So, when does copyright infringement rears its ugly head and Wizards or Hasbro puts a stop to anything that may be stepping on their toes?
Good question!
When you receive letter from their Attorney saying to stop what you are doing.
I’m not an attorney, but unless you are selling your modifications to their original game board and/or using those modifications for a profit business, then you are not infringing on a copyright. If you are using the mods for personal use and not profiting on it, then you’re fine. Hence why no one has probably received a letter/notification asking them to stop.
@BusaRider29 Exactly right; copyright law is intended to prevent commercial use; had to explain it to Kinkos/Staple’s staff 10X, that the difference in “use” is material.
@Harvard3x said in Copyright infringement:
@BusaRider29 Exactly right; copyright law is intended to prevent commercial use; had to explain it to Kinkos/Staple’s staff 10X, that the difference in “use” is material.
Harvard3x welcome to the forum! One suggestion though: please look at the age of a thread before replying to it. This one is over a year old.
I’m not an attorney either, and it’s usually a good idea to treat with healthy scepticism any information on the internet which starts with an “I’m not a lawyer” disclaimer…but for whatever it might be worth, here’s a cautionary note about the “copyright law is intended to prevent commercial use” argument. People or organizations who make non-commercial use of copyrighted material aren’t necessarily in the clear just because they’re not making any money. An illustrative example would be a small daycare centre which uses without authorization a picture of a Walt Disney animated character – say, Mickey Mouse – in its logo, and which receives a cease-and-desist notice from Disney’s attorneys. The notice isn’t necessarily sent because Disney thinks that the daycare centre is making money from Disney’s intellectual property, or because Disney thinks that Disney is somehow being deprived of revenue. The real point of the notice is that copyright owners (especially multi-billion-dollar international corporate giants like Disney) have a responsibility to protect their copyrighted property. Having Mickey Mouse copied by a few trivial daycare centres here in there isn’t the issue; the issue is that Disney has to put itself in the position of demonstrating that it’s serious about defending its copyrighted property…because if it doesn’t do so, it potentially weakens the legal case it might bring against non-trivial offenders, such as (for example) a company that starts selling millions of unauthorized Mickey Mouse dolls and lunch boxes and t-shirts. So while it’s true that money-making piracy is indeed the kind of commercial use that copyright law is intended to prevent, keep in mind that copyright holders can’t necessarily limit themselves to just going after the commercial pirates.
Here is WOTC policy…
