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yukishiro1 wrote:
Again, they aren't new rules. The only thing that's really new is the change purporting to completely ban fan animation/movies. So why do we think they're suddenly about to start enforcing rules they haven't been enforcing up to now, just because they changed a different part of the document to address a different issue?

I'll be the first to hold up my hand if I'm wrong, but to me this reads 100% as about Warhammer+ and trying to make sure there are no free alternatives, not as some big change in their general IP strategy.

exactly that, GW changed their rules to make sure that this kind of content is exclusive to WH+, also because their starting content won't be much better than the stuff you got for free

so what else was announced for WH+ were the free content is of similar or better quality?
masterclass painting guides and battle reports
we are just connecting the dots here that this will be the next step, and specially on YT this is easy to enforce

so the big question here is just how strict will they enforce those rules (or try to enfoce them) and what else get changed with WH+ running

 insaniak wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
No, I don't think that's true. You have the right to recast for personal use, just like you have the right to make copies out of a book you own for personal use.

You really, really don't. That's not just an amateur, personal opinion, it's been the position of various IP professionals involved in the hobby over the years.

No, this depends on the country
for example laws in central European countries allow re-casts for private use
you are not allowed to sell them and it need to be a reasonable amount for private use (so called "household amounts") and the source must not be obviously illegal
this also covers 3D printing by scanning the original model and make a private copy

so yes, I am allowed by law to buy a single GW model and make 9 more from it for a unit to play a game
and this is what people have done here for years, long before 3D printing was a thing

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

They want to sanitise the hobby, and monetise everything.

No other company gets away with monetising a balance patch, except GW, and somehow their lazyness should be applauded cue 2 W csm... FOMO, blatant cut content DLC, preorder DLC.. etc.

I've been saying GW is the EA of tabletop games. EA screwed all their franchises by shoving DLCs, FOMO, and monetized BS up their franchises rear ends, and are rightfully the most hated company in the world, yet they are making billions. GW just hasn't figured out how to implement gambling to minors into their stuff... yet.

NAVARRO wrote:Hum I wonder If a commission painter on YouTube cannot paint GW minis anymore if he wants to profit from the videos?

Or my case a commission artist and painter. Is it illegal now for me to be hired to draw 40K content?

Spoiler:

Especially adult content

No, it's not illegal "now". It was already illegal before. Not being able to use someone elses creations without permission, outside of certain contexts, was already enshrined in copyright law and has not changed just because GW have wrote an article.

Tell that to literally every single fanfiction in existence.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Tell that to literally every single fanfiction in existence.

Fanfiction isn't a problem. Fanfiction that is monetised without the permission of the IP holder is an infringement.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

No, this depends on the country

Yes, I was responding to an American poster about US Fair Use.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Tell that to literally every single fanfiction in existence.

Are you implying no one has ever infringed copyright law before? Or that everyone always gets punished for absolutely every crime?

IP infringement is particularly blurry as companies regularly allow it to take place, because they think it's beneficial to them and/or the backlash would be worse for them.
This "looking the other way" is often confused for legality or even entitlement.

 Grot 6 wrote:
Spots the Space Marine 2.0


Yet GW can't make any more Cursed City...


We can see that SOMEONE has their priorities straight.

... yeah GW should force their legal team to work in a GW factory!

The thing is, apart from what they HAVE done with animators, none of us know how GW will enforce these IP changes.

Will they go after, bat rep makers and lore video creators? Who knows. Certainly none of you guys do.

So maybe we should watch, observe and comment on what they actually do, not what they might do.

Yet again, bad GW is bad, nothing new to see here. Legally can they do all this ? Most likely they are all good. Now them doing it feels real bad however and depending on how hard they will hammer these points home it could really blow up in their face at least for some people.

I would say if you think this is just the start that is a quite reasonable way to view it. I can easily imagine them using this to slowly trim away many uses of their products outside their direct hands, such as battle reports, etc, etc. As they try and get all the information coming out of their own avenues. Fan support was good when they felt they needed it but they may be finding they don't need it at all so why keep wasting the time and money when they can take it all themselves ?

Time will tell but GW has never gotten less greedy over time.

Sunno wrote:
The thing is, apart from what they HAVE done with animators, none of us know how GW will enforce these IP changes.

Will they go after, bat rep makers and lore video creators? Who knows. Certainly none of you guys do.

So maybe we should watch, observe and comment on what they actually do, not what they might do.

Reasonable approaches are sadly not in vogue. Some comments definitely read as if GW will enforce it with a 100% certainity. Just the usual hate on this board.

