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Karol wrote:

No by definition a tau can not be considered good, the same way a bear or a dog can't be good. And in each moment where the choice is between camp 1 with humans, and camp 2 not humans. The camp 1 is right. For it to be different one would have to , I don't know hate the human race or something, and that is plain insanity considering people are humans.

There are two ways to approach this. Either we accept it is a fictional setting, in which case 40k humans are worth less than real bear and dogs. After all bear and dogs actually exists while 40k humanity is fictional.

Or we take the setting at face value, in which case Tau are sapient beings and fully equivalent to humans.

Either way, human in 40k do not get to be right just for being humans.

 Tyran wrote:

Karol wrote:

No by definition a tau can not be considered good, the same way a bear or a dog can't be good. And in each moment where the choice is between camp 1 with humans, and camp 2 not humans. The camp 1 is right. For it to be different one would have to , I don't know hate the human race or something, and that is plain insanity considering people are humans.

There are two ways to approach this. Either we accept it is a fictional setting, in which case 40k humans are worth less than real bear and dogs. After all bear and dogs actually exists while 40k humanity is fictional.

Or we take the setting at face value, in which case Tau are sapient beings and fully equivalent to humans.

Either way, human in 40k do not get to be right just for being humans.

It's canon that dogs are worth more than your average person:

Source: https://regimental-standard.com/2018/09/26/managing-your-canid/

I forgot about that.

The hilarious/terrifying part of the IoM is that it doesn't care about humans as individuals or as people, it only cares about humanity as a species.

Karol wrote:
For it to be different one would have to , I don't know hate the human race or something, and that is plain insanity considering people are humans. [/quote

You don't? You should hate the human race.
Especially playing in the meta you do...

 Tyran wrote:
I forgot about that.

The hilarious/terrifying part of the IoM is that it doesn't care about humans as individuals or as people, it only cares about humanity as a species.

"Human resources" taken a bit too literally is the 40k method.

Adeptus Bureaucratus takes it very seriously!

 kodos wrote:

Voss wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Racism and speciesism isn't the same thing.
Species have biological differences, and those differences can be irreconcilable (e.g. Tyranids and Humans).
Races are made-up unscientific balderdash that have no real meaning save for an excuse to poke each other with sharp sticks and to justify oppression.

be aware that such thing can be lost in translation were the word for race means "species" (and you would refer to humans and tyranids as 2 different races)

It could... but... not really? That has been a real problem with fantasy settings for decades now, but various companies are starting to move away from it (sometimes in awkward ways).

But in sci-fi and sci-fi adjacent settings (ie, 40k and star wars), those aren't used as adjacent, let alone related, concepts. 40k at its worst barely acknowledged the modern concept of racism exists, and focused on actual aliens (and almost exclusively hostile aliens). If its actually a linguistic translation problem, someone needs to tell the companies involved to keep a sharper eye on their translators, because that isn't even vaguely what's meant.

well, GW has a history of bad translations and falling for "false friends" that find their way into other products because the people grew up with that and use it as they have learned it from GW
(famous one is with the German Warhammer books were Spear was translated as Speer, the German word for Javelin while Spear is actually Spieß and a lot of people grew up with this and it flew over into other settings as the translators of those learned it from those books)

the setting being Xenophobic and Species-ism and translated into racism as the other languages missing the words for it while the words for species and race are used interchangeable (so orks and elves become just another fantasy race) and racism in real live is there different as well (more about origin and culture)

so just don't get angry if non-native speakers are taking it as "racism" when Mankind hates Xenos in 40k

Angry isn't the word for it.
Puzzled by trying so hard, maybe, because the context is pretty clear. Even, or especially, with a history of poor translations.


---
Regimental standard isn't canon, folks. Its an on-the-nose joke website.
Unless you really think the imperium is encouraging people to sign on with Magnus or join genestealer cults.

Wait have people been taking it as a serious publication rather than in-universe propaganda leaflets? Apart from the very good canids being higher up in the command chain, it's all silly nonsense.

Voss wrote:

Regimental standard isn't canon, folks. Its an on-the-nose joke website.
Unless you really think the imperium is encouraging people to sign on with Magnus or join genestealer cults.

