees based on their revenues from commercialized work under the updated OGL.

Will OGL publishers have to pay royalties?

Probably not. Unless they are making over $750,000, licensees get to keep the money they earn. But the new OGL states that the Commercial Agreement “covers all commercial uses, whether they’re profitable or not.” So if you go into the red on a Kickstarter that earned $800K in backing money, you will still owe Wizards of the Coast, regardless of the fact that you did not profit from your venture.

“Note that if You appear to have achieved great success… from producing OGL: Commercial content, We may reach out to You for a more custom(and mutually beneficial) licensing arrangement,” the document notes, indicating that WotC is open to creating custom contracts and agreements, but at their discretion. This could indicate that “subsidized competition” like Pathfinder might not get a great deal.

The revenue tiers are as follows:

A. Initiate Tier. If You have registered at least one Licensed Work but haven’t generated $50,000 or more in total (gross) revenue from OGL: Commercial products in a given year, You are at the Initiate Tier.

B. Intermediate Tier. If Your Licensed Work(s) have generated more than $50,000 in total revenue in a given year but less than $750,000, You are at the Intermediate Tier.

C. Expert Tier. If Your Licensed Work(s) have generated at least $750,000 in total revenue in a given year, You are at the Expert Tier.

According to the document, “If, and only if, You are generating a significant amount of money (over $750,000 per year across all Licensed Works) from Your Licensed Works, The revenue You make from Your Licensed Works in excess of $750,000 in a single calendar year is considered “Qualifying Revenue” and You are responsible for paying Us 20% or 25% of that Qualifying Revenue.”

The draft goes on to explain that if you make $750,001, you will owe Wizards of the Coast 25 cents, as they are only asking for royalties on the one dollar made in excess of the Expert Tier. As stated in their announcement in December, WotC suspects that “less than twenty” companies are at the Expert Tier.

Who has to register work with Wizards of the Coast?

The Updated OGL says that “no matter what Tier You are in or how much money You believe Your product will make, You must register with Us any new Licensed Work You intend to offer for sale… including a description of the Licensed Work. We’ll also ask for Your contact information, information on where You intend to publish the Licensed Work, and its price, among other things.”

Creators will also be required to use a specific badge in order to publicly and obviously identify their work as covered by the updated OGL, and they will have to give WotC a copy of the publication. The early draft suggests that many of these processes will be handled through the company’s official digital toolset, D&D Beyond.

This is a significant change from the original OGL, which allowed creatorspublish without reporting. While it makes sense that Wizards wants to monitor who is using the Open Game Content, this feels like an impossible task. People are selling their work across dozens of platforms, and sometimes one product is being sold on multiple platforms. Whatever the reporting system looks like, the biggest burden will likely be on the smallest creators.

Kickstarter is D&D’s preferred crowdfunding platform

Online crowdfunding is a new phenomenon since the original OGL was created, and the new license attempts to address how and where these fundraising campaigns can take place. The OGL 1.1 states that if creators are members of the Expert Tier, “if Your Licensed Work is crowdfunded or sold via any platform other than Kickstarter, You will pay a 25% royalty on Qualifying Revenue,” and “if Your Licensed Work is crowdfunded on Kickstarter, Our preferred crowdfunding platform, You will only pay a 20% royalty on Qualifying Revenue.”

This means that the Updated OGL is directly encouraging Kickstarter over any other platform, including private company sites, as any non-Kickstarter revenue over $750K will incur a 25% royalty, and only Kickstarter revenue gets a break. There is no reason stated why Kickstarter is Wizards’ preferred crowdfunding platform.

There is also a section in the Updated OGL dedicated to conditions surrounding crowdfunding. Even for Initiate and Intermediate tiers, there are strings attached to using any crowdfunding platform, not just Kickstarter, to get a project off the ground. The two main points are that “you may only crowdfund the production of Licensed Works,” and that “no infringing materials are given out as perks or rewards.”

The power is back at Wizards of the Coast

While there is plenty more to parse, the main takeaway from the leaked OGL 1.1 draft document is that WotC is keeping power close at hand. There is no mention of perpetual, worldwide rights given to creators (which was present in section 4 of the Original OGL), and one of the caveats is that the company “can modify or terminate this agreement for any reason whatsoever, provided We give thirty (30) days’ notice.”

WotC also gets the right to use any content that licensees create, whether commercial or non-commerical. Although this is couched in language to protect Wizards’ products from infringing on creators’ copyright, the document states that for any content created under the updated OGL, regardless of whether or not it is owned by the creator, Wizards will have a “nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose.”

There are a lot of implications in this extended policy, and the ramifications of this updated OGL could have a chilling effect on new licensed products. As only “static” products are included, all work that publishers do for virtual tabletops may have to be offered as non-commercial, free products, which de-incentivizes their production. The royalties associated with any company making above $750K could also prompt publishers to hold back extra products or scale down projects so they stay under the Expert Tier.

Wizards of the Coast is clearly expecting these OGL changes to me met with some resistance. The document does note that if the company oversteps, they are aware that they “will receive community pushback and bad PR, and We’re more than open to being convinced that We made a wrong decision.”

io9 has reached out to additional publishers and creators, and will update this article as new information becomes available.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

January 5, 2023 at 09:25AM