OA634: Wizards of the Coast vs. Transphobic Racists

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:16 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 634. I'm Thomas. I'm in Edinburgh right now. That's Andrew. Where might you be?

0:01:23 Andrew: I am in Emilia-Romagna right now, so just got back from a Parmigiano-Reggiano tasting, and yeah, yeah, the villain is in Argo Bargo Stan, along with the wizard from She-Hulk, so...

0:01:30 Thomas: So if anyone's playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego along with us, you know, we leave those clues that I definitely wouldn't get. Yeah. Well, you got to be like they're looking at a monument. That you know give them a vague clue, and I never knew any of them because I had no education to actually, I

0:01:45 Andrew: See, as somebody who's, you know, slightly older than you, I had the Where is Carmen San Diego game on the computer. Oh, okay.

0:01:59 Thomas: Know, I remember that we still had that as someone who was from a small town and probably didn't have the funding for more updated computers, we still had the money. I, at that time, it was actually really fun. I used to love it, but I honestly had no idea, like, I would just, it would just eventually have take a of sympathy on you and just, like, give you the right answer if you guessed wrong. You you never were taught any geography of any kind.

0:02:02 Andrew: All right. Yeah. Yeah, right. You appear to be a not particularly bright child. Carmen is in this capital of Peru that rhymes with Ema.

0:02:29 Thomas: And I still didn't get it. Yeah, sema, I don't know, I got nothing. Uh, so fun. Um, still having a great vacation, vacation edition of OA will be for the next few recordings, but of course we have to bring you away, and and by "have to", I mean we're excited to always bring you. Oh, hey, yeah, and uh, so that said, why don't we get to today's subject. I'm

0:02:44 Andrew: We love you let's do it

0:02:52 Clip: Down the law, down the law.

0:02:56 Thomas: And Andrew, I think we're doing a peanut butter and chocolate scenario. I think we're tying law and wizards, if I'm not correct. Wizards of the Coast.

0:03:07 Andrew: Wizards of the Coast, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hasbro Inc., they're, they, best known for publishing Magic the Gathering, which you love, and they're owned by Hasbro, which is best known for publishing Transformers, which I love. So, how could we not cover, this unbelievable story? I just can't wait to walk you through it. Now, for the audience, right, we have established you, your, cool guy geek cred, you right play Magic the Gathering, right, it, but you have been emphatic about having never played Dungeons and Dragons, right?

0:03:37 Thomas: Haven't played Dungeons & Dragons, although I did become a D&D Minus fan, and it seems interesting, but there don't seem to be enough solid ways to win that I would feel good about. It feels like you're making it up as you go, you know. Yeah.

0:03:38 Andrew: Yeah Well,

0:03:52 Thomas: See, I need rules.

0:03:51 Andrew: You are making it up as you go along. So I, I love that about you. The other thing is, I love the fact that you have not played Dungeons and Dragons, because had you played Dungeons & Dragons, there is a non-zero chance, uh, we are sharing this with the listeners, I think, for the first time, uh, we might have said it in a, a, in Q&A at some point, but there's a non-zero chance I proposed, among other potential names for this podcast, Lawful Neutral, uh, which I thought was hilarious, and you were like, I don't get it, and and I am so glad you didn't get it because otherwise, like, there would be eight people listening to this podcast. So, uh, thank you for having, from from the bottom of mine heart, for having never played Dungeons and Dragons, but, um, you know who has played a lot of Dungeons and Drakens?

0:04:34 Andrew: Uh, the folks, the fine folks at Wizards of the Coast is an ongoing lawsuit. That lawsuit sounds in trademark infringement. OK, that's going to seem a little bit weird right now, has led to an imminent request, just a week and a half ago, for injunctive relief. And if you're thinking, how exactly does that sort of come together, together, we actually previewed little bit of this in our latest Law'd Awful Movies, where we were talking about she hulk spoilers right, if you're watching she hunk and you have not listened to Law'd Offal Movies and do not want us to talk about episodes four and five, skip ahead about a minute or so. The In episodes four or five, we learn that one of the characters has actually raced to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and trademarked She-Hulk and is using She- Hulk to sell cosmetics, very right?

0:04:34 Thomas: That bet

0:05:29 Andrew: Clearly, for purposes of the show, kind of trading off of the goodwill of the star of the show, She- the Hulk. So, you can infringe on someone's trademark in a way that does not also dilute or diminish that mark. Hallmark, right, is likelihood of confusion. So, again, let's stick with our She-Hulk, you could have a cause of action for trademark infringement that says, hey, um, this is likely to be confusingly similar to potential consumers, right, they would think if they see she hulk brand beauty products that they are endorsed by the the She-Hulk, but they're not actually.

What kind of the classic example that is, the hamburger shop in Coming to America, like, right, that looks exactly like a McDonald's. There's, right, no indication that they serve bad burgers at that place, it's just people will pull in, and it's called, like, McGonagall's or something, right, and people would pull in thinking it's a McDonald's, and you would divert traffic away that rightfully belongs to McDonald's. But there's also an aspect of trademark infringement where you are diluting the goodwill of the trademark holder. So, right, imagine that you had the McGonagall's and you were selling, rat burgers, right, like you were making people sick.

Imagine that you had the She-Hulk cosmetics and they were, as they set up in, spoiler for 20 seconds, that, you know, it was literal snake oil, you could, right, see how, even uh independent of, hey, these are people who should be buying my product instead of yours, you would have the, um, yeah, you are diminishing my brand with your inferior stuff.

0:07:06 Andrew: And that is how we wind up with a request for a preliminary injunction that sounds much more like defamation than it does like trademark infringement. So, we're going to get there, so let's start off with what Wizards of the Coast did, and the biggest thing they did was they bought, fought, Dungeons and Dragons in 1997. So Dungeons and Dragons was created by two guys, that the most prominent was e Gary Gygax. Anybody who's ever played Dungeons and Dragon's, his name is all over the lore and the mythology, and he invented it in 1974, put put a pin in that, that we're going to pull out repeatedly, uh, because spoiler alert, anything you made in 1974, '74, is going to be garbage, right, that's just the way the world is, and we're going to, you know, talk about some of the aspects of that, but nevertheless, Dungeons and Dragons and some of these stuff that is affiliated with Dungeons & Dragons, um, entirely acquired by Wizards of the Coast in 1997, right, and what they wanted was D&D, but what they bought was, because everything, right, what's everything?

