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Made in gb
Battleship Captain





Bristol (UK)

Last night GW updated their intellectual property guidelines, they added a bit to their zero tolerance category about fan animations.

Fan-films and animations – individuals must not create fan films or animations based on our settings and characters. These are only to be created under licence from Games Workshop.

Might not be unexpected to many, but here we are.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Intellectual-Property-Guidelines
   
Made in be
Regular Dakkanaut





And my interest in Warhammer+ is completely gone.

This will heavily backfire on them.
   
Made in de
Longtime Dakkanaut



Bamberg / Erlangen

Somebody with more law knowledge please enlighten me:

Is this just a fail safe in case they want to go to court with someone? So nobody can say "but you never said anywhere that this is not allowed"?
Can they have this written there without actively shutting down hobby animators doing their stuff on Youtube? Or are they "forced" now to do it?

   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

a_typical_hero wrote:
Somebody with more law knowledge please enlighten me:

Is this just a fail safe in case they want to go to court with someone? So nobody can say "but you never said anywhere that this is not allowed"?
Can they have this written there without actively shutting down hobby animators doing their stuff on Youtube? Or are they "forced" now to do it?


IANAL, but basically yes. The key line is "be non-commercial, with no money being received or paid. This includes all forms of fundraising activity, and generation of any advertising revenue". If you're monetizing your YT channel off the back of GW IP they're going to be having words with you, but it's free fan art they'll leave you alone.
   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain





Bristol (UK)

"non-commercial" only applies to their stance on fan fiction, they have a zero tolerance for animations commercial or otherwise apparently.

Unless they deem you've copied GW material in which case even non-commercial fan fiction isn't allowed either.

I might not lock them in to enforcing this, but it does show they have a new stance and indicates a change in approach.
   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





GW should focus on proofreading their books more insteand and FAQ problems due to their release structures, release more books instead than attempting to chapterhouse 2.0 themselves again...

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




a_typical_hero wrote:
Somebody with more law knowledge please enlighten me:

Is this just a fail safe in case they want to go to court with someone? So nobody can say "but you never said anywhere that this is not allowed"?
Can they have this written there without actively shutting down hobby animators doing their stuff on Youtube? Or are they "forced" now to do it?


IANAL, though I have had training in copyright and trademark law as it applies to print and visual media. You don't need to have any disclaimers or warnings about enforcing your IP rights. For trademarked terms I'm pretty sure you need to list them somewhere. Copyright is inherent to any created work and doesn't have to be applied for (except in the US, because they have to be different) but trademarks need to be paid for and tend to be for quite narrow uses.

Even before the existence of these guidelines GW could have attempted to enforce their rights under IP law. It's not a defence to claim the company doesn't have any guidance therefore you can do what you want.
   
Made in ie
Battleship Captain





Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/07/21 11:40:40



 
   
Made in gb
Did Fulgrim Just Behead Ferrus?






I think everyone could benefit from a nice chill pill. Many companies have this kind of this as their base IP protection and it's all about enforcement.
I saw the example of Roosterteeth's Red VS Blue and Bungie/Microsoft, RVB could have been killed way back in the early 2000s but it wasn't because Bungie/Microsoft recognised it for the useful tool that it was for getting kids into Halo. However, we could have a situation like where Sony tried to trademark "Let's Play". They failed miserably and lost a lot of community standing.
I think we should let the people who have to worry about this do what they need to do and not try to doom-monger or incite fear/hatred.
   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain





Bristol (UK)

I totally agree, although this is coming the wake of Astartes, SODAZ, and similar being shut down so there's plenty of precedence to suggest they are interesting in enforcing it.
   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

Probably worth pointing out these are worldwide guidelines rather than limited to a specific jurisdiction.

Someone on Twitter has said that German law doesn't allow transference of IP so GW cannot 'buy' fan-films and take them over, so a blanket ban might be the only way to avoid issues.
   
Made in gb
[MOD]
Villanous Scum







Please continue the discussion here;
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/799841.page

We do not need 2 threads on this.

On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
 
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