Copyright on personal use
SaintandSinner:
Hi everyone,
I looked through the copyright sticky but didn't see an answer to my question. We have a home made PDF that we'd like to print and have bound for personal use. I'd also like to give a few away to the other contributors and to my players. Thing is I'm not sure what art in the thing (and maybe some copy/pasted background text) might be copyrighted. We just looked and found whatever looked good. Is this a problem? I'm not going to sell anything just make usable copies.
Sorry if this is obvious, none of us are really sure.
Thanks. B-)
Ben Lehman:
This is not the right forum for these questions. There are only a handful of lawyers here, and I'm not sure whether any of them are intellectual property experts.
Try The Intellectual Property Law forums.
From my experience (a couple of years ago) they're very nice and helpful people.
yrs--
--Ben
Tim C Koppang:
First of all, you have to realize that copyright law is not always clear-cut. There are no one size fits all answers. There is also a difference between what is legal and what is practical. Let me start by giving you some conservative advice:
I'm assuming that when you say, "home made PDF" you have an original game that you wrote. You then searched the internet for interesting artwork and pasted it into your document. Is that right? If so, you own the copyright on your original material. On the other hand, chances are that whoever created the artwork you lifted from the internet owns the copyright on each image. You do not have a right to take other people's work and use it in your game, even if it's only for personal use. Whether you sell or give away the game is almost entirely beside the point. The absolute safest way to go is to find out who owns each image and get written permission to use them in your game.
That said, if you're printing out three copies of your game on your inkjet printer for yourself and your buddies, the practical reality is that no one is going to come after you for copyright infringement (probably). If you're really paranoid, then I suggest finding some public domain images (public domain means that no one owns a copyright on the image), or licensing some dirt cheap stock images. Just do a Google search for websites that offer these sorts of things and make sure that they're legit.
greyorm:
Quote from: Tim C Koppang on June 16, 2009, 06:23:32 AM
You do not have a right to take other people's work and use it in your game...for personal use.
And that's where the debate is, because private, personal use, non-profit scenarios are actually supposed to be something you can do under copyright law.
Which is where Ben's advice above about contacting an IP lawyer with the exact details of what you're doing so you can figure out if it is an issue comes into play. Do that.
If this is something you made for yourself and are handing out to a couple friends? It's just not an issue (or not supposed to be). If you're trying to have someone bind and print it for you (Lulu, Kinkos, wherever), and sending multiple copies out through the mail and such, then it easily could be an issue.
That's where the area becomes gray and you'll need to talk to a lawyer.
SaintandSinner:
I had an idea. An internet forum ran with it. Someone volunteered to flesh it out and make it pretty. I'm not sure where the additional material came from but a concern about copyright was brought up when I mentioned printing it. Just asking general questions before I go back to the other contributors and see what can be done to make it 'printable'.
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