Regimental Standard started as a continuation of the Infantryman's Uplifting Primer amd most consider it canonical as it matches that tone very well.

Let's be honest: the Imperium is amazingly good at shooting itself in the foot in the setting and should we should see that represented in the canon more.


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 Gert wrote:
Wait have people been taking it as a serious publication rather than in-universe propaganda leaflets? Apart from the very good canids being higher up in the command chain, it's all silly nonsense.

In universe propoganda would still make it canon as it's what the Imperium would be actually telling it's own military force.

Voss wrote:
Angry isn't the word for it.
Puzzled by trying so hard, maybe, because the context is pretty clear. Even, or especially, with a history of poor translations.

it might be clear for some but for others you really need to point it out is they never thought about it in a different context in the first place (also because that kind of context is not there in real in their region/culture)

 Gert wrote:
Wait have people been taking it as a serious publication rather than in-universe propaganda leaflets? Apart from the very good canids being higher up in the command chain, it's all silly nonsense.

A lot of people think 1d14chan memes are true lore, including Failbaddon and Angry Marines. Don't forget how often Text-to-Speech Device is touted as a great introduction to the lore.

As for SODAZ most of his stuff is just DoW assets ripped into Source Film Maker right? I expect they'll pay him for one consultancy gig, tell him "Don't call us, we'll call you" and ignore him from then on whilst soaking in the "Waow! Wholesome Chungus GW totally love their fanbase and want to nurture creative talent, not like Kirby at all!"

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Wait have people been taking it as a serious publication rather than in-universe propaganda leaflets? Apart from the very good canids being higher up in the command chain, it's all silly nonsense.

A lot of people think 1d14chan memes are true lore, including Failbaddon and Angry Marines. Don't forget how often Text-to-Speech Device is touted as a great introduction to the lore.

And this is another strong argument against fan-works. Fans often totally misunderstand lore or aspects of the lore on a fairly fundamental level (arguably this is a failure of communication on the creators fault, i.e. someone is a gakky author/writer/filmmaker, etc. or they spend too much time focusing on some aspects of lore while others are left barely covered resulting in misconstrued perceptions), or have their perceptions of lore heavily colored by fan commentary which is sometimes woefully inaccurate, failbaddon being an excellent example of this. Aaron Dembski-Bowden wrote a pretty great piece on the subject:

Sometimes... things go too far.

My son, Shakes, is 5.

Someone in the house will say something funny. Like, the baby, Annah, will say something adorable, or Katie will laugh at something I say, or whatever else. Normal stuff. And Shakes will repeat it once, at an opportune moment, and it's genuinely funny.

Then he'll do it again, because he's 5 and because he doesn't know how humour works. He thinks irreverence and repetition are humour, rather than ways to present humour. So he says something 100 times, it loses all context, and you just want him to shut up.

Also, if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes truth. You see that with a lot of 40K memes. People still insist to me that I'm changing Abaddon's lore by having him win a few battles. Christ, the lore in 2nd and 3rd Edition explained his themes and agenda and successes in delicious detail, but the common online perception is Failbaddon the Armless. I've talked to so many peeps at GW HQ who are completely unaware or mystified by the idea that Abaddon sucks, because they only know the lore. They don't know the memes. And that says a lot.

It's not that memes aren't funny. Some of them so, so are. But it's that many of them take the core of something funny, tear it out, repeat it ad infinitum, and call it profound. Then if you point out that it's boring, stupid, or wrong, well, that rarely goes down well. I've seen it happen.

And that's not even going into all the political nonsense. In addition to most of those entirely missing the point of the lore they claim to understand, it always amuses me to see Andy Chambers or one of the other classic overlords bemused by those memes, and commenting on their own wonder at how the point of 40K was so soundly missed.

If I were a creator, I would consider such things to be incredibly damaging to my creation, no matter how "enriching" some people might feel about it otherwise - a creator should have a right to shut such things down when it violates the spirit or nature of their work, thats not something that a panel of wise men can determine for them.

Are there any interviews with Chambers, or Rick Priestley, or any of the other original designers that touch on that subject(ie "the point of 40k" as you put it)? I think that would be pretty fascinating to read, honestly.

