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Topic: What's in a Name? (Read 8742 times)

What's in a Name?

I rather like the name DnD Sanctuary, it fits well with our origin and it's a clever but recognisable variant of D&D.

But it has its problems.

o  It is very parochial and remains tied to Opera, even if loosely

o  More importantly DnD is not original and is the name of a video game as well as that of a company.

We should have a name which does as many of the following as possible:

o  Be original and avoid copyright difficulties
o  Be catchy
o  Ideally, show up well in Google searches
o  If possible, reflect what we're about

It's not easy and maybe DnD will stand, but I think it worth the effort to see if there are any other names we can come up with.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #1


o  More importantly DnD is not original and is the name of a video game as well as that of a company.

It's not easy and maybe DnD will stand, but I think it worth the effort to see if there are any other names we can come up with.


A forum it's not a video game or a company, completely separated activities with no possibility of confusing people, therefore there are no copyright problems. That is, according my country laws.

I had to register denominations at the international center in Switzerland (WIPO - World Intellectual Property Organization) and I suppose the laws to be the same regarding signatory countries. In fact, it's at the original country that the name it's allowed or not, WIPO just registers to have international protection. And you pay for that.

That's not an easy thing and certainly complex if we are going to care too much with it. Very very complex with lawyers specialized in nothing but that. Do we really need such concerns? I know nothing called "DnD Sanctuary".

But of course, if problems arises, it will be Frenzie to got them. That's not fair.
You tell us what you think about this issues, Frenzie.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #2
Even if DnD were a company or a product, the reason Bounty the coconut candy bar and Bounty the cleaning product can coexist peacefully is that they're completely unrelated. I don't really see any relation between Debates & Discussions and Dungeons & Dragons.
But of course, if problems arises, it will be Frenzie to got them. That's not fair.
You tell us what you think about this issues, Frenzie.

I'm not sure it's really an issue, but I'm all open to suggesting a few different names.



Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #5

Even if DnD were a company or a product, the reason Bounty the coconut candy bar and Bounty the cleaning product can coexist peacefully is that they're completely unrelated. I don't really see any relation between Debates & Discussions and Dungeons & Dragons.
But of course, if problems arises, it will be Frenzie to got them. That's not fair.
You tell us what you think about this issues, Frenzie.

I'm not sure it's really an issue, but I'm all open to suggesting a few different names.


Frenzie, you are quite logical in your interpretations & conclusions..

The name is probably safe.

That said,  if you look at the many litigations concerning copyright infringement & so on, there would be at least 2 things in your favor regarding both:


  • The product is not in unfair competition with any other known corporation.
  • There is an obviously provable absence of malice if there were any conflicts found to exist.


I wouldn't be overly concerned Frenzie, but to be doubly safe formulate & publish a liability disclaimer.

I would also consult a local lawyer who is well versed in your liability laws.




Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #6
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Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #7
Yes SF - I agree with most of what you wrote there; DnD is arguably OK an logic says it should be but as you say unfortunately some of these litigations defy logic. This morning I'm packing to leave for Holland to see family so I don't have time to research many examples, but there were some very silly cases of legal cases in the UK where the Olympics Organisation objected to the use of even the word Olympics - see here.

Better to discuss this here and rehearse the argument than get caught out later.

Re Copyright in the forum I would guess that most cartoons shown in D&D probably infringe copyright if people wanted to be sticky. Can't say I approve at all but there it is.

On the disclaimer thing, I'm working on that.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #8
Meh, if those bastards at Opera (pardon the French there, Frenzie, but they have really rubbed me the wrong way on how they've gone about the whole dratted thing) want to complain about the name, I say we spit on them, and add just a wee bit more to it, such as DnDTalk or something similar.

Of course, Pesala was always a wise poster, and I am still quite partial to the name Diatribes and Disputes, as it brings to mind happy years of arguing ad nauseum with our dear friend Bantay. :left:  :)

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #9

Why is a message board without file sharing so concerned about copyright? Is that the reason why we don't see any mention of Opera or its logo?

Because it may already be a copyright violation just to show an image or whatever, even if you don't host it. These things differ between countries as anyone following relevant, for example, german and american news can attest. I'd assume dutch copyright law would be more or less in line with german ( thanks to EU regulations ) rather than US law but I bet it's got its own set of warts.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #10

Re Copyright in the forum I would guess that most cartoons shown in D&D probably infringe copyright if people wanted to be sticky. Can't say I approve at all but there it is.

Depends which laws actually apply. In the US it would be fair use ( don't pretend it's your own, link to the original just to be safe etc. ), but this isn't the US.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #11
Re Copyright in the forum I would guess that most cartoons shown in D&D probably infringe copyright if people wanted to be sticky. Can't say I approve at all but there it is.

