[FC-discuss] Anime fangames and fair use

[Kevin Driscoll]

Hi Ryan,

I am not a lawyer but I am a gamer. One community of indie developers
you might like to observe is the Japanese doujinshi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Djin_soft

Many of doujin games are sold on CD-Rs alongside fan art and fan-made
manga at shows like Comiket and small comic. From the little that I
know, some use only original material while some borrow from existing
anime/manga.

Doujin productions are an essential part of the Japanese anime/manga
ecology. Ian Condry at MIT is a good person to ask about these issues:
http://web.mit.edu/condry/www/

This group produces one of the most popular series in the
English-speaking world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Shanghai_Alice


Kevin


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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