 Tyran wrote:
In addition, GW makes it clear that the IoM are not really the good guys, they are not meant to be praised or imitated.

Hence the "most bloody regime imaginable" in the standard 40k intro, plus all the examples of stupid dogmatism and backstabbing.

And the whole “you will not be missed” bit at the end.

Such are the straits humanity finds itself in, nobody has time for racism or sexism. If you can fight, you fight. If you can work, you work. There’s no escape. There’s no respite. The Imperium will chew you up and spit you out just as much as a rabid Ork would. The Imperium is no more caring of its citizens than a Hive Fleet. You all get wiped out? So long as your planet is standing, they’ll ship in a new populace, because it’s the infrastructure that matters.

 Overread wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
For all the people who think GW " offering " these people to work for them is done as a good thing, I wish I could see the world that way. Considering the canned statements they all give out this is simply them offering to " work " for them or get crushed, they won't say that however. It's all about being a shark with a smile these days.

Yeah sure GW can do whatever they want with their IP, but lets not say they are good for it, they are simply greedy sods, losing no money at all with these videos out there but not being able to stand anyone else getting recognition for them.

Unless you are telling me these video makers were somehow robbing from the poor little orphan boy GWs tills.

As noted earlier in the thread, Astartes person was making around $20K a month from patreon money generated by those supporting the creation of Astartes.

And how much of that money was somehow going to go to GW ? Just because I don't spend 20 dollars on lunch today doesn't mean I'm promised to then spend it at GW stores. If I support an independent creator who is making what GW doesn't give a crap to do on its own with a similar quality, or even a care to customer desires, why would that money then go to them ? To assume he's taking a nickle away from GW is a bit silly. Recasters, yes they are directly taking sales away from GW, third party markets for bits, sure they are as well to some degree, pirated codex, of course they are. GW isn't selling content like these fan movies I'm aware of. We can agree to disagree, but assuming that money would have gone to GW otherwise is a little silly.


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 JohnnyHell wrote:
Make money off someone else’s IP, they’ll getcha.

It’s not rocket surgery.

How much rocket surgey have you had ? I can't wait for them to trademark skulls and come for my inborn IP infringement.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Wait have people been taking it as a serious publication rather than in-universe propaganda leaflets? Apart from the very good canids being higher up in the command chain, it's all silly nonsense.

A lot of people think 1d14chan memes are true lore, including Failbaddon and Angry Marines. Don't forget how often Text-to-Speech Device is touted as a great introduction to the lore.

As for SODAZ most of his stuff is just DoW assets ripped into Source Film Maker right? I expect they'll pay him for one consultancy gig, tell him "Don't call us, we'll call you" and ignore him from then on whilst soaking in the "Waow! Wholesome Chungus GW totally love their fanbase and want to nurture creative talent, not like Kirby at all!"

This is exactly what GW is doing I think. Just a nicer way to toss some coins to the creator ( maybe as we can't even be sure they paid them a dime ) handed them a canned response to put out and they don't come out as the bad guy they'd be if they C and Ded them into oblivion. It's simple PR so the friendly face on the same ol bad GW.

As someone said, a potential purchase is not a purchase, a potential damage is not a damage, an intellectual property is not a physical property.
If you really believe in economy, then ideas shouldn't have any prices (only industrialization of them would matter: an idea can be freely and indefinitely replicated: that's the quintessential definition of something worthless by the standard definition of price, based on scarcity. By the way, already the copyright laws only serves the bigger interest (because, if you really would be at the side of content creator, you would advocate for personal recognition of their authorship... ) Instead you conflate the idea of intellectual property with a corporate entity that - by definition - do not have intellect at all (that's why it need to rent it from real people). That's even before taking into consideration that we require money in order to register an idea: so if I'm poor I can't have original idea?

Today we wouldn't know who Blanche or Chambers are if we really thought that is GW as a corporation that "creates" anything....and you're trying to sustain that this is the proper way to support content creator.
It's funny, but a little sad.