BaronIveagh wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
There's a lot of "the sky is falling" hyperbole that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how IP laws work, both in how much they can cover (pretty much everything GW stated in their list) and also what it won't cover (pretty much everything not stated).

GW can't go after cosplayers, or review channels, or battle reports. Sure, they could strong arm YouTube, but that's a YouTube TOS issue, not an IP issue. And even then, I doubt that's the case. Fan made movies are actual creative works that deliberately slot along side canon works. That's very different from an unboxing or painting tutorial.

Polonius, maybe you're forgetting, but you're actually arguing this with people who have previously received Cease and Desist orders from GW for these exact things. Actual legal action has been taken by GW for the things that you're saying they could never do.

This is it exactly!

Some of us here had our hobby seriously impacted in the past by heavy-handed legal actions. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to not want that to happen again.

Gimgamgoo wrote:From reading these forums, it seems that all GW are trying to do is give a little slap on the wrist to scare animators into removing their animations (or make it so they can't afford to make them).

GW have probably realised they don't have enough animations to make a really full WH+ channel, so have tried to employ those fans that are making them. Where they've failed to hire, they're trying to scare the animators off with a generic IP reminder threat to include the animations.

It just seems really late preparation for their WH+ subs release next month.

All the rest of the scare talk about shutting youtubers down for painting videos is just silly.

I think this is probably on the money...

And an acknowledgement of 3D printing now becoming a much bigger thing.

 insaniak wrote:
Yes, I was responding to an American poster about US Fair Use.

your post were written in a general way and this is also were some of the problems with GW come from, that their general guidlines are written without the laws of different countries in mind (and therefore are more strict than they needed to be just be sure to cover everyone)

 kodos wrote:
your post were written in a general way and this is also were some of the problems with GW come from, that their general guidlines are written without the laws of different countries in mind (and therefore are more strict than they needed to be just be sure to cover everyone)

To be fair, up until comparatively recently, the laws were fairly universal, with the US's Fair Use being amongst the more liberal. The EU rules allowing countries to pay IP holders compensation in exchange for allowing people to copy for personal use weren't something that I had come across before. An initial search online turned up the bare bones of it, but I'd be curious to see what it actually applies to, as the articles I found seemed to suggest it was aimed more at digital or printed content.

 insaniak wrote:
as the articles I found seemed to suggest it was aimed more at digital or printed content.

this is is always changing depending on technology and for example empty/fresh MC, VHS, CD's and now HDD's have always been more expensive here as for the additional fee for private copies (blank media tax and most of the money goes to the social fund for authors)

going down the way of re-casts this usually applies to sculptures/art and rules what can be done without being a counterfeit and now with 3D prints being a thing this gets updated (but not in all countries at the same time) and it is expected that in the long term the fee will be added to 3D printers as well

BrianDavion wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:
Spots the Space Marine 2.0


Yet GW can't make any more Cursed City...


We can see that SOMEONE has their priorities straight.

... yeah GW should force their legal team to work in a GW factory!

Given their ability at doing the law talking thing I'm not sure this isn't asking for some poor minion having to pick body parts out of the machines

They already had the legal rights to shut down fan animations and films before, as proven by the fact that they did it. They've just added this to their "guidelines" (and that's all they are - the law is the law regardless of what they assert or otherwise) to make it clear that fan animations aren't allowed so no-one else starts devoting years of their lives to making something that can never be shown.
If they were going to start to go after people making battle report, painting videos or so on, would they not have added those to these guidelines when they updated them?

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:
Spots the Space Marine 2.0


Yet GW can't make any more Cursed City...


We can see that SOMEONE has their priorities straight.

... yeah GW should force their legal team to work in a GW factory!

Given their ability at doing the law talking thing I'm not sure this isn't asking for some poor minion having to pick body parts out of the machines

-and nothing of value would be lost

 Sim-Life wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Mallo wrote:
Some of these are not at all enforceable. They clearly just want to scare smaller scale operations away and hope enough people are put off.

Personal experience, they will actually try to enforce these, the actual law be damned. And people with YouTube channels are going to have a hell of a time of it, since YouTube will keep taking your videos down as long as GW keeps making those copyright claims.

All that's really left is to see who's left in the end.

I suspect a lot of people saying GW won't enforce this are people that 8th brought back, so they don't remember GWs old ways. Still gutted we never got to see Damnatus.