Well, in addition to making the classic Dungeons and Dragons and all of its variants and the modules and the manuals and all that, they, they made some other games that were like, well, what if we had Dnd but also this other thing, and, right, one of them was called Star Frontiers. Okay, Star Frontières is, you guessed it, what if we had Dungeons & Dragons in space?

0:07:32 Thomas: Dungeon and Steve dragon oh Is this like when you have Risk, but then they make a bunch of Risk maps that are like Lord of the Rings Risk and you know Star Trek Risk, kind okay okay, Space Balls, the flamethrower yeah, is

0:08:43 Andrew: It's bit different. They did not call it Dungeons&Dragons the Space Edition, But they pitched it as a different game, but a different came with the same kinds of mechanics, right, like you have a character, your character has stats, you belong to, any, but instead of belonging to Middle Earth, races, you belong to alien races, right, and as you might imagine, there are some diehard fans of Star Frontiers, but Star Frontières is not Dungeons and Dragons, right, it was never a children's cartoon, um,

0:09:21 Thomas: It, for people who want to be like even cooler, or slash I guess nerdier than the dungeons, we don't play Dungeons and Dragons, we play Star whatever Andrew Star Frontier here

0:09:25 Andrew: Yes. Yeah. Star frontiers. Yes. Yeah. So now here is what could be a very, very interesting trademark question. But for the fact that as far as I can tell, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit are lying. OK. So other than that, this would be a really interesting question. And that question would be right what if wizards of the coast yeah bought gygex and his partner published dungeons Dungeons and Dragons 1974 and they did it under the name TSR Inc okay and they changed the name in 1975 to TSR Hobbies Inc and then in 1983 that split into four separate independent businesses and as game publishing arm right continued as TSR Ink and they had certain trademarks and of a stylized calligraphy TSR with the notation underneath that says the Game Wizards. A sort of 1980s-ified logo. You know what text the looked like. They were trying to be cool in the 1980s of TSR with the logo outline,

0:09:46 Thomas: But in space oh no, sorry I was trying all

0:10:42 Andrew: Line, you know, that clearly some uh marketing firm put together for them and then a 1990s logo that features a dragon and TSR on top of, uh, a circle. And so, you know, those are the registered trademarks. Like I said, in 1997, Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR Inc, and as part of that, that they are the full successor in interest to TSR. TSR Inc. went out of business as part of their acquisition.

They bought all of the intellectual property rights, including the trademarks, trade names, service marks. TSР Inc.'s intellectual property at the time of the sale included, but was not limited to, intellectual property rates related to the name TSR, the Dungeons and Dragons line of product, the Star Frontiers line of products, and other stuff, right. And then TSR Inc. formally assigned all of those trademarks to Wizards of the Coast and then went out of business. Okay, so that's how TSR became Wizards off the Coast. Thing that would be an interesting question is, suppose Wizards on the Coast only ever really wanted Dungeons and Dragons, right? Suppose they they didn't care at all about Star Frontiers or any of the other stuff. And by the way, like, they didn't really even like first the kind of edition of Dungeons & Dragons that much, they're focused on the seventh edition and the new rulebook and all of that.

And one of the things that you're aware of that's requirement under trademark protection is consistent renewal and use of the marks in commerce, right? A right? Trademark can become abandoned. And so if you were in a position, for example, where you bought Star Frontiers in 1997 and then did nothing with it, it would indeed be highly plausible

0:12:29 Andrew: That you could come to abandon that trademark. Yeah.

0:12:34 Thomas: Okay, I got some questions for you. So The idea is like, uh, what if, know, we we bought Dungeons and Dragons, turns out the company we bought owned some other bull crap, but it sucked and we didn't want it anyway, so we just did nothing. And so that seems like, you know, a possibility, but but what if instead it was like, we're all buying this, but also they're kind of a competitor. So we want to make sure we buy this other product to have it be off the market. Like, we don't want it to be out there because, it's say, it's a competitor or something like that. Would that still apply where it's like, well, you're not using the trademark that you bought, so therefore,

0:12:34 Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So Interestingly enough, there is an answer to that question that gets me to my first love, which is, of course, Transformers. Uh,

0:13:14 Thomas: You I knew it. You tried to fool me with it. I thought it was Magic the Gathering, then it got subbed out for dungeon dragon something I don't care about, and now we're already transforming. No, it's okay, it's delightful. Oh.

0:13:25 Andrew: In fact, right, the license to distribute uh the major competitor to the the Transformers in the 1980s, right, was uh the go bots right. Which was owned by Tonka Toys. Hasbro subsequently acquired Tonka Boys, and Hasbro, right, they own Transformers. Transformers are a billion times better than go bots They don't have any, they don't have any desire to bring back GoBots, but they didn't want exactly what you just described, which was, they didn't want somebody else to be like, uh, I'm gonna come along and like sell the go buy and like, why not? "I'll let trade on" the there was a go bots mythology, there are communities of go bots enthusiasts, and like, why don't I profit off of this potential competitor? So what Hasbro has done is, uh, in the intervening years since acquiring the go bots moniker, they have used that intellectual property in their Transformers line, first by having a character named go bots which is kind of dumb, and

0:13:35 Thomas: Yep. Right. Yeah, It's like it was written by the lawyers who are like, you gotta use this otherwise it goes away, all right, have a, I don't what this is, but let's have a robot named GoBots.

0:14:39 Andrew: Literally what happened, so they just took one of the toys on the dies on the line, and they were like, how much can it possibly make to make a, you know, your cheapest, crappiest transforming robot, call it GoBots, and we're done, right?

0:14:46 Thomas: It's Interesting. To me, that you would even have to do that, because on one hand I get the idea of like, well, you know, it's kind of cool, intellectual property wise that someone needs to use it, you know, otherwise and it could, be you could lose those rights. I get that, maybe as a creator, maybe as an artist, but just as a pure capitalist, uh, and that's what our country often is, it seems weird that you there wouldn't be such a thing as a transaction whereby you could buy a thing and say, I want to buy this so that it does it isn't out there anymore. Seems like that should be a possible, like, contract you could make with somebody, right? Yeah.