 Cybtroll wrote:
As someone said, a potential purchase is not a purchase, a potential damage is not a damage, an intellectual property is not a physical property.
If you really believe in economy, then ideas shouldn't have any prices (only industrialization of them would matter: an idea can be freely and indefinitely replicated: that's the quintessential definition of something worthless by the standard definition of price, based on scarcity. By the way, already the copyright laws only serves the bigger interest (because, if you really would be at the side of content creator, you would advocate for personal recognition of their authorship... ) Instead you conflate the idea of intellectual property with a corporate entity that - by definition - do not have intellect at all (that's why it need to rent it from real people). That's even before taking into consideration that we require money in order to register an idea: so if I'm poor I can't have original idea?

Today we wouldn't know who Blanche or Chambers are if we really thought that is GW as a corporation that "creates" anything....and you're trying to sustain that this is the proper way to support content creator.
It's funny, but a little sad.

Copyright absolutely is not just a means to serve bigger interests. I know scores of people who have benefitted as individuals from the UK's copyright laws, ranging from small amounts of money to very large indeed. It's basically what allows anyone to make money as a freelance creative working with larger businesses since without copyright any work submitted would be in danger of being exploited against the creator's wishes. It's also not true that only rich people can benefit from these laws. In the UK (and all of Europe, I believe) copyright is an inherent right of the creator that costs nothing and a trademark costs as little as £170 to register in the UK. I do think there are problems with the way IP and copyright laws are enforced and the legal system that surrounds them too often advantages people with more money rather than those who have legitimate claims but I see that as more of an issue with the legal system in general than the concept of IP.

Your point about us only knowing who Chambers or Blanche are because of GW seems to make the opposite point to the one you're going for. What that shows is that the corporation does have some positive effect on the distribution of ideas. Basically, if GW isn't successful the content creators don't have a means of support and we don't get to enjoy these IPs. It follows that the corporation should then be able to gain some benefit from this. They take the risks, both financially and creatively and wouldn't do so without at least the prospect of some reward at the end of it. The ability to profit from the ideas of the people they paid for those ideas is one of the ways they can get that reward.

 Cybtroll wrote:
As someone said, a potential purchase is not a purchase, a potential damage is not a damage, an intellectual property is not a physical property.
If you really believe in economy, then ideas shouldn't have any prices (only industrialization of them would matter: an idea can be freely and indefinitely replicated: that's the quintessential definition of something worthless by the standard definition of price, based on scarcity. By the way, already the copyright laws only serves the bigger interest (because, if you really would be at the side of content creator, you would advocate for personal recognition of their authorship... ) Instead you conflate the idea of intellectual property with a corporate entity that - by definition - do not have intellect at all (that's why it need to rent it from real people). That's even before taking into consideration that we require money in order to register an idea: so if I'm poor I can't have original idea?

And under such a system what reason would anyone have to create and release anything new? Right now if you release something you've got your copyright as a default protection in most nations (I think the only one that doesn't agree is China, who do have their own version of copyright within China, but don't honour international treaties on it). You can sell it at whatever price you want and you are protected; its your entity. Under what you propose anyone could steal it. Big firms would just hoover up popular ideas and mass market sell them for their own gains. Small start up firms would have no hope as even if their prices were cheaper, they'd never have the manufacturing base nor the marketing to outreach to the mass public. Big firms would just slap their logo on it and sell it mass market at whatever price they wanted.

It would create an environment where new creations and ideas would be hidden away. Where there'd be no reason or protection for people to develop a new IP or a new idea because the money, the time and the effort they put into it would have a very limited to no chance of returning that investment to them in a financial way. Worse than that, other entities would have free reign to make those profits. You'd have legions of creators watching as others made a fortune from their work. Meanwhile big firms would simply grow fat on whatever they'd take.



Also fun fact - the same copyright laws that protect GW and allow them to shut down things like Astartes, if they want, also protects Astartes. The creator of Astartes owns Astartes. GW can have it shut down because of copyright infringement, but GW also cannot just steal it and use it for themselves. It's one reason a lot of authors won't read or go to fanfiction sites, because they don't want to later get a copyright claim from a fan fiction writer claiming that a sequel book used their ideas.

chaos0xomega wrote:
And this is another strong argument against fan-works. Fans often totally misunderstand lore or aspects of the lore on a fairly fundamental level (arguably this is a failure of communication on the creators fault, i.e. someone is a gakky author/writer/filmmaker, etc. or they spend too much time focusing on some aspects of lore while others are left barely covered resulting in misconstrued perceptions), or have their perceptions of lore heavily colored by fan commentary which is sometimes woefully inaccurate, failbaddon being an excellent example of this. Aaron Dembski-Bowden wrote a pretty great piece on the subject.

