From: [jeff p k] at [netcom.com] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Letter to EFF in regard TSR legal threats
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 21:44:59 GMT

I thought others might like to see a letter I just sent to both the 
electronic frontier foundation, and a friend of mine who's a presidential 
advisor (and an old RPG player):


Jeffrey P. Kesselman
631 Harvard Ave
Santa Clara, CA  95051

Mr. Stanton McCandlish
EFF Online Activist
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Dear Mr. McCandlish:

I am assuming that you are the right contact person for this letter, please 
forward this on to the correct person if you are not.  

I'm writing you about recent actions taken by TSR inc., publisher of
The Dungeons and Dragons family of games.   Specifically, TSR  recently 
threatened to sue for Copyright and/or trademark infringement any ftp site 
or individual USENET poster who makes available independently created character

descriptions and adventures, even if such postings contain no TSR materials 
beyond the use of some D&D terminology.  

Their stated position is that all such materials are derivative works (clearly
a stretch of Copyright law). Their stated objective is to force everyone
posting materials in any way related to their game to do so only to their
licensed sites, in such a manner as they determine, and under their total
control.

They have already sent letters threatening legal action to a number of ftp 
sites, as well as made the USENET community as a whole scared to post these 
materials(once a common practice.)

As this claim has broad implications for what one can and cannot release onto 
the net, I thought you might like to get involved in seeing this claim 
challenged.  In addition to the inherent fallacies in the broadness of the 
claim itself, it would seem that these actions on their part might very well 
be actions in restraint of trade, as TSR holds a very well established place 
of dominance in the role-play game industry.

Thank you for your time in reading this.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey P. Kesselman
[jeff p k] at [netcom.com]

cc: [t--k] at [arpa.mil]  rec.games.frp.dnd  [T S Rinc] at [aol.com]