[FC-discuss] Anime fangames and fair use

[Adi Kamdar]

If I've learned anything about fair use, it's that you can't tell for sure.
Until you've been taken to court.

Basically, if it's anything like fan fiction, it depends on how similar it
is to the original.

I hate using "it depends."

-Adi


On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Ryan Prior <ryanprior at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all. I've long been a member the community built around the BYOND
> ("Build Your Own Net Dream", http://www.byond.com) software, which is most
> famous for its large and thriving sub-community built around anime
> fan-games. There has been years worth of controversy over the status of
> fan-games and their developers by the web site's staff and BYOND developers:
> do we try to drive the anime developers & fans away because they very rarely
> get permission from the copyright owners to use the IP related to Naruto,
> Dragonball, etc; or do we take a laissez-faire approach and let developers
> deal with IP issues themselves? Lately the community leaders have taken the
> second approach, but in the past few weeks a few forum moderators and
> longtime community members have been speaking out, saying that they want to
> diminish the connection between BYOND and copyright abuse.
>
> What I'd like to hear from any of you who are in the know, is what would
> constitute fair use of copyright when it comes to fan games. If the game
> makers are using in fan-games which are made freely available on the
> Internet graphical sprites, names, etc which are likenesses of materials
> that are copyrighted and/or trademarked by others, but not using any actual
> TV footage or sprites from published games, then is that usage likely to be
> fair?
>
> Thanks,
> Ryan
>
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