If I were a creator, I would consider such things to be incredibly damaging to my creation, no matter how "enriching" some people might feel about it otherwise - a creator should have a right to shut such things down when it violates the spirit and nature, thats not something that a panel of wise men can determine for them.

A creator is powerless to oblige others to interpret and value their work in a specific way, that would amount to a private thought police. Creators can't control how other will appraise their work (unless in a distant future, entertainment can be directly planted in the brain and force the reciever to experience the content in exactly the manner the creator intends (would this be a desirable development, I might ask?)).

More importantly, creators are to an extent required to tolerate views about the work being spread in the form of reviews, analysis, parodies and satire, depening on your view those items can be considerd fan-content. Such content could include representations and interperations that violate the 'spirit and nature' of the author's intent. So creators also can't fully control how others spread appraisals of their work. (If not, negative reviews would become a prime target for misintepertating the creator's intent, as a start).

1d4chan illustrates rather well that a twisted version of Warhammer 40k exists in a realm that is independent from GW's direct input (even if you do not agree that it should!). How many would argue that 1d4chan falls within the 'spirit and nature' of what GW intends?

The ability of GW to excerise total control over the setting already is impaired both practically and legally, (as you admitted with the aquila drawing case). This does alter the nature of our disagreement. You belief that creators should be able to shut down derived-content at their wishes, but also that there is some form of boundary beyond which legal action cannot be taken (aquilla drawings, again). I can actually more or less agree with that belief, but with a different boundary for legal actions.

People say the aquila isn't protected; are you sure that's right?

Two headed eagles clearly aren't protected, eagles are an extremely common motif and two heads is also fairly common.

But the aquila is something very specific. Only one of the heads has an eye, one foot is hard and angular, the other more curved. This exact interpretation of a two headed Eagle I'm sure is protected.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
People say the aquila isn't protected; are you sure that's right?

Two headed eagles clearly aren't protected, eagles are an extremely common motif and two heads is also fairly common.

But the aquila is something very specific. Only one of the heads has an eye, one foot is hard and angular, the other more curved. This exact interpretation of a two headed Eagle I'm sure is protected.

No, this relates to a post I made a few pages where I proposed that the moment I were to draw the imperial aquila (the exact one ) GW could start a legal procedure (and request me to destroy my drawing and pay them damages).

Chaos' reply was that no court will acquiesce to GW's request and through the suit out, I read this as him understanding that there is a some form of limit beyond which legal action can't be taken.

I think what people object to Caradman is profiting from others IP.

I'm not fan of large corporations and I do understand where you are coming from, you want a fair world where the little guy can do this and not be penalised but that would be incredibly difficult in practice.

I think anyone or company that c and d's fan works is unbelievably petty until the creator starts making cash. At that point allowance of it will have several knock on affects that others have pointed out.

Since I don't think it's been posted yet - here is GW's Intellectual Property Policy.

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

A creator is powerless to oblige others to interpret and value their work in a specific way, that would amount to a private thought police. Creators can't control how other will appraise their work (unless in a distant future, entertainment can be directly planted in the brain and force the reciever to experience the content in exactly the manner the creator intends (would this be a desirable development, I might ask?)).

This isn't about policing thought. It's literally about actions. Obviously an IP creator can't and shouldn't police what people think about their IP, nor can they do anything about someone writing down their private thoughts about it unless they publish it somewhere. Once something is published it's no longer purely a thought and has become an action.

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

More importantly, creators are to an extent required to tolerate views about the work being spread in the form of reviews, analysis, parodies and satire, depening on your view those items can be considerd fan-content. Such content could include representations and interperations that violate the 'spirit and nature' of the author's intent. So creators also can't fully control how others spread appraisals of their work. (If not, negative reviews would become a prime target for misintepertating the creator's intent, as a start).

