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Dumpshock Forums _ Dumpshock News, Bug Reports, Feature Requests, & Discussion _ Copyright violations

Posted by: Angelone Jul 20 2007, 05:43 AM

Recently the SR3R thread was closed. One of the reasons given was because parts of the rulebooks were being reprinted here on Dumpshock. Now I know I myself have done this in a "What it says on page # of (book) is [insert quote here]". I've seen quite a lot of this and I thought it was okay to do so.

What I'm basically asking is is there some kind of limit before quoting out of a book becomes Copyright infringment? When I tried to access the Terms of Service and Site rules, only a blank white page would show up. So I got no answers there.
It's also hard for me to imagine how you can have any kind of discussion about rules without the ability to quote them in some way. How much is too much?

EDIT- Not trying to be snarky I'm honestly curious.

Posted by: Demerzel Jul 20 2007, 06:54 AM

I doubt the determination is based on some flat word count or some such metric. What you have to consider is purpose.

Case 1: Someone is asking for clarification on how to play SR4 in some way. Perhaps they are having a hard time deciding if they should get a power focus or a spellcasting focus. I post a paragraph to explain something they misunderstand so they can focus on that while they are looking at the forum and not need to get their book. Great, no problem.

Case 2: I'm making a product (albeit free one) which essentially is creating competition for the current game/content I'm trying to sell. While I do that I'm copying some text verbatim, perhaps even from pdf's. Now even though your creating this product free of charge with no hope or expectation of monetary reward, you're competing with their product. That is very much a problem.

I don't mean to disparage the SR3R effort, but you can't really think that it's okay to publish, even in a free way, something that is a direct competition with the copyright holder's current products and have them choose to turn a blind eye to your endeavor.

And you may get angry at Catalyst over that, but consider if Wiz Kids realized it was happening, and that the devs for SR knew about it (And how could they not considering), they may not be so happy with CGL just ignoring that property that they had to work so hard to get the ability to work with in the first place.

Like it or not, while SR3R may be a great fan based product you're not going to convince anyone who controls the property that it isn't going to cost them money.

My apologies if that is overly blunt.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Jul 20 2007, 12:04 PM

QUOTE (Demerzel @ Jul 20 2007, 01:54 AM)

you can't really think that it's okay to publish, even in a free way, something that is a direct competition with the copyright holder's current products and have them choose to turn a blind eye to your endeavor.

You can, actually, provided you comply with the relevant laws and agreements. Fortunately, WizKids has provided a standardized way to use, with their permission, some amount of Shadowrun content. Beyond that, it's all up to staying within the Fair Use affirmative defense. This expectation is reinforced by the fact that, while difficult to prove, a DMCA takedown notice sent in bad faith is actually perjury.

Ultimately, unless the moderators have been concealing something from us, there was no C&D or takedown notice received. The question for a poster to ask themselves is not "is this legal", but "does this make the forum staff nervous". Now, since Dumpshock almost certainly does not have Safe Harbour protection there are certainly grounds for them to be nervous in some cases, but that doesn't mean that a violation has to occur for them to take action.

~J

Not a lawyer, not legal advice