0:14:52 Andrew: Yeah.

0:15:26 Andrew: And And would amplify that to say that, you think of property law as sort of your bundle of sticks, right, and one of the sticks you want to be able to buy is, right, the rights to the name go bots This is an example, kind of, of where that pure property notion has been pushed at the boundaries, particularly with intellectual property, right, where something doesn't go away, right. It's super easy to understand this in the context of land, right, I buy your land and then I fence it off, but even then right, Right, land has a backstop with adverse possession, right? I, if I am, this is, we've talked about the Gnome 2000 case at great length, but right, if I buy a piece of land and I am so remiss that I go 30 years without noticing that you have, you cut down my fence, cut down a forest, built a log cabin and you live on a corner of my land, guess what, after 30 years that person now owns that area.

0:15:59 Thomas: Yeah, you got squatter's rights. Wow. Yeah yeah, If I don't notice, you've crawled into my GoBot. Or, uh, you know, using it,

0:16:22 Andrew: Right. Right. If I, if I don't notice that, you know, you have decided to come, come along and revive a defunct trademark, then, then the argument is, uh, don't it. I get you paid for it, but you paid für it and you are not using it so it is kind of this contrasting battle between, you various theories that underlie capitalism, right?

0:16:31 Thomas: Yeah, yeah

0:16:45 Andrew: Because the counter argument. The Adam Smithian argument would be, right, but you want people to be able to buy and sell so that they can be more efficient. You do not want people to buy and sell, right, so as to, you know, make life worse for consumers. Trademark law requires you to continuously use that mark in commerce, what, and is continuously, right, there's a ton of case law on that. And it would be a super interesting question. I thought we were going to be diving into that question when I looked at this lawsuit, because this, the plaintiff is TSR LLC, and if you say, hmm, I seem to recall it being a TSR Inc, yeah, you're damn right, it's a TSR. TSR LLC is a company formed, uh, in 2020, uh, by a guy, uh, to come by and try and resurrect the arguably abandoned trade and service marks, right. TSR LLC filed to register various trademarks

0:16:44 Thomas: That's kind of cool. Interesting I

0:17:45 Andrew: With the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in October of 2020, and one of the things that they wanted to do was trademark Star Frontiers, which is owned by Wizards of the Coast, on the basis that, uh, Wizards of the Cost abandoned that trademark, was no longer using it in commerce. They then had a subsequent application with regard to some of the TSR logos on some of the earlier books, like, right, the little 1980s one and the earlier Game Wizards one, right. They They basically wanted to say, hey, uh, take, we're going to resurrect the old Star Frontiers, and Wizards of the Coast doesn't care about it, we do, we're going to bring this back, and it'll be even better than ever. Problem is that, factually, and again, you know, we're just at the answer stage, right? Right. And this lawsuit is proceeding through to discovery.

0:18:34 Andrew: But it seems very, very clear to me in having read the complaint and the answer that Wizards of the Coast, in fact, did a thing that for which the new TSR has no answer. Is, And they said, yeah, look, we care a lot about the Dungeons & Dragons stuff, and we care a lot About the new Dungeons and Dragons stuff. But one of the things did, that I

0:18:58 Thomas: Guess they named One of the dungeons, Star Frontier or whatever. Everything you

0:19:02 Andrew: Love That idea, but no, even more so than that. There is a website called One Bookshelf. One book shelf appears to be like an online used bookstore, and it has a a a sub website called drive-thru rpg Okay, drive-through rpg is, uh, d-r-i-v-e-t-h-r r-u-r-p-g dot com, okay. They have this inventory of unsold, and and their answer says that they are still producing, right, they're still running off new copies of these old books from the 1970s and 1980s and then sending them over to this third-party distributor, One Bookshelf, to sell sell the older stuff, so that way they can kind of maintain two markets.

The big market for mass market players, Dungeons and Dragons, and all the other, you know, Magic the Gathering, all of the stuff that their that core market wants to play today. Um, hardcore adult collectors, yeah, they were not, they're not going to turn away that revenue source, right? So they they partnered partnered with this One Bookshelf, drive-thru RPG, licensed the old intellectual property to One book shelf in order to market and sell those original 1907. And the answer has a glorious picture of the bright red Dungeons and Dragons basic rule set that I remember getting for my 10th birthday as a child. Um, the basic rules, by the way, like this is just

0:20:30 Andrew: It Is I Was indeed a rules lawyer, I still am. Um, buying the basic Dungeons and Dragons set in the 1980 was like buying, you know, that the like mythical crack that gets you, you hooked the second you smoke It, right? Like, because you can only play at a level three, like, it's it's ridiculous, right? It is the Second you buy it, you do it, you're, it's fun. And then it's like, oh, somebody got you this nine dollar book for your birthday, and now you're going to spend 70 on Dnd books, which, of course, I then proceeded to do as A child, so

0:20:29 Thomas: Were A rules Lawyer Weren't you, yeah.

0:20:42 Thomas: Wow Yeah Same With Magic, that's how they get you. I remember that first little introductory Set and My brother actually got for me

0:21:03 Andrew: Yeah And So it's, uh, it's his fault, this was, this was my parents' fault, so my, didn't so One of the things that they sell, I'm looking at it right now, bright purple, the original Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn, a science fiction role-playing game. I have gone to the website, um, it's on One Bookshelf, they're selling it right now. And according to their allegations, and I don't know, maybe Wizards of the Coast, a, you multi-billion dollar subsidiary of Hasbro Inc, is lying about this, but I find that hard to believe. Assuming that their answer is correct, um, this seems to end entirely, right, the question of trademark abandonment. They right are still using Star Frontiers in commerce as of right now. I can go click on the website and pull it up, but I can also go to TSRmuseum.com, which is the website maintained by the TSR LLC that was created, and I can click on their online store, and I can buy all sorts of stuff that they have reprinted that uses that original TSR Game Wizards logo

0:21:10 Thomas: I

0:22:10 Andrew: A shot-for-shot identical. There's one for The Cult of Abaddon by Vincent Florio with Ernest Gygax Jr. It's this

0:22:19 Thomas: Is This I mean, famously, we talked about a previous Magic the Othering, Wizards case that that was hilarious, in which crypto bros were trying to, you take advantage of other people's IP. And I remember you yelling, don't try to make money off of other people's IP. But this kind of seems like what they're maybe doing.