Reviews, analysis, satire and parody all fall under the purview of copyright. All of those things are protected by copyright law. A content creator cannot use copyright law to force a negative review to be removed, for example, because that's deemed a fair use of the content. It's almost like these things have actually been thought about and tested before. You'll notice those categories are fairly specific, though, and there are criteria that exist for evaluating whether use of copyrighted material falls under one of those categories. Your category of "fan-created content", OTOH, is ridiculously vague and basically encompasses anything any fan may ever create. That's unworkable. That's at the core of this disagreement, I think. Maybe there's some sub-category of "fan content" that should be protected but you need to show how you would define it while still protecting the IP creator's rights to not have their creation used in ways they don't approve of or that might damage them.

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
And this is another strong argument against fan-works. Fans often totally misunderstand lore or aspects of the lore on a fairly fundamental level (arguably this is a failure of communication on the creators fault, i.e. someone is a gakky author/writer/filmmaker, etc. or they spend too much time focusing on some aspects of lore while others are left barely covered resulting in misconstrued perceptions), or have their perceptions of lore heavily colored by fan commentary which is sometimes woefully inaccurate, failbaddon being an excellent example of this. Aaron Dembski-Bowden wrote a pretty great piece on the subject.

If I were a creator, I would consider such things to be incredibly damaging to my creation, no matter how "enriching" some people might feel about it otherwise - a creator should have a right to shut such things down when it violates the spirit and nature, thats not something that a panel of wise men can determine for them.

A creator is powerless to oblige others to interpret and value their work in a specific way, that would amount to a private thought police. Creators can't control how other will appraise their work (unless in a distant future, entertainment can be directly planted in the brain and force the reciever to experience the content in exactly the manner the creator intends (would this be a desirable development, I might ask?)).

You're arguing something completely different. While a creator can't force an individual to interpret their work in a particular way, they can certainly exercise their influence to shape public perception within the community at large to ensure it is consistent with their intent.

More importantly, creators are to an extent required to tolerate views about the work being spread in the form of reviews, analysis, parodies and satire, depening on your view those items can be considerd fan-content. Such content could include representations and interperations that violate the 'spirit and nature' of the author's intent. So creators also can't fully control how others spread appraisals of their work. (If not, negative reviews would become a prime target for misintepertating the creator's intent, as a start).

All of which are protected as fair-use of an IP. The difference here, however, is that its made clear that these works are *not* official content and nobody interprets them as such (and if they are presented otherwise then they can be hit for damages by the IP owner). A lot of fan content outside of these protected categories are easily confused as being official content and as a result are often more influential, and thus more damaging. The Warhammer Armies Project is a good example of this - a lot of people often confuse those unofficial army books for being the real thing and will cite those books when they are discussing things like Cathay or Kislev, this is especially true among people who are new to the warhammer fantasy setting, especially those who entered into the hobby through Total War. These completely unofficial documents created by loving and well-intentioned fans have completely colored peoples perceptions of how things should or shouldn't be, and at times it has caused arguable harm to GW and/or Creative Assembly when peoples perceptions and expectations are not met by the reality of officially produced content which differs. Likewise, I have seen people in discussions and debates cite fanfic as though they were official sources - at times even the 40k wiki has cited and referenced fanfic.

Hell - the 40k wiki has an entire page that basically started as a result of what was basically fanon which resulted from someones misinterpretation of the lore - it was only recently that the disclaimer went up on the top of the page ("Note: All dates from this point forward are provisional due to errors in the Imperial Calendar, meaning these events could actually have occurred at any time from the early 41st Millennium to the early 42nd Millennium."). This fanon misinterpretation has arguably been directly damaging to GW and its employees, as I've seen several Black Library authors on twitter receiving some pretty disturbing levels of verbal abuse and harassment as a result of this specific topic, and invariably when they say "you won't find us reference a single date in any official publication by Black Library or the design studio as being in M42" people would link to this page as though it were proof otherwise, etc. There are a number of valid reasons why GW wouldn't (and probably couldn't, legally speaking) issue a takedown notice for something on a wiki, but in a different context and presentation (i.e. if it were part of a really popular fan animation instead) this would be something that GW might want to consider C&Ding if it was resulting in a damaged perception of GWs branding based on a setting in the 41st Millennium.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
People say the aquila isn't protected; are you sure that's right?
Two headed eagles clearly aren't protected, eagles are an extremely common motif and two heads is also fairly common.
But the aquila is something very specific. Only one of the heads has an eye, one foot is hard and angular, the other more curved. This exact interpretation of a two headed Eagle I'm sure is protected.