GW isn't a person with it's own thoughts and ideas though. It's not a serial killer that went quiet for a few years to throw people of the scent and now wants to go back to killing. It's a company. Obviously corporate culture is a thing, and certain ways of doing things tend to stick around through momentum even as the people change, but generally once that change has happened it takes active effort from people to revert it to what it was.

Most of the people at GW ten or so years ago when they last went after folk in a big way likely are not there any more. So there's no inherent internal reason for them to revert back to that.

That doesn't mean they won't. Doesn't mean some new people won't join the legal team and start pushing the idea that they should start aggressively going after anything damaging to their brand, whether they have the legal right to or not. But the fact that they did it before doesn't really make it any more or less likely. "Reverting to type" is not really a thing with companies, unless it's a very hands-on, high profile CEO.

The fact they've updated the legal text could be seen as indicator that they're planning some sort of copyright crackdown, but all they've done is add in a note to say they're going to do what they've already done.

Aren't GW already forcing some animator to remove all their Warhammer stuff when they refused to join the WH+ program ? Kinda remind me of Nintendo war with fan creator and community of their old games.

This is a great wakeup call for all Warhammer fan creator out there, time to dip, I wouldn't be surprised if some fan creator got targeted in the future because of something they post on social media that GW didn't like.

 Pacific wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
There's a lot of "the sky is falling" hyperbole that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how IP laws work, both in how much they can cover (pretty much everything GW stated in their list) and also what it won't cover (pretty much everything not stated).

GW can't go after cosplayers, or review channels, or battle reports. Sure, they could strong arm YouTube, but that's a YouTube TOS issue, not an IP issue. And even then, I doubt that's the case. Fan made movies are actual creative works that deliberately slot along side canon works. That's very different from an unboxing or painting tutorial.

Polonius, maybe you're forgetting, but you're actually arguing this with people who have previously received Cease and Desist orders from GW for these exact things. Actual legal action has been taken by GW for the things that you're saying they could never do.

This is it exactly!

Some of us here had our hobby seriously impacted in the past by heavy-handed legal actions. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to not want that to happen again.

Okay, but what were the specifics? I can’t comment on a C&D I know nothing about.

Chopstick wrote:
Aren't GW already forcing some animator to remove all their Warhammer stuff when they refused to join the WH+ program ?

They have asked some creators to either stop profiting off their IP (so Patrons or YT) or to come work with them on Warhammer+. AFAIK they've not approached anyone who is not making money from it.

"Fan works
must not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity"

What does that mean?

"include the word ‘unofficial’ prominently on the front cover"
amused me because it reminded me of a late law in my country about 'foreign agents" that must slap "foreign agent" on any of their publications.

 Shadenuat wrote:
"Fan works
must not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity"

What does that mean?
.

It means they don't want fan fiction that they feel will impact perception of the setting or the company in negative way.

If they don't spam R34 sites with takedown notices then we know what GW HQ gets up to then

 insaniak wrote:
It means they don't want fan fiction that they feel will impact perception of the setting or the company in negative way.

Sounds kinda broad.

 Shadenuat wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
It means they don't want fan fiction that they feel will impact perception of the setting or the company in negative way.

Sounds kinda broad.

It is, probably intentionally. Again, worth pointing out that anything GW writes on their IP pages, unless it's exercising their rights to conditionally extend a license to creators as CBS/Paramount do, doesn't affect the legal standing of anything.

Many years ago GW legal shut down a humorous T-shirt that I had put up for sale (all proceeds to charity). It was a shame but not entirely unexpected.

Protecting your IP and brand is fine up to a point but GW legal have a history of going after protection for things they don't actually own. IIRC a friend has emails from them demanding that he stop selling "Blood Red" paint (which he called their bluff on and came to nothing).

I really don't care about all the post chapterhouse names that they have come up with as I have no emotional attachment to them whatsoever. They have all been designed to have maximum legal protection but to me many of them just sound silly.

 Shadenuat wrote:
"Fan works
must not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity"

What does that mean?

It's directed at parodies and things making fun of GW

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:
"Fan works
must not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity"

What does that mean?

It's directed at parodies and things making fun of GW

So YouTube channels like FlashGitz for instance?

They already took down their 40k stuff like Space Hulk didn't they?

If FlashGitz survived through the ad-pocalypse and the trigger happy GW of yesteryear this isn't going to change anything. Until GW actually brings its first case to a court or sends a C&D there really isn't any point in all this fear-mongering nonsense.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:
"Fan works
must not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity"

What does that mean?

It's directed at parodies and things making fun of GW

I think parody is still legally protected, but it has to be obvious parody rather than just using their IP in a demeaning way.