0:22:37 Andrew: Is exactly what it seems to me. And again, It seems as though that's exactly what TSR is doing the new TSR, TSR LLC. And we have not gotten to the real hook of the story, which Is, I have talked about trademark diminution. And by that, I mean the authors of the new Star Frontiers, which are the authors, which, what they are attempting to market. The reason they brought this lawsuit, to try and clarify that they were entitled to the trademarks, um, appear to be Nazis.

0:22:39 Thomas: Still discovery.

0:22:50 Thomas: Ah, okay.

0:23:10 Andrew: When I say Nazis, I am being literal, uh, I'm going to give you horrifying examples. We We will get to those in a minute, but, on September the 8th, in this same lawsuit, that is, in consideration, right in the middle of the discovery process, was Wizards of the Coast motion for a preliminary injunction to stop them from bringing this this new edition of Star Frontiers, to market, because they disseminated around the draft of the rule book. Hilariously, they distributed it around, and I have to read this to you, it says, "No part of this beta manuscript is final. We can change anything as needed before for final printing. This is not to be given, released, and handed to anyone associated with Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro," or, yeah.

0:24:02 Thomas: That's a bad document. That is what we call in the opening arguments show, a bad document.

0:24:02 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Inside cover repeats the same thing, warning, "This is a work owned by TSR and any copying or transfer is a violation of the trademarks owned by TSR Hobbies LLC," and Justin Lanasa, he's the guy who registered this work, "is is not allowed to be transferred to Wizards of the Coast or their attorneys," spelled a-t-t o-r-n-i-e-s "or entities." Um, by the way, uh, if you want to know how seriously does Wizards off the Coast take that, uh, no, you can't give that. Um, the reason I have the copy of the rule book is because it it was attached totheaffidavittoflaurenrainwater daughter, Wizards of the Coast lawyer, so, um.

0:24:42 Thomas: Yeah. Is that a one weird trick To get out of copyright law? It's like I make a bootleg DVD of, like, Avengers Endgame, and then I write on it, "Don't give to anyone who is involved with The Actual IP" Yeah The Disney Yeah, that doesn't work.

0:24:55 Andrew: Yeah. At Marvel Yeah At Disney Yeah Right There's

0:25:00 Thomas: Huh, weird.

0:25:01 Andrew: More, I mean, I did not read the bullet, but I will now, that says, this is a classified manuscript, Transferring this to individuals, yeah, who are not allowed, will result in possible criminal actions, um A lunatic Wrote That, right

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0:29:13 Andrew: Before I get into the, like, people are Nazis, because these people are in fact Nazis, I wanted to talk a little bit about, because I found this really, really fascinating, of what you do if you are Wizards of the Coast. Um, you kind of recognize where your market is and you would like to be socially conscious, right, and you bought a property from 1974, which, pulled that pin back out, nothing from 1974 is woke. And there are lots of problems with Dnd that are sort of inherent in the material. And Wizards of the Coast has really been incredibly proactive in going back, even though you get the, like, you're messing with the, right, like Perfect example, right, right, you have various playable races, races and Uh, one of the races that you could be was, uh, you could be a dark elf, a drow, right, dark elves could only be evil in alignment.

0:29:59 Thomas: Yeah Yeah

0:30:12 Andrew: Now, alignment is the, what you choose to play with your character, so you can see it's kind of a problem just at the outset.

0:30:12 Thomas: Especially

0:30:21 Andrew: Right, like

0:30:21 Thomas: When You're Making the character, and they have you measure the skull to see, like, if It, yeah

0:30:21 Andrew: Yeah Right The dark the equals bad is not a great one to to start with, but but the whole idea of, no, there are some races that are evil by nature, yeah.

0:30:35 Thomas: I've actually heard of some of this, uh Debate, I think it's an interesting issue because know, I played a lot of, I haven't played Dnd, but I played, plenty, you of games that just have that basic concept, elves, dwarves, you know, whatever's. And it's, it is interesting to be like, hey, it's kind of weird actually to have race-based characteristics, you that it seems like you could maybe have different races or whatever but have their, the ability to kind of be whatever you want within that.

0:30:36 Andrew: Yeah Yeah.

0:30:59 Andrew: And, so this is, for example, a June 2020th press release, so this predates the lawsuit, right? This is not pretextually generated after they were sued, right? And the press release says, um, "Dungeons and Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only a diverse group of adventurers can overcome the many challenges D&D presents. In that spirit, making D&B as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities over the last six years. So we'd like to share with you what we have been doing and what we plan to do in the future to address legacy D&E content that does not reflect who we are today. We recognize that doing this isn't about getting a place where we feel we can rest on our laurels, but continuing to head in the right direction." And then one of the explicit design goals of the latest edition of Dnd is to depict humanity in all its beautiful diversity by depicting characters who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and belief, we want everyone to feel at home around the game table and see positive reflections of themselves in our process.

0:31:07 Thomas: Yeah,

0:31:54 Andrew: Human in Dnd means everyone, not just fantasy versions of northern Europeans, and the Dnd community is now more diverse than it's ever been throughout, "Throughout its 50-year history, some of the peoples in the games, orcs and drow being two of the prime examples, have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That's just not right, and it's not something we believe in." So then they talk about really along two different lines. Right. Some of it is changing, you know, what you might call flavor text, right, like changing descriptions, removing racially insensitive characterization. So, for example, there was a module called the Curse of Strahd, which included a people known as the Vistani.

0:31:59 Thomas: A Light elf's burden, right?