It is protected, our friend here is misconstruing a few different arguments and presenting them as linked. You can't put an Aquila on a t-shirt and sell it (legally - you can try and probably make a few hundred bucks on it before you were hit with a C&D though), etc. but you can make a drawing/image of one, post it on dakka, print it out and hang it on the wall of your room - technically speaking doing so would fall into a grey area within IP law (which in general is largely defined by grey areas), but GW won't pursue action against you for doing so nor would any court or judge take them seriously if they attempted to do so because (at least in this context) theres no actual harm or damages involved with this and GW would have to clear some very high hurdles to prove otherwise.

Slipspace wrote:

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

A creator is powerless to oblige others to interpret and value their work in a specific way, that would amount to a private thought police. Creators can't control how other will appraise their work (unless in a distant future, entertainment can be directly planted in the brain and force the reciever to experience the content in exactly the manner the creator intends (would this be a desirable development, I might ask?)).

This isn't about policing thought. It's literally about actions. Obviously an IP creator can't and shouldn't police what people think about their IP, nor can they do anything about someone writing down their private thoughts about it unless they publish it somewhere. Once something is published it's no longer purely a thought and has become an action.

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

More importantly, creators are to an extent required to tolerate views about the work being spread in the form of reviews, analysis, parodies and satire, depening on your view those items can be considerd fan-content. Such content could include representations and interperations that violate the 'spirit and nature' of the author's intent. So creators also can't fully control how others spread appraisals of their work. (If not, negative reviews would become a prime target for misintepertating the creator's intent, as a start).

Reviews, analysis, satire and parody all fall under the purview of copyright. All of those things are protected by copyright law. A content creator cannot use copyright law to force a negative review to be removed, for example, because that's deemed a fair use of the content. It's almost like these things have actually been thought about and tested before. You'll notice those categories are fairly specific, though, and there are criteria that exist for evaluating whether use of copyrighted material falls under one of those categories. Your category of "fan-created content", OTOH, is ridiculously vague and basically encompasses anything any fan may ever create. That's unworkable. That's at the core of this disagreement, I think. Maybe there's some sub-category of "fan content" that should be protected but you need to show how you would define it while still protecting the IP creator's rights to not have their creation used in ways they don't approve of or that might damage them.

I pretty much agree agree with all of the above.

Though, I still have many thoughts about things like fair use exemptions though. Think of the following example: A prominent opinionmaker writes a scathing review about a product which leads to potential customers turning away, although the company is arguably harmed that's still considerd fair use right? But now what if said review leads to a cascade of events (think about demonstrations and boycotts) that would harm the company even further? To what extent does does the wording of a review matter? If it containts outright falsehoods, a court case would be likely, right? But what if it's not so clear, what if the review contain misrepresentation of the creator's intent? How many is changed if the author didn't or couldn't now that he was misrepresenting the creator's intent? And what if he could know, but genuinly didn't? How much does the tone of review matter? Or the previously expressed opinons by the reviewers, or comments that he made outside the review?

Crucially, what is the motivation to protect a negative review, but not let's say a questionable meme if, and only if, it can be determined that the former causes more harm for the creator, like customers turning away, than the latter? I have several explanations of my own, but they mostly come down to value judgement of reviews over memes, and the quality, meaning tone they're generally associated with.

It would depend on what the review said.

If someone said "I think GW products are too expensive and you shouldn't buy them", GW doesn't care because it's meaningless. Oh no some adults aren't going to buy your product and are boycotting until you make it cheaper, oh wait twenty kids just bought starter sets, oh there's another fifteen, etc.

