Games Workshop on the Warpath

Well, this is exactly the reason that the German 40k movie, Damnatus, wound up being 'officially' canned by GW. German law states something along the lines of 'the creating artist retains full rights to his/her/their works' and that would have contravened British law and put GW into the aforementioned conundrum. End result: they had no choice but to put an official C&D on the movie makers (not that it stopped them, mind you, something I'm eternally grateful for...excellent flick), much to the disappointment of law-abiding fans everywhere.

Heh, if you really want to blame someone, place that blame squarely upon those wig-wearing yahoos in British Parliament for enacting such a silly and counter-productive law

I'm sure GW or ANY company needs to protect their IP.

But in the case (for example) of talkbloodbowl forum, It had that name FOR OVER 8 YEARS! (Unchallenged by the way. It's pretty easy to assume that in such case, a court would fall in favour of the users IF they had the time and money to endure a trial. GW lawyers were overconfident that nobody will try that against a company with more resources than god).

And lots of GW employees, creatives and "big fishes" posted at TBB too!

Now, IF they just "sanctioned" the site, and ask for a NOMINAL fee (like USD$1.00 a year) for the "privilege" of using their name. EVERYBODY will be happier.

The site RECOGNISES that GW OWNS the IP and is PAYING a fee.

GW RECOGNISES that the site is a fan-created effort, using their IP WITH PERMISSION.

And the fan community RECOGNISES that somebody in GW has MORE THAN 2 ACTIVE BRAIN CELLS.

Is that so DIFFICULT?

As far as GW's party line seems to read...

In a word, yes.

It's terribly unfortunate, but... *shrugs*

Just to poke my head in again, and post the opposite of my before. Being paranoid of IP isn't exactly new. Yes GW seems to be going more out of their way for it, Toho actually goes to much the same trouble with the Godzilla franchise. (proud supporter of devil's advocacy)

AND NOW...they asked Tom Anders to step down from the Blood Bowl Rules Committee...I'd bet they didn't ask nicely either.
http://www.wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9886 .
I find it increasingly difficult to refer to GW without using language that would make a sailor blush.

This whole thing confuses me as some of GW's IP would never be used or bought again in the extent it has if it didn't have the fan base talking about it.
As with any nerdy franchize there will always be a level of user created content, but that's a good thing.
I would think that it's when the user created content tries to take president over their 30-isch year's of background building that they get a little skitisch, as they are not only part of their own fan base but the creators of the whole thing.
(Think Uwe Boll, Think softcore ill directed T'n'A stunt shots of Leonantos in a bikini fighting back to back in an -illgotten alliance for survival resulting in eternal friendship and romance- with Grashkul thraka(or green guy with teeth prosthetics and tin armour whos a disilusioned cop something something) and The Emperor and Sigmar against an oncoming horde (read five) of undead slaneeshi tau-nids (stuck on obviously visible racks and wheeled by camera men) when they go on vacation to a cabin on an island and find the...Neuromomnimom buried many years ago by...Hardy Pottehart after he was defeated by Captain Pickard -lots of bleed in embittered flashbacks-)

But hasn't GW had a bunch of special viewings of fan made movies on gamesday and golden deamon?
(I'm pretty sure they previewed a BFG cruiser from damnatus in WD a bunch of years ago.)

On the other hand they want to make money (and yes GW minis are too expensive, they should be free at least to me.)

Blood Bowl will be NOTHING this days without the HARD WORK Galak (Tom Anders) so freely input into the rules and the game.

And Tom is one of the friendliest guys in the bussiness and is ALWAYS trying to help people enjoy the BB game, and searching for new sculptors to give them a start for their work (I should know, because I have one of my minis at sell in his web-store).

This is MORE THAN SHAME on GW.

But sadly, it is hardly surprising.

Only hope is that GW REALLY releases LRB 6.0 to the gaming community.

But with this move, probably not.

And without Galak, the chances of a new revision (7th ed) is reduced to zero.

After all that has happened in the last weeks I was convinced to stop buying GW stuff, but this...

Man, have all GW directors loose their minds?

Not to fuel this hellride with more hate but Scibor (@CMON) can't even advertise his work under their proper names anymore
They all have screwy names like "scifi warriors".
And this guy is doing everything right from style to scaling so why they don't just hire him and give him a fat paycheck for making them dirty rich on people returning to the game is beyond me.

I asked GW Legal about all of this and their response was:


Thank you for your email concerning the website www.boardgamegeek.com and other fansites.



We understand that you are unhappy about the decision by the people running www.boardgamegeek.com to remove all Games Workshop copyrighted material from their site.



Unlike many companies, Games Workshop usually only stops people from using our intellectual property if we must do so in order to protect it (provided that use is by and for hobbyists). For example, the law requires us to protect our trademarks in certain ways - and if we do not - we might lose them. As you can imagine, we do not want to lose our trademarks as we would no longer be able to create the great miniatures and tabletop hobby wargames that we pride ourselves on!

Guidance has been available for our fans for many years in our Intellectual Property Policy that can be found on the legal pages of our website http://legal.games-workshop.com This sets out how our hobbyists can use our intellectual property in such a way that Games Workshop is not likely to object. Within the policy there are some simple rules, such as:


1) Do not use Games Workshop’s intellectual property in relation to any commercial activity; and

2) Do not screenscrape any content from official websites.


There are also a number of more general guidelines, setting out the spirit of the policy. If a fan follows the policy in spirit and letter, then it is highly unlikely that Games Workshop will take any action to prevent their use of Games Workshop’s IP.



Games Workshop has not specifically targeted any particular website but instead is taking a consistent approach to all sites that we are aware of that are using our IP without our permission.



We have written to the owners or administrators of these sites detailing our concerns. In our letters, we gave the parties infringing our rights various options as to how they could address our concerns. At no time did Games Workshop demand that any website close down. At the same time, the people who run fansites, also need to take appropriate action to ensure that they and their users do not infringe Games Workshop’s IP rights. We will continue to work with the relevant parties to ensure that the rights are protected at the same time as our hobbyists being able to make the most of the games they enjoy.



We trust that this clarifies the situation.


Group Legal Department
Games Workshop Group PLC

That was rather nicely put...can't find much to object to in that statement.

Looks like that storm in a teacup turned out to be just that. To me it looks like GW are not being particularly unreasonable in protecting their continued existence as a company. Most of the fansites that closed down could have done something constructive but the owners chose not to. The GW haters jumped on the bandwagon and have stirred up a lot of bad feeling, unnecessarily in my view.

WarbossKurgan wrote:

The GW haters jumped on the bandwagon and have stirred up a lot of bad feeling, unnecessarily in my view.

It can be true to SOME extent.

But kicking Tom Anders has no excuses.

And as I have said before, A NOMINAL FEE for some sites like TalkBloodBowl would prove a much, much smarter move.

As for the "answer" playtable received, The same EXACT letter has been posted at BGG and other places for several weeks now.

It's a STANDARD LEGAL RESPONSE from GW lawyers, so no surprises here.

Admittedly, GW DIDN'T ask BGG to REMOVE ALL the fan created documents, but confronted with the menace of trial against a company as big as GW, and with the limited amount of time GW provided, the guys at BGG just DIDN'T HAVE THE TIME, NOR THE HUMAN RESOURCES to review file by file, and just REMOVED anything that even "smells" as something to do with GW.

Kicking their fan base again.

I have said this before, GW has EVERY RIGHT to protect their IP, but there are ways to do it.

Kicking Tom Anders is not one IMO.

But then, that's just my opinion.