0:32:42 Andrew: And, and the problem is the Vistani was very clearly just an export of the Romani, and so the Curse of Strop, like, it was basically all like evil stereotypes about, and I'm going to use the, the, slur word, so fast word, but about gypsies, right, like the, the slur for, for the Romani people. So, um, what they did was they pulled the module, they re-, they worked with a Romani consultant, um, and they redid the Vistani people in a way that made them an export sport but didn't rely on reductive tropes. So changing as the way things are described in a game that has 50 year old components is one of, it it's also changing some of the mechanics, right, like we talked about the alignment issue, but you know, and I don't know Dnd if specifically had this, but like there often in computer games that are essentially using the Dnd engine, like, you when you clicked sex female, it would be like, "All right, well, we're subtracting one from your strength."

0:33:38 Thomas: Right.

0:33:38 Andrew: And, right, great. Like, yeah, exactly right. So that's what Wizards of the Coast has been doing, in of course.

0:33:39 Thomas: Right. This race is minus one to trustworthiness, and, yeah, yeah, and that's unambiguously good, it's incredible to me that conservatives get absolutely just bent out of shape over you, a Little Mermaid being a different color, because after all, scientifically, mermaids, uh, definitely You, I'm in disbelief, it's so much better to have it mean, to I, that know, language is something drawn up by a corporation, and it's, you know, I get it, but like, it is truly, if you, if you have that experience of playing a game with a bunch of people and being able to sit there and, no matter who's with you, being able to be like, "Yeah, fun game, cool game, everybody's happy," versus, "Oh, just realized one of my friends is this identity and, oh, this is a pretty questionable," that's just not good for anybody. Like, I don't know why anyone would have a problem with this.

0:34:02 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. I Don't know either. So now I'm going to go through some of the items that, I thought initially I was going to read this from the allegations in the complaint, which I would describe as sanitized. And then that took me to the affidavits, which are kind of a step removed. And then they took me into the rulebook, and my jaw hit the floor.

0:34:54 Thomas: And Sorry.

0:34:56 Andrew: So, right.

0:34:56 Thomas: Remind me, now, are we talking about the rule, the book of the company that popped up to like make their

0:35:00 Andrew: So this is TSR, TSR LLC. This is the rule book they want to disseminate for Star Frontiers, years. And the question is, and know, we talk about how you get injunctive relief by showing likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm and balance of the equities, uh, irreparable harm includes, uh, harm to goodwill, right, tarnishing, so I go out, yep, I feel like the irreparable harm is a slam dunk here. And so, will you, uh, we're going to make fun of these Nazis, but if it makes, makes you uncomfortable, you know, FYI that these, that descriptions of horrible things racists and bigots have said are, are a common in the next few minutes. So, game characters, section one, character concept. So this is page one of the manual, right, once you get past the introduction, there's some stuff in the introduction that I could call out, but we, but get to the first one here, character concept, "What is a player character?" Within the gamer-defined skills, bullet point number two is, "Think about your race carefully, as some races are more superior in power, etc."

0:35:00 Thomas: Own, okay, Gotcha.

0:35:18 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Okay.

0:36:02 Andrew: "Some races have latent issues, similar to blacks having issues with" sickle cell anemia, and with family issues. Remember, racism is bad, don't do racial things, like racism, have fun with it. And I swear to God, I am reading from manual, "The have fun with it, but remember, some races are just sometimes superior in some ways." That's

0:36:07 Thomas: Oh my God. Oh my god. I love the, like, e.g. sickle cell or family stuff. Holy crap. Did I hear that right? This

0:36:34 Andrew: You heard that correct. Page one, page two, "Choose a race and sex. As part of the character generation, you should choose a race you'd like to portray in the game world. Keep in mind, all of the races have different abilities and weaknesses and racial attributes, some being good and some being very bad. Think of it like real life."

0:36:52 Thomas: Just sounds like it was written by, like a kid.

0:36:54 Andrew: Humanoids, humans, when you play them, you'll need to choose possibly race within human races for them, maybe a white or black or Asian person, something of interest with humans, as you can play these sub races to great effect, maybe mimic things you have seen in history, maybe you were a black person who felt they were oppressed so you hate whites, maybe you are an Asian who is smart, so you put more into your intelligence score.

0:36:54 Thomas: Oh

0:37:19 Andrew: These are examples only to think about. Gonna go a couple more pages in the book. What about when we talk about a character's attributes, right? The standard Dungeons and Dragons 0 to 18 score, um, we have, uh, as a character trait the original Dungeons and Dragons had charisma, that the new version of Star Frontiers has attractiveness. We attractiveness score has a range between 1 to 12 plus 6, okay, so 7 to 18, generally a score of 18 is about as beautiful as one can be. "Think of a tall, slender, white woman with red hair and large breasts. This seems sexist, comma, however it is a fact of human nature." Yeah.

0:37:13 Thomas: My gosh. This Oh is a 12-year-old.

0:38:01 Thomas: Sexist?

0:38:02 Andrew: She would be more desirable than let's say an overweight woman. Wow.

0:38:02 Thomas: That wasn't my first thought. It was a lot of ists.

0:38:09 Andrew: No.

0:38:09 Thomas: Sexist wasn't the first, racist, ableist, uh, fat, phobic and sexist, I'm just saying, okay.

0:38:11 Andrew: Yeah, under Under that, checks modifier, we have, "If you have the score of seven to nine, below right average, role here, this person is a plain Jane or homely, ordinarily known as a butter face." "This person, if female, CAN increase their score artificially with the use of cosmetics, put on some eyeliner, this can add 1d4 to the score temporarily." Um, this was absolutely 100 Disseminated, uh, within the gaming community, and there are, again, you know, it's a lot of Reddit posts or whatever, but uh, Wizards of the Coast attached actual conversations, and I've, I've been through to those forums, from people saying, um, "Is this really, because it's got the TSR logo on it, is this real, a Wizards on the Coast game?" You know,

0:38:37 Thomas: This just, I mean, it's just, just trolling, or, yeah, Yeah.

0:39:01 Andrew: And some people have come back and been like, "No, this is one Nazi who's

0:39:05 Thomas: This is canon, Wizards of the Coast, okay."

0:39:07 Andrew: Very good, very good, um, examples of races from throughout the galaxy, uh, this is another game mechanic, so we have, as a sub race of the Olfar, have, I wish I were making this up, negro, tall, thick-bodied, dark-skinned, even purple, dark brown-eyed race with large strength, average intelligence, all attributes are in the 10 plus range, except intelligence, which is maximum a plus nine. Nordic class of all far is tall, blonde, blue-eyed race with exceptional attributes and powers, all attributes are in the 13 plus range. Yeah.

