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Old 09-18-2016, 02:17 PM   #31
steelbrok
 
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by tjoneslo View Post
From what I've been told, Far Future Enterprises gets the copyright and archives of JTAS and all the GURPS books at the start of next year. From there, the plan is to release the collection on a CD-ROM like the other collections of Traveller books.
So, more out of curiosity than anything else, copyright for the few articles I had published in JTAS now belongs to FFE?
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Old 09-19-2016, 12:39 AM   #32
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by steelbrok View Post
So, more out of curiosity than anything else, copyright for the few articles I had published in JTAS now belongs to FFE?
If SJG paid you for them, then, yes.
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Old 09-21-2016, 01:19 PM   #33
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

As I understood it, if you sold an article to JTAS, or rather, SJGames, you sold all the rights.

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We have the exclusive unrestricted right, in perpetuity, to use all or part of any such article in other forms, including but not limited to reprints, special compilations, hardcopy, promotional materials, and Internet postings
I made some money, I saw my name in "print", what more do I want?
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Old 09-22-2016, 06:03 PM   #34
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by Drifter View Post
As I understood it, if you sold an article to JTAS, or rather, SJGames, you sold all the rights.



I made some money, I saw my name in "print", what more do I want?
Ongoing credit for the work.
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Old 09-23-2016, 11:43 AM   #35
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by jeff_wilson View Post
Ongoing credit for the work.
Credit like money? I was paid at a rate that was agreed. I'm not owed anything else.

Credit like my name on the articles - I would like that if the article see the light of day again. I would think it would be unethical if my name were to be stripped off articles I wrote. Maybe not illegal - it does say "exclusive unrestricted right". But if ever saw one of my articles without my name, or worse, with some other name, I would be very vocal about that. Not good publicity for whoever was publishing it.

Are you saying I am owed if they are published again?
Are you saying it is likely my name is going to be stripped off the work?

You should be clear if you are going to be making accusations. It sounds like you distrust something here, but I can't tell if you distrust a potential publisher or distrust the original sale agreement.
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Old 09-30-2016, 12:06 PM   #36
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by Drifter View Post
As I understood it, if you sold an article to JTAS, or rather, SJGames, you sold all the rights.
...to SJG. Not to FFE. Surely authors should have a say in what happens to their work if ownership gets transferred to another company?

My hope was that publication rights to my articles would revert back to me after SJG's Traveller licence ended. Or at the very least I'd be offered a choice of letting FFE continue to use them or for them to revert back to me. If not, then under what situation would rights revert back to the Author?
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Old 09-30-2016, 02:03 PM   #37
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by Malenfant View Post
...to SJG. Not to FFE. Surely authors should have a say in what happens to their work if ownership gets transferred to another company?
No, "by all rights" the author transferred the copyright in the work to the purchasers. It is a common legal term. It not an issue in general because there are other terms available that limit the rights sold in various ways.

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Originally Posted by Malenfant View Post
If not, then under what situation would rights revert back to the Author?
None with all rights sold.

However you need to look at the EXACT terms you agreed too in your correspondence with SJ GAMES and then talk to a IP Attorney for clarification. I realize that may sound like a big deal but that the only way for you to understand fully what you agreed too and conversely any remedy you may have.

While I haven't had anything published with SJ Games, I have looked at their submission process and in general if you write something for them they want all the rights. The exception being licensed property. In this case Traveller.

So what happened here is that you wrote an article, submitted it to JTAS, accepted the terms on condition of acceptance, it was accepted, SJ Games compensated you.

Then SJ Games in turn publishes it under their license with FFE, which apparently stipulates that all right to GURPS Traveller products revert to Marc Miller and FFE. However that is consistent with how Marc Miller been dealing with Traveller Licenses in the past due to the Digest Group fiasco.

The lesson is to understand completely what you sign or agree too in publishing. If you don't then goto the IP Attorney. It what I did a couple of year back and it was worth every penny. I haven't since because I haven't had to sign anything appreciatively different from what I originally went into for. But if something new came up then I would pay the money to make sure I am not missing anything.

From publishing myself, my opinion is that it is not a good idea to publish anything with with a publisher and surrender your rights. Unless you are playing with other people's stuff as I call it.

For example I created an original setting that I call the Majestic Stars that I ran campaigns for using the Traveller rules. I would not submit anything from that to a publisher unless I retain all my right to use it again in the future.

However I also have some stuff I created that only works in the Third Imperium setting, I don't care if I surrendered all right to that materials. The Third Imperium wasn't mine to begin with.

A real life example is that I don't have any rights to the Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor product for Goodman Games. I was hired to covert and update the original 70s version to D&D 3.5. Later I did another project with Goodman Games where I wrote a series of original settings under the Points of Light series. There I opted to retain my rights to the text I wrote and maps I drew. I don't have any rights to the title of the series, Points of Light, or to the art. So I could publish the text myself but it will be with new art, and a new layout.



Hope this helps, I realize it sucks to realize this after the fact, but you are not longer the owner of those articles. Once you were compensated, SJ Games was free to do anything they wanted with those articles. In this case was to publish them under their FFE License for Traveller.

Last edited by robertsconley; 09-30-2016 at 02:08 PM.
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Old 09-30-2016, 03:10 PM   #38
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

In my specific case at least, the two articles I wrote were about including real phenomena (Brown Dwarfs and wandering planets) in Traveller. I'm not sure if there's any legal obstacle that forbids me from taking my articles and republishing them without the 3I-specific content (which was largely confined to text boxes anyway). Or would I really be expected to find a different way to express how to generate brown dwarfs and interstellar planets just for the sake of rephrasing things so it's not the same as what was published?

(and generally speaking, if I do publish anything again in the future then I'm doing it myself and not through a publisher, which would avoid headaches like this).
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Old 09-30-2016, 03:12 PM   #39
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by robertsconley View Post
However you need to look at the EXACT terms you agreed too in your correspondence with SJ GAMES and then talk to a IP Attorney for clarification.
For what it's worth, the terms for JTAS submissions appear to have changed over the life of the magazine. At least in the first couple of years, the rights one signed over were specifically for "electronic" publication and did not automatically include print publication. There was a clause in the early contract that SJ Games would have to negotiate separately before publishing articles in book form.

I remember being considerably upset when SJ Games converted "Best of JTAS, Volume 1" from a printed book into one of their first pdf products before publication, because they interpreted that to be an "electronic publication" for which they already held the rights. They did pay a "bonus" as a "courtesy," but there was no negotiation. This was a major factor in my decision to curtail my writing for JTAS.
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Old 09-30-2016, 03:34 PM   #40
Andrew Hackard
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Default Re: Is JTAS still going?

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Originally Posted by Malenfant View Post
I'm not sure if there's any legal obstacle that forbids me from taking my articles and republishing them without the 3I-specific content (which was largely confined to text boxes anyway).
You can certainly rewrite the articles and publish them using new text without the gaming content, but you sold the copyright to the specific expression you used in the articles you wrote.
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