Copyright Clarification

[wildfire142]

Just checking something before I get started entering lots of data.

I'm about to start a campaign using a non OGL system and wanted to be sure before I started that sharing stuff via player editions won't get myself or Lone Wolf Development into trouble.

The system is Rolemaster and I want to share spell lists and other basic stuff with my players, but not the rest of the community.

I'm assuming this falls under fair use?

[Chemlak]

By our current understanding: yes.

That is, assuming you mean the realm you set up that your players will access. That is absolutely within the intended use of the product (how awful would roleplaying be if everyone had to buy a complete set of books to be able to play?).

Just don't share it with the community.

[Dark Lord Galen]

ditto to Chemlak's response and to add...... by definition it is considered "Fair Use"...
The author(s) intent, in this case a roleplay game conveys a "degree" of latitude in the sharing of information.

Another caveat or two, :
1>would be you are not profiting from it (ie financially, obviously you collectively "profit" from your groups participation). Now this, however doesn't imply you can scan images of those books in mass and post them for use by your players, even privately.
Which is why WOC (Wizards of the Coast) could certainly send the "IP Police" your way if you were to copy in mass the Character sheet or the Tokens located in the back of the 3.5edition PHB or DMG. Thankfully they "removed" their IP rights to those pages in mass with the restriction defined at the bottom of the page ("Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only"). They did not do so for ALL pages between the covers.

2>AND acknowledgement of the source material is required in most cases though acknowledgement is not implying that the IP owner can't still protest.


It is for this reason that LWD (ie Hero Lab / Realmworks) may not be contractually licensed to publish some items for a company yet can publish others... ie Piazo is a good example. (though Rob has posted elsewhere they are in constant negotiations with various companies to expand such support). Since LWD profits from the inclusion (and I assume their partners as a pass through licensing cost) they have to be a great deal more sensitive to the structure of any IP agreements they partner with.

In short, generally companies have opted not to pursue "fandom" (ie supporting literature, art, cartography, etc) that purchasers create, "Fandom" is based on their company IP, but because they realize that it is the very same people that are financing them, they don't often find it financially desirable to pursue such persons. In some excessive cases, it doesn't mean that they couldn't pursue. If they feel that the "fandom" were impacting them financially within their market.

See Here for more info>http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

[wildfire142]

Yes the intention is to only share a realm with a few players so they can access the material as if they had borrowed my books. No intention to make it available to the community as a whole

[rob]

Most RPG content is intended for disclosure to your players. As such, it would be very strange for a publisher to get upset about you doing exactly what the material was published for. And it would probably be very hard for a publisher to justify to a judge that you're in the wrong if you're doing exactly what the publisher intended for you to do with the material you legally purchased. Of course, this assumes that you are only sharing the content with a small group - your players.

In addition, the publisher would need to be notified that you are doing something wrong with their content so that they can get upset. And the publisher would need to be able to independently verify that you ARE misusing their content in order to get upset. This means that the material would need to be released to a wide audience, which you won't be doing.

As long as you're using the content in the spirit and manner in which it was created and sold to you, I can't see how you would run into any issues whatsoever.

[wildfire142]

Thanks Rob, that was my understanding as well but thought it best to get a clarification before I start doing lots of work on a realm that I might not have been able to share with my players.