Lord Libidan wrote:johloh wrote:I have contact info of the author of the geekcraft book, and am actually good friends with a editor at the company that published that same book. So if we started to get some material together I could schedule out a meeting possibly.
I think spinuntilyoufall used to be a cpoyright person, so we'll ask her what we can/can't do, and go from there?
It's definitely worth talking to an editor about as they're going to know more about it than I do. As far as I know, though we are pretty much out of luck on being able to use anything with a video game character in it:
The legal status of fan made art in America may be tricky due to the vagaries of the United States Copyright Act. Generally, the right to reproduce and display pieces of artwork is controlled by the original author or artist under 17 U.S.C. § 106. However, fan art using settings and characters from a previously created work could be considered a derivative work, which would place control of the copyright with the owner of that original work. Display and distribution of fan art that would be considered a derivative work would be unlawful.
However, American copyright law allows for the production, display and distribution of derivative works if they fall under a fair use exemption, 17 U.S.C. § 107. A court would look at all relevant facts and circumstances to determine whether a particular use qualifies as fair use; a multi-pronged rubric for this decision involves evaluating the amount and substantiality of the original appropriated, the transformative nature of the derivative work, whether the derivative work was done for educational or noncommercial use, and the economic effect that the derivative work imposes on the copyright holder's ability to make and exploit their own derivative works. None of these factors is alone dispositive.
American courts also typically grant broad protection to parody, and some fan art may fall into this category. This has not explicitly been adjudicated with respect to fan art, however. Moreover, while parody is typically afforded protection under § 107, a court must engage in a fact-intensive, case-specific inquiry for each work.
So, as far as something like this site goes, the worst that would happen would be a cease and desist letter - and really we're covered under fair use, since it's not for sale. But once you get into a commercially available book it all gets a bit mushier... Each publisher would need to be contacted for permission to use their characters in a book. It may be worth seeing if we could get permission from some - I don't see Nintendo giving permission, but I'll bet we could get it from some of the smaller studios...
