Copyright. :(

[Anderas]

I was spending the last two evenings with my old RPG books. Cutting, straigthening, reworking, upsampling, resharpening, color changing to fit with HQ; until i had 180 pictures in sufficient high resolution of diverse ancient or less ancient weapons. There were alone 10 swords, 14 sabres, 10 shields.... and so on. Not that i would ever make so many equipment cards, but as i was so deep in the topic, i couldn't just stop half the way, could I?

Then i was seeing that Ulisses apparently bought the rights of that old RPG some years ago ("Das schwarze Auge"); and I asked if I may use their art for my Heroquest cards.

The answer: Yes i may reuse them even if i wanted to have my cards professionally printed, no issue with that. But I am not allowed to share my work on the net except specifically for "Das schwarze Auge" content; for example on a fan page for "Das schwarze Auge" it would be allowed and I could reuse it. Thanks a lot and have a nice day.

So what do i do now? Does anybody here know where fair use starts and ends and how much i have to change on each picture so that my own creativity makes the work "my" work? Is it sufficient if I headline my equipment card thread with "Black Eye Equipment" or would i need an RPG website to be allowed? (in that case i rather search for other pictures in the net, to be honest!)

[Count Mohawk]

Let me point out that a couple of the images in the back of the Artchives here are basically black-and-white versions of MTG card art. And the Inn certainly does not control the rights to the original artwork from HeroQuest either.

Personally, I wouldn't have asked them if you can do XYZ with their artwork, considering you wouldn't suddenly stop wanting to work with their artwork just because they say you can't. Also, if the artwork in its original form is available online somewhere already, what can they really do to stop its further dissemination? Information wants to be free. Unfortunately, fair use is a United States concept, so my usual explanation of the four factors of fair use are moot for you Euro folk. If you live in Germany, you may not have any fair use rights at all, which is a travesty. Some other parts of Europe have a similar but less powerful concept called "fair dealing", about which I know very little. So if you think there's an actual danger from some rabid attack lawyers, there's not much you can do to defend yourself if they actually go that far.

That said, *EFF* copyright. I'd post 'em anyway.

[Goblin-King]

Copyright is never an easy subject... That being said...
Basically you are never allowed to use other people's works in original or altered form without expressed permission. It's as simple as that.
I'd say Ulisses is extremely generous in allowing you to do so much with their works. I'd even say at this point their clause of only sharing on DSA-specific is almost a little silly. But their work, their rules...
I guess they want you to post them on a DSA webpage. Then you could link to THAT homepage from this forum. It's a bit convoluted, but if that's what it takes...

Fair use, to the best of my judgement won't come close to applying here...
It doesn't ever allow anybody to use a work for something like this.
Fair use is the ability to acquire limited rights to use a work without permission in certain situations.
Examples could be news reporting, criticism, education or research.

But yeah, on the internet piracy is hard to prevent. They'll never stop music and movie piracy until they make a service that's good enough for people to not bother with illegal downloads.
They are getting closer with stuff like netflix and spotify, but not quite there yet.
These cards you are making will probably fly under the radar, so I wouldn't worry regardless.

[FainFlynn]

Meh, you aren't selling anything so I say post it.

[Goblin-King]

Meh, you aren't selling anything so I say post it.

That is irrelevant in the eyes of the law.
Giving credit/citing your sources doesn't make theft legal either.
There may exist some exceptions if it's strictly for private use - that means no sharing...

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but a whole lot of people seem to think non-profit theft and giving credit is actually making it legal. I just want to point out it doesn't.

[FainFlynn]

Understood, but what damages can result??

[Count Mohawk]

Damages in copyright cases that actually reach a conclusion tend to be statutory and far higher than the actual monetary harm caused by the infringement. The most striking example I can think of in US case history is that of Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas-Rasset, in which the plaintiffs exacted increasingly high statutory damages for copyright infringement against a single person who file-shared 24 songs. The final amount assessed was $222,000, or $9,250 per song, although the plaintiffs argued multiple times for the damages to be increased still further (at one point the award value was a staggering $1.92 million, which was so high that the sitting judge knocked it down to just $54,000 on the principle of it). Of course, even $222,000 was quite sufficient to force Thomas-Rasset to declare bankruptcy.

However, remember also that to respect copyright is to respect the people who make signs like these:

And they wonder why piracy still exists. Honestly, I could harp on the subject for hours, but I don't want drathe to add copyright to the list of topics "that cause friction among passionate members", so I'll leave it at that.

[Baylor_OgreBane]

Unfortunately I agree with Goblin-King on this one. The quagmire of copy right law on the net is exacerbated by all the different countries having different laws on the subject.
I am assuming that you have altered the images in Photoshop by playing around with the levels and adding filters. If that is so then technically it is still the original artists image just altered in the eyes of the law. If you Drew over the top of the image and added in a few details of your own, then it is theory your image taken from reference, but there would have to be considerable differences for it to be consider legal and not plagiarized. But doing it that way and not selling the images or obtaining profit from them will seed you better in UK copyright law.
Your best bet to do it would be to move to China where the phrase "copyright infringement" doesn't seem to exist.
The irony is that rather than approaching the company that owns the copyright, approaching the artists might have been more useful.

[Showdown35]

The irony is that rather than approaching the company that owns the copyright, approaching the artists might have been more useful.

On that note, 2 years ago I actually contacted a bunch of artists asking if I could use their art on some Dominion fan cards I had made. I asked if I could use the art for my own personal use, and possibly share the images on a fan forum, with no monetary gain whatsoever.
I only had two artists respond, I still have the old emails from the artists, here's what they said:

ARTIST 1:
"Officially, I can neither give nor deny permission to you to use artwork owned by others. Anything done for Wizards of the Coast, for example, belongs to them.

Artwork to which I own copyright is the portfolio on which my retirement will be based, so I'm not willing to give artwork away, especially if it's likely to be cropped or otherwise altered. That opens the door to loss of copyright through repeated usage downstream. The internet has med copyright protection a really slippery slope. I hope you'll understand."

ARTIST 2:
"Thanks for the message. The thing is that most of the images on my website I do not own the rights to, as they were done for clients. I'm not sure which particular images you were thinking of using? Besides, I'm not sure if I like the idea of my images being slapped on cards randomly, without my imput and presented to the public in that way. Well, it's cool if you want to use it for personal use - I'm just a little concerned that if you use an image that's from let's say Halo 4, I (and you) might get in a bit of a trouble. I'll tell you what - let me know what particular images you want to use and I'll let you know if they are mine or not. Cool?"

[Baylor_OgreBane]

The irony is that rather than approaching the company that owns the copyright, approaching the artists might have been more useful.

On that note, last year I actually contacted a bunch of artists asking if I could use their art on some Dominion fan cards I had made. I asked if I could use the art for my own personal use, and possibly share the images on a fan forum, with no monetary gain whatsoever.
I only had three artists respond:
One said since it was his work, he would want to see anything I did with the images first (cropping, editing, etc.), before he would approve me sharing them.
The other two said they can't answer me because they didn't have the rights to their work. They said I would have to go through the copyright owners (one being Wizards of the Coast), which I did not follow up on...

Yeah most are busy people and all work in a sense is very personal, so wanting to see what people did with it I would understand. Also if you were asking for specific images then it would be a copyright owner issue.
That being said there are artist willing to help, that might show you images from their sketch books for certain pieces or might have the odd pic they could never sell. Really it is a case of talking to them rather than approaching them with an agenda. You can But try!