0:39:44 Thomas: Trans.

0:39:44 Andrew: Laughing is the only thing you can do here, then after setting up the overt, you, racism, we also have, every time the word gender is raised, it says male slash female only, quote, "in the galaxy there are no trans races." In in the Galaxie there are no, yeah.

0:40:02 Thomas: Races, I hear you, but also, what's a trans race, yeah?

0:40:08 Andrew: Assume that me, a race in which it is possible to be trans as an individual, yeah.

0:40:13 Thomas: Because that's a racial, racial characteristic. Oh. My

0:40:14 Andrew: Yeah. Never mind that, of the only life form in the galaxy that we know of, there are trans people, no, we are going, going to, uh, erase from all of fantasy gaming the idea that you might play, uh, as a trans member of, you an alien race, that's like, you know, the cat people with pseudopods, oh my gosh, so for example, one of the alien races is described as gender reproduce asexually by budding, no trans. Trans races. How the hell would you be a trans asexual budding? Even know. But but repeatedly, no trans races. They are genuinely non-binary, not socially non-binary. I don'T even know what that means.

0:40:58 Thomas: God, just look, listen, racist asshole, 13 year old who wrote this, just write in your little diary, you know, just, you know, what, what is all the trying to make a game, this is just the most puerile crap, it also, you know, it's funny, not for nothing, it kind of shows how bankrupt the whole ideology is, the fact that, like, again, as that corporate thing, the Dungeons and Dragons, um, Wizards of the Coast write-up said diversity is strength, but like, for real, if you make a game where one or however many of the races is just garbage, like, then no one would play that race, what's the point of the rate, like that doesn't, that do shows how stupid the concept is, like it doesn't even make sense.

0:41:40 Andrew: Yeah, or they would play at the way this handbook does, right, which is, which says play it stereotypically, have right, fun with it, I, and also, I guess I just want to pause, the very last one, um, sent me down an incredibly bizarre rabbit trail, uh, that, uh, I did not know existed, but apparently it's also part of Nazi ideology, um, regarding languages, so, um, we have, this is the last page that is included, it talks, it about languages, um, and it says all intelligent creatures in Star Frontiers New Genesis, that's what they're calling it, have a learned language, their native language, all societies that participate within the UCPS, I don't, that's probably some like, space UN thing, speak the language of enterprise or business, their language is known as the common tongue, this is the official language and scripted the UCS and is a lawful language for commerce and education.

0:42:25 Andrew: However, there are also sub languages spoken by races that only those races speak. This is sometimes done to keep secrets, make plans, and do business. Official language is French. No, that's not true at all. I don't know why you would have to put it in. And when you Google what is the official language of the United Nations, you will get the United Nation has six official languages, right?

0:42:33 Thomas: Okay are You telling me that people who write this kind of crap are not particularly well informed or even can perform a basic Google search, Andrew, is that what you're trying to tell me, because I, for one, I'm shocked

0:42:57 Andrew: Know you're shocked, but like seriously, you type in what is the official language of the United Nations? And it says there are six official languages of the UN.

0:43:04 Thomas: You know, these nerds know how to use a computer, they just don't want, they're just ignorant, willfully ignorant.

0:43:10 Andrew: You can document it. It is rule of procedure S slash 96, as later amended to add Arabic. So S96 was the members of the Permanent Security Council, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, and then they added Arabic, right, because it seemed kind of wrong to exclude a billion people from your official languages, the, the French thing is just like, apparently this is like what circulates in the back alleys of Breitbart and what have you, I want to continue, China demands that countries who want to do business with them speak Mandarin, that's not true either, I, American blacks use jive speak and Those In the South Can speak Creole. These are examples of both mandated and racial languages, sub-languages. So, you know, they had to get a uh a parting shot out at jive speech, but no

0:43:47 Thomas: My god what is the point of it, it's not like everyone playing is going to actually learn a different language, you would just be like, all right, right now, we're, talking in a language that the other people can't understand for the sake of the game or whatever, it's so stupid.

0:44:04 Andrew: Yep. I don't know, but this, I always think it's good to punch down at racists and Nazis, and I think it's good to laugh at how stupid they are, uh, but I also wanted to illustrate, like, what does it mean, you know, when, when the president says, "I, I have shown irreparable injury when you you took away the documents that don't belong to me." Like, this is an example of what irreparable harm means? This is what harm to your goodwill is. That is having people look at this, read this manual and go, well, it says TSR on it. Wizards of the Coast really endorses this kind of garbage, this kind of nonsense.

0:44:15 Thomas: Yeah

0:44:43 Andrew: And that is, in fact, part of the thing that trademark law is meant to protect, it's meant to protect the goodwill you have built in your business from people like this, so I, want to say I reached out to Wizards of the Coast, but they, uh, they declined to comment, uh, I am not naming any wizards, this was entirely done, uh, and all errors, uh, are mine and not to be attributed to, to Wizards of the Coast.

0:44:43 Thomas: Not naming any wizards, but yeah

0:45:09 Andrew: So hey, we're yep hey, they, are law wizards so, but yeah So, so there you go, uh, that hearing is September 30th, so uh, I expect injunctive relief to be issued forthwith, uh.

0:45:09 Thomas: You don't get sued apparently they're a little, a little bit litigious, those those wizards but rightfully so here this

0:45:30 Andrew: It's absolutely does, but I thought we have done very little of you, the good guys being teed up to win here, and and this just seems like, uh, both factually ridiculous and and the activities, well, you know, speak for themselves, so, So thought it was worth talking about.

0:45:29 Thomas: Seems like a slam dunk, right? Well,

0:45:47 Clip: Thank you for being a friend, yeah, travel down the road with me, say we started from the bottom now we're here girl,

0:45:56 Thomas: Now it's time to thank our Hall of Famers, our all-time greats, we are on the fourth of our five quintiles, um, often known as the best of, of them, I think, I'm pretty sure that's famously the fourth, is, is the best, uh, why don't you go first, thanking our patrons at patreon.com/law, who, uh, give the Hall of Fame level, enjoying the goodies, the Law'd Awful Movies, by the way, uh, that's, that is still out, it's, uh, gotten a lot of feedback, and that's okay, uh, it is She-Hulk, of course, we watched the first four episodes and we talked about mainly three and four, but you, you know, the whole show. The law, and not the best. I'll give a little teaser. Not the best law. So if you want to hear why and Andrew's breakdown and everything, get that Law'd Awful Movies on patreon.com/law.So Andrew, start us off.

