Games and fan art go together like mashed potatoes and gravy -- you just don't have one with out the other. But how would you feel if you found a legal disclaimer in your favorite game's website terms of service that claimed that any fan art you produce, regardless of your intentions, is owned by the game company just because you depicted the IP?
That's what Woody Hearn from GU Comics found inside of the Bioware Tems of Service on the Star Wars: The Old Republic website. The paragraph in question (found in section 7 of the terms) essentially states that all fan art derived from any intellectual property of LucasArts and/or Bioware is explicitly the property of LucasArts and/or Bioware. So that stormtrooper picture that you drew? Yeah, it belongs to LucasArts.
Hearn has already explicitly stated that GU Comics won't be featuring any more Star Wars: The Old Republic or other LucasArts / Bioware titles until the policy changes. While he is covered under the fair use law for satire, any other pieces drawn by other artists may not be.
As much as I was looking forward to this MMO, I have zero intention of doing another comic about it unless there is a change in their policies.
Sure GU's content is protected as satire/parody under the Fair Use exceptions to copyright law, but I'm never going to agree that they own my work.
And, I have no interest in supporting a game with such anti-community strings attached. So this is me officially telling Bioware/Lucas Arts to bite my crank.
They don't need to explicitly state it anyway. Fan art based on someone else's IP is almost certainly infringement of either a trade mark or copyright (except if it's humor/parody which is protected), so LucasArts is essentially just saying that they want to retain control. Fanfic/fan art has always skated the edge of legality - remember the pornographic EQ fanfic that Sony sent their legal team after as an example?
LucasArts is still not nice, but I think Woody is taking things a bit in the extreme. Try doing some WoW stuff that Blizzard doesn't like and see how fast you get in legal trouble...
The way that case law is on IP (especially copywrited and trademarked stuff), is if the owner of the copywrite/trademark doesn't take action to protect infringement, the courts will consider the trademark/copywrite abandoned, and fair game for anyone out there.
Correction Mr. President, I DID build this, and please give Lurker a hug, we wouldn't want to damage his self-esteem.