If someone were to say "GW keeps its manufacturing costs down because it uses slave labour", then GW is going after them for libel/slander/whatever else because that is a serious allegation.
A load of prominent UK news sources did pieces on GW's recent success and most if not all were bottom-tier, "give it to the intern" type stories that made numerous factual errors. Now, it's not libel/slander/lies that these sources were printing when they said GW paint could cost £10 or that the range was mostly metal/resin, it was just really bad journalism that with two seconds of research anyone with half a brain could see was untrue. It's not going to hurt GW's business if the Guardian writes a rubbish article because their primary market, kids and teens, aren't going to read that article.

chaos0xomega wrote:
You're arguing something completely different. While a creator can't force an individual to interpret their work in a particular way, they can certainly exercise their influence to shape public perception within the community at large to ensure it is consistent with their intent.

But of course, I specifically used the word 'oblige' to make that distinction, creators, authors and storytellers use narrative and context to ensure that their work is interpreted as close as possible to the original vision, this is very much fine. I did in fact want argue, that a responsibility for how a work of fiction is interpreted is very much shared between both the customer and the creator.

All of which are protected as fair-use of an IP. The difference here, however, is that its made clear that these works are *not* official content and nobody interprets them as such (and if they are presented otherwise then they can be hit for damages by the IP owner). A lot of fan content outside of these protected categories are easily confused as being official content and as a result are often more influential, and thus more damaging. The Warhammer Armies Project is a good example of this - a lot of people often confuse those unofficial army books for being the real thing and will cite those books when they are discussing things like Cathay or Kislev, this is especially true among people who are new to the warhammer fantasy setting, especially those who entered into the hobby through Total War. These completely unofficial documents created by loving and well-intentioned fans have completely colored peoples perceptions of how things should or shouldn't be, and at times it has caused arguable harm to GW and/or Creative Assembly when peoples perceptions and expectations are not met by the reality of officially produced content which differs. Likewise, I have seen people in discussions and debates cite fanfic as though they were official sources - at times even the 40k wiki has cited and referenced fanfic.

Hell - the 40k wiki has an entire page that basically started as a result of what was basically fanon which resulted from someones misinterpretation of the lore - it was only recently that the disclaimer went up on the top of the page ("Note: All dates from this point forward are provisional due to errors in the Imperial Calendar, meaning these events could actually have occurred at any time from the early 41st Millennium to the early 42nd Millennium."). This fanon misinterpretation has arguably been directly damaging to GW and its employees, as I've seen several Black Library authors on twitter receiving some pretty disturbing levels of verbal abuse and harassment as a result of this specific topic, and invariably when they say "you won't find us reference a single date in any official publication by Black Library or the design studio as being in M42" people would link to this page as though it were proof otherwise, etc. There are a number of valid reasons why GW wouldn't (and probably couldn't, legally speaking) issue a takedown notice for something on a wiki, but in a different context and presentation (i.e. if it were part of a really popular fan animation instead) this would be something that GW might want to consider C&Ding if it was resulting in a damaged perception of GWs branding based on a setting in the 41st Millennium.

I agree that it should be made clear wherever possible that fan content is in no way offical and many fan-creators actually do use such disclaimers in an effective manner. I applaud that, very much, if it can alleviate some the original creator's concerns, that by all means it should become more widespread and refined in fan creations.

It's horrible to see authors being verbally abused on twitter because of information on a wiki, and it would be equally horrible if a fan animation leads to the same kinds of abuse or even worse. Now you argue that taking down the wiki in such an isntance is reasonably speaking close to unachievable, but not that does not go for the fan animation, With the given reason being context and presentation. I think we may be finally getting somewhere, those who commit the absues should obviously be punished, but I believe that the context and presenation argument should be weighed differently. In fact, I may hypothetically sympathize more with the animator than with the wiki-editor depending on the circumstances.

I just want to reiterate that no US court has ever ruled against a non-commercial, transformative fan work. Not sure about the UK.

The fair use provisions of education, criticism, and parody are very important if you are commercializing your use of copyrighted content, but if you are making non-commercial use of copyrighted material that is transformative in nature (eg you're making an animation of your own, not just posting videogame cutscenes to Youtube), you would have to do something particularly egregious to bring the force of law down on you even if your work isn't strictly fair use.

beast_gts wrote:
Since I don't think it's been posted yet - here is GW's Intellectual Property Policy.

Thanks for the link! It seems to cover most of the stuff people are complaining about. You absolutely can create fan work, if you don't say it's official and don't make money off it.