0:46:34 Andrew: Yeah Thank you to Bob Loblaw's Law Podcast, Cuddleism is a religious belief about being sincerely held, it's pronounced special, main ball arena live show with the Cup Polly Hernandez, Andrew, will you represent my company, 100 percent liable, this is legally actionable LLC, I, I mean, you know, I, I already represent Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, so I think, you know, there's no basement. There, not a lawyer. Well, you know, the world needs more lawyers, but they also need more not lawyers. So that's great. Jason Copas. Bob Coburn. Donate to EFF. Donate to EFF. Donate. I endorse that 100%. Yeah, that's the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We do a lot of good work. Stop calling him Uncle Frank. Nate Drex has to call him dad. You do not like treason, so, so you say. Try it, try it, and you may.

0:47:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:34 Andrew: CivilPoliticsRadio.com, Fridays at 7 p.m. Eastern on Valley Free Radio. My Unsigned Lawyer's Band's debut album is Pro Hoc Fiche. John Bilderbeck, Dasvidaniya, Comrade Michaels. I don't know that Comrade Michaels was a Russian plant, but Dasvidania to him anyway. Congratulations to the newest member of the Pennsylvania bar. Celebrate at an OA Philly premium event in my basement bar. Yeah, congrats. Please do, uh, if you have a bar admission stories, uh, to share with us, please do. We, we love hearing this. Jennifer Cratch, and OMG, that was my worst Patreon name ever, and I kept it up for two months. Yeah.

0:48:11 Andrew: Whatever that was was certainly terrible, and we're glad you changed it. Take it away, Thomas.

0:48:11 Thomas: Well, you got to be like an NFL quarterback. You have a short memory. You get back at it. You do another patron name, another for another few months.

0:48:21 Andrew: I have Tom Brady in two leagues, so tell me about it.

0:48:24 Thomas: Me too.

0:48:25 Andrew: No.

0:48:25 Thomas: And yeah, that hasn't been doing that well for me. All right. Thank you too. Stop Alibaba slander. Jeff Galback. Lawfulcopter says, America, where we want our children to breed but not read. It's not illegal to hope bad things happen to Sam Alito. Baltic Tay. It has been shortened. Okay. What is the Hardee's equivalent of a crunch wrap? For a pillow guy. Well, there is no Hardee's equivalent of a Crunchwrap. Sorry, that's just, it's too, well, oh, I guess if you mean like in the letter form, like to send something. I don't know what the closest thing to mail is on the Hardee menu. We don't have them out here that I know of. So, Philip Kizer, Andrea the Arbitrary and Capricious, Bane's Trumpet, person one, C-O-B-R-A, Cobra, person two, no, pronounced Mike, a foreign name.

0:49:13 Thomas: I know what what that is, but it sounds like a reference to something that I don't know. Sing to J.G. Wentworth song, please. I have nuclear secrets and I need cash now. Call 877-DOCS-NOW. We'll. We'll Have Get Our Friend Ben Young, who is in the J. G. Wentworthy commercial, To maybe do the drop an album for this rewrite. You right, complete lack of imagination. Greg Kreimer, return of the karaoke legend, now playing at your local sweaty dive bar. Jonathan Milo, mead song wishes all meteors a happy crash into justice. Thomas's stupid little RV. Abscion. Sergeant Javier Escueda, still awaiting trial in retaliation for whistleblowing the death of a subject in police custody. Join, and join your labour union. Together, we bargain, alone we bag, yeah, absolutely, now more than ever. Thank you so much, hall of famers. You're the best. You make the show happen. We love you so muchoin their ranks at patreon.com/law.

0:49:30 Andrew: Yeah.

0:50:09 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

0:50:15 Thomas: Now it's time for T3BE, Thomas Takes the Bar Exam Answer Time. This is, I believe, was the second question of this new book. Still getting my, uh, my sea legs on this book, my bar legs with this, and it seemed either very straightforward or the most dastardly con in the history of bar questions. So let's find out. Yeah.

0:50:34 Andrew: Let's Find out which one. So, Thomas, uh, the question I'd ask you during the course of three days, oral testimony is admitted on the question of causation in a voluntary manslaughter trial. And just as a sidebar, that voice is really, really typical of how the bar exam is written, when they want to establish something as a fact but not allow you to tie that fact to anything, you know, they'll just say testimony is admitted, right, like so who was admitting the testimony, right right?

0:50:49 Thomas: All Right. We don't Even Know.

0:51:06 Andrew: You know, go F yourself. You don't get to know that, right? So the Wife of the accused seeks to testify. The accused objects to the admission of her testimony. So you have some fair idea what her testimony is going to be. I had posted delightful in Facebook group, uh, the fact that I had re-watched A Fish Called Wanda on the plane.

0:51:06 Thomas: Yeah. Oh I Saw that. So good. What a good plane movie too. Yeah.

0:51:29 Andrew: Oh And Yeah. It was, it's great plane movie, you know. It is, that I thought I might fall asleep in the middle, uh, which I did, and I didn't want to, you know, I didn't, wasn't, didn't wants to be invested in something that I hadn't seen before. And, uh, still hilarious. And so I'm just thinking of Jamie Lee Curtis on the stand going, um, yeah.

0:51:48 Andrew: Uh, and George was there with us, because I remember thinking, where is he going at 10 of 9 with a shotgun? Oh, somebody

0:51:47 Thomas: So Good, wait Yeah. Where, what, how has that not been an intro quote? Okay, somebody submit that for the next intro quotes. I mean, we get so many good suggestions that I've forgotten one of my favorite movies all time. I love that movie. So does it hold up? I haven't watched it in probably 15 years.