There's also the integral copying of articles that showed up occasionally, sometimes even without source attribution. You can quote parts of an article to discuss them, but you can't simply paste the whole article. I realize that other website are *ahem*stupid*ahem* and they often seem to make no attempt to keep their links alive. I'm not talking about a My Opera-style shutdown, but simply a newspaper upgrading this or that aspect of their website and breaking all links every two years or so. Therefore I completely understand why one might wish to include an entire article, but unfortunately even if it disappears from the Internet completely it's still not okay. I'm not entirely sure how http://archive.org handles this.

There's also a lot of CC licenses out there, but all too often people seem to forget about the attribution part of that license.
On the disclaimer thing, I'm working on that.

One thing that might be worth considering is that each comment is not only the responsibility of an individual poster, but also the full property of the individual poster. Disqus essentially requires you to sign away all rights to your own comments. Disqus is awful. I want to be the anti-Disqus, so to speak. You give me the right to publish your comments, and to unpublish your comments if they violate the rules, and that's about it. If you could incorporate something along those lines into your first draft that'd be neat too.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #12

Meh, if those bastards at Opera (pardon the French there, Frenzie, but they have really rubbed me the wrong way on how they've gone about the whole dratted thing) want to complain about the name, I say we spit on them, and add just a wee bit more to it, such as DnDTalk or something similar.

I doubt they have a copyright on "Debates and Discussions".


Of course, Pesala was always a wise poster, and I am still quite partial to the name Diatribes and Disputes, as it brings to mind happy years of arguing ad nauseum with our dear friend Bantay. :left:  :)

We used to refer to it as the troll cave way back when :right:

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #13


Re Copyright in the forum I would guess that most cartoons shown in D&D probably infringe copyright if people wanted to be sticky. Can't say I approve at all but there it is.

Depends which laws actually apply. In the US it would be fair use ( don't pretend it's your own, link to the original just to be safe etc. ), but this isn't the US.
The Netherlands has citing right. It's somewhat similar to fair use, but more limited. The relevant law is in article 15a of authorship law.

It says (summarized, and don't completely trust my interpretations as IANAL):

  • Citing is not regarded as a breach of copyright if:

    • The work was properly made publicly available. (i.e. don't cite from unpublished stuff without permission)

    • The citing is in concordance with what society deems acceptable with regard to the size of the cited passages and whether it's justified with the intended goal in mind.

    • Article 25 is taken into account. (That's about what rights the author of a work has even after having sold the rights to their work. They can e.g. still object to publishing a work, but that already seems to be covered under point 1. There's also all kinds of stuff there about surviving relatives etc.)

    • As much as reasonably possible, the source, including the name of the maker, is mentioned.


  • Citing also means citing in press overviews of articles published in periodicals. (Isn't that freaking obvious? Law can so weird. :P I guess they might have some exceptions for overviews someplace else.)

  • This article also applies to citing in a different language than the original.




Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #14
So, more or less, don't quote the whole thing unless absolutely unavoidable, always credit the source, always respect the source's license. IANAL either.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #15
Yup. Fairly common sense stuff I'd think, but it means a large percentage of DANBUZU's posts cannot be allowed.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #16

Yup. Fairly common sense stuff I'd think, but it means a large percentage of DANBUZU's posts cannot be allowed.

My thoughts exactly. Then again, in a forum where you as the owner have no direct control over what people are posting, isn't it enough to respond to reasonable complaints in a reasonable time frame? As in remove offending content once you're made aware of it and determined that it actually needs to be removed? IIRC german law changed into that direction a while ago after much wailing & gnashing of teeth but I may be wrong there.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #17
You're probably right, but I wouldn't want posters to get the idea that it's allowed unless someone complains. In the long term I imagine it's both safer and easier to be a bit more proactive about it.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #18
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a big, fat notice telling people to properly cite their sources, respect the original author(s) etc.

 

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #19
Just one more thing, I think that bellow the DnD Sanctuary tittle, at top left of the page, it should have a brief description kind of "International discussion forum for debating... everything". Something like that that would turn clear to any visitor that this is not economically driven, or some esoteric sect...
It should appear at Google and other search engines.

Sometimes it's possible to find some kind of motto that explains it in a very resumed way, but nothing comes to my mind this moment.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #20
I entered a "slogan" in the settings, which automatically replaced the top-right image. How's that?

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #21
he he, I like it  :)
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's in a Name?

Reply #22

So, more or less, don't quote the whole thing unless absolutely unavoidable, always credit the source, always respect the source's license. IANAL either.


yes good point Mac ... noted for the draft rules, also Frans, your remark on the posts belonging to the poster is exactly aligned with my thoughts on the matter.

Back on the name thing. Note that DnD association is not just with a game, I gave that only as an example ... Google a bit more. Col Reb (Sir) Diatribes indeed! Along those lines I had thought of Moans and Mutters, but that was taken already ... Moans and Groans less so but not quite pristine....on-going.