Grumdril
Member
lenihan":1zb0knal said:I think we can all agree that from a business perspective GW's attempts to protect their IP are sound. If I'm playing devil's advocate, then I have to say I think it's a little brazen when you consider that really there's very little in GW's IP portifolio that is truly original; it's mostly derived from the rich pool of historical, fantasy, sci-fi, and pop culture resources, so if I was being particularly grumpy I'd suggest that what they're doing amounts to an enclosure of the commons, much like recording artists who try to claim copyright on traditional songs. Which would be a really interesting debate, I think, but probably likely to veer to close to the admittedly tedious vice of "GW bashing".
Take a look at GW's copyrights / trademarks list - I found it interesting but you many not
Orc and elf (etc, etc) are not GW trademarks. Ork and Eldar are. Space marine is not a trademark, Adeptus Astartes and various chapter names are. So if you have orcs fighting elves fighting a vaguely Germanic high medieval human army you're entirely free of IP, if the humans have a priest of Sigmar or the orcs have Skaven (but not ratmen) allies you're using GW IP. If you write about the latter in a fan way you're fine. If you publish and sell the latter scenario, or write it in a way that GW considers derogatory, obscene, or offensive you're probably in trouble.
lenihan":1zb0knal said:I also think that the idea that you're not allowed to contaminate their miniatures with parts from miniatures by other companies is hardly gamer-friendly in principle (so when I put a pitchfork from S&D models, a railway scenery manufacturer, in the hands of one of my minis, I was breaking their rules - something I didn't know until I read this yesterday) although as in practice I've never heard of anyone getting a cease and desist letter for playing with a converted mini, I think you could say that the policy is just a very sensible covering their back-side. So what I'm saying is that they're gamer-friendly in the sense that they turn a blind eye. But as the treatment of some internet fan materials shows, they will only take this so far.
If you create a conversion you're not "breaking their rules", you're creating a deriviative work of a copyrighted work without the copyright holders permission, which potentially breaks copyright law. See my previous post about why GW can't give blanket permission to do this, and hence why their words are as they are. There are fair dealing / fair use exceptions to copyright law but without a lawyer you don't want to go there. Also I notice that they ask you to not combine stuff from other manufacturers. They tell you what to do most of the rest of the time...
If the BBG case is what you mean by "treatment of internet fan material" it wasn't that, they were also breaking copyright law. They chose to delete the safe fan material as collateral damage. Without paying for a lawyer of their own to decide what was safe and what wasn't they'd not have had much choice, but if all they'd had in the first place was fan material within the bounds of GW's terms then I imagine they'd have been fine.