0:52:00 Andrew: Should pull that. Yeah. I You know, they're, it's still with, you know, 1987, so I but, but it, does, does not, not hold up in a way, right? Like, it's fine. It's fine, and it's

0:52:13 Thomas: Sure, sure. Yeah. But it's the perfect airplane movie because want to watch something, like you said, that you've already seen. You don't want to Watch like a new, you know, movie that you're but so another one of my go tos is Groundhog Day. I feel like that's a good airplane movie.

0:52:24 Andrew: Yeah. Oh, Groundhog Day is the perfect

0:52:31 Thomas: So good.

0:52:31 Andrew: Movie. It really is. All right, but here we have the wife of the accused seeks to testify. The accused objects to the admission of her testimony under the federal rules of evidence, and then here were your options. A, the wife can decide to testify against her her husband. B, the husband can have his wife's testimony against him rejected. C, the prosecutor can impeach the wife's ceremony. Or D, the other state's witnesses must corroborate the wife testimony. And you giggled here again?

0:52:58 Thomas: I Love B is the funniest thing

0:53:00 Andrew: Well, go ahead.

0:53:00 Thomas: I've ever seen. And yeah, Yeah. Well,

0:53:02 Andrew: No, no, tell me your thoughts.

0:53:03 Thomas: I mean, I like the idea that like, let's imagine this is that scenario where obviously the husband has, you committed some crime and the wife is like, I'm going to testify against him because he's monster. But then like you go through all that. And then at some point the judge is like so to the husband, do you want to reject this or not? And then he's like, yes. OK, I don't know what that would mean.

0:53:24 Thomas: Or is there a real law thingy that that could actually be.

0:53:23 Andrew: So I think that the fact that it was written awkwardly may have helped you here, right? Because the two nonsense answers are C and D, What right? This question is, and by the way, you picked the correct answer. A, the wife can decide to testify against her husband. And what this is testing is your understanding of the spousal privilege. And I don't think it's, I mean, again, I found it sort of amazing the way you were able to dismiss out B as a possibility, because B would suggest that the spouse against whom the privilege is to be introduced would then hold the right to the privilege, which, by the way, is the case when you're talking about most other privileges, right? So delete spouse here and replace it with lawyer or priest or psychotherapist, right, like, you if I've told my lawyer I committed the crime and then you know the lawyer's like, um, I would like to appear on the

0:53:34 Thomas: Oh, well, that's

0:54:25 Andrew: Defense witness list. Right? I could say no, I, I, I declined to allow my lawyer to testify against me. Now

0:54:33 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah, because I was between A and C. So why is C a ridiculous answer?

0:54:37 Andrew: C is a ridiculous answer in the sense that the, the prosecutor can impeach anything, right, you know. So, I mean, that basically would say there is no privilege, right?

0:54:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. But okay, I'm going defend my, I don't think that's a nonsense answer. I think that is because sometimes that is the way the answer is, is like you think there is privilege, but if there isn't, then that is how they formulate the answer.

0:54:54 Andrew: Okay, fair enough. But what this question wanted to test was, does the privilege rest with the spouse, or does it rest with The Party against whom the testimony is sought? And the answer is it rests with the Spouse. So, you know, think about, is a spoiler for Better Call Saul Season 3, so I'm not going to apologize for that. That was like eight years ago. When Jimmy McGill marries Kim Wexler, she can still testify against him. She just cannot be compelled to testify against it.

0:55:30 Thomas: Right. I mean, that seems so obviously true, unless the patriarchy is that bad, which maybe it is. But But like the idea that a wife couldn't testify against an abusive husband, even if she wanted to, it seems so obvious that it's like, yeah, obviously the privilege rests with her that she can't be forced to if she didn't want to.

0:55:47 Andrew: Yeah, I think the question. Of an abuse, situation adds a wrinkle to it. But I was just thinking about, could right, testify against his, you know, sort of, Slippin' Jimmy activities, right? His Saul Goodman activities. And so by getting married, she now cannot be compelled to testify, but she could still testify if she wanted to, which is, you Know, something that I didn't see a lot of people explore in terms of like the breaking bad aspect of her character, right. Kind of fairly early on, she was like, OK, well, here's how I'm going to protect you from this. I can no longer be legally required to testify against you, although, you know, my conscience could still make me. So I

0:55:57 Thomas: But Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:56:25 Thomas: Well, yeah. Good point. Well, I'm one for two. Seems like maybe we should, you know what? It's been so long. We can keep a percentage of the new test. You know, maybe this is 50%. I've got a coveted 50% already on this new test,

0:56:34 Andrew: Did coveted 50 percent and we'll Keep the new book for a while. So I think we could do that.

0:56:42 Thomas: All Right, well, let's find out who this week's big winner is.

0:56:45 Andrew: Yeah, this week's big winner is low hanging keyboards, keyboards, uh, that is at L keyboards on Twitter, who writes, "I believe that this is testing knowledge about spousal privilege, and what Hollywood has told me is that a spouse cannot be compelled to testify against the other, but unlike clergy penitent privilege, a spouse can choose to waive their privilege against." The answer, a "Well, I just, I, I should have read that in

0:57:09 Thomas: Wow we could have saved ourselves a lot of time. Yeah, I mean

0:57:10 Andrew: Yeah instead of just giving the segment. I just gave that, was pithier.

0:57:14 Thomas: They didn't mention anything about Fish Called Wanda, so that's the only knock on that answer you know yeah and

0:57:15 Andrew: Well that's that's a mistake but uh but everyone, uh, like us, uh, you should give Low-Hanging Keyboards a follow. That is at L L keyboards or at L K E Y B O A R D S on Twitter, and congratulations on being this week's winner.

0:57:33 Thomas: That's our show, uh, thanks for the good old-fashioned Monday deep dive, Andrew, and we'll be back at it with a rapid response Friday. Don't worry, even though we're vacationing, that's the dedication, so Andrew start

0:57:44 Andrew: Nor wind, nor rain, nor sleep, nor snow.

0:57:47 Thomas: Reading those documents on the boat you're on, Andrew. And all

0:57:51 Andrew: I'm not on a boat yet, but I promise you I will be and I will be reading documents.

0:57:56 Thomas: Right, well, we'll see you then.

0:57:57 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

0:58:31 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.