Peacekeeper_b said:

Jim Hawkins' sense of right and wrong was!

Sinister, I think most(all) of us are disappointed at the situation too and aren't reiterating the legal perspective to keep our fellow gamers down or depressed. People just have different ways of reacting and expressing it.

Also its prudent to call for calm and to take a dispassionate perspective, as FFG have expressed that they are looking for a solution and it is important to note this may take time. What makes me hopeful is FFG is not GW and has shown a different approach to these issues in the past.

If a sophisticated solution like an official card application is arrived upon it may take a good while to see the result. Once a solution is available you can bet we'll all be keen to use your custom cards and will love ya for it. In fact in the interim I'd love to see plain text based versions of your cards posted to the forum so we can discuss and tweak ideas and mock up our own cards at home from the basic text.

Cheers D.

Here's the worst case scenario. GW doesn't feel that FFG can or will protect GW's IP adequately and yanks the license. Whoops, no more WFRP. I'd rather not see the fan community do anything that jeopardizes FFG's ability to continue to produce and support this game. I'm sure that the guidelines they are working on will need to be reviewed and rewritten a few times to get blessed by GW. Patience is required rather than outrage.

mac40k said:

"Patience is required rather than outrage."

waoh. That IS such a great signature quote. I'll certainly use it in my next game with some cool wiseman. (... and I do agree with you)

willmanx said:

And then the wiseman should go to full reckless and attack any PC that disagrees with him.

sure, let's what and see what FFG does. Let's be reasonable. I agree.

I paid good money for this game, so as long as I'm not breaking any forum rules, I'll use the forums to give honest feedback to a company as a customer both good and bad. I believe FFG is a great company and will fix this.

If any company would do something as irrational and ill concieved as removing a license because its players had negative feedback, I'd consider it my duty to save countless gamers from such a company before they invested. The fact that there is even this fear....says volumes about a certain company.

So for everyone sake's I've moved my stance meter to neutral. Thank you very much, now I won't hit very often.

Definately no outrage .... or even suprise ... from where I stand. After seeing the exceptional quality of Hurlanc's fan made utility it was only a matter of time before it was pulled and a decision / edict had to be made. The quality and scope of this project was truely breath taking in it's potential to carry the game forward - but also to re-create existing content already released by FFG (illeagal and highly damaging to the future of our beloved Warhammer). We all know that as players and GM's we create more material for our needs than FFG will ever be able to accomplish - there are just simply more of us out here than the writing team at FFG - and we live this every time we play, adapting to situations and particular needs.

I have to say that I am on FFG's side on this one - although we all desperately want a similar LEGAL utility. The product and profitability needs to be protected! As I have already said I would pay for such a tool - whether a one off fee or subscription based. I believe it is marketable for FFG to do this!

With all our views and desires it would be nice to reach some compromise - our desires as fans and players and FFG's need to protect itself as a viable company.

As a side note I would like to see an official version but with a great big credit saying something along the lines of "concept originally developed by ...."

I definately do not think there should be any grievance with FFG, or GW for that matter, and we should wait for their guidelines and abide by them - however painful that may be.

alp said:

Again I can't think of another game company that's more obsessed with it's IP than GW. WotC services millions of players. They make all their art available for use. Most all rpg companies do this. I can see a having a grievance with them. Law is certainly a factor but so is standards and practices, which aren't in keeping with the general standard and practices within the hobby.

Am I the only person on the internet who's actually researched why GW does stuff like this? I looked it up a couple of months ago when they started sending swarms of C&D letters because I decided to learn instead of frothing at the mouth about how they hate their customers like most folk I'd seen posting about it.

Games Workshop is a British company. Their copyrights, intellectual property, and trademarks are registered under UK law, which does NOT have "Fair Use". The closest approximation it has is something called "Fair Dealing", which pretty much covers professional reviews, academic research, and nothing else.

Thus, they have to protect their IP with a degree of vehemence that an American company would not have to resort to. Strange Eons hasn't been shut down because Lovecraft's copyrights are in the USA, and therefore, whoever FFG got the license from is bound by US copyright law and its provisions for fair use.

If Games Workshop does not rabidly attack people who make things that even remotely look like they're infringing the IP, some British judge can rule that they didn't do enough to protect it, which means the company effectively ceases to exist, given that their entire business is based around that IP.

EDIT: Sinister, WotC and White Wolf were both US companies. TSR was a US company. Hasbro is a US company. White Wolf got bought by an Icelandic company, so the laws get a bit weird there, but I'm pretty sure CCP still has them using US copyrights. US copyright law is a hell of a lot less restrictive than what Games Workshop faces.

Lyinar said:

Is this true? or are you just a GW fanboi? Do you have any links for me to investigate your allegations? I find it hard to believe that GW will lose ownership because some fans are making cards of a product they lisence to another company. I know international laws and laws between countries can be tricky. Your arguments are good, but can british copyright laws dictate a company`s policy?

You might of course be right, I have read about many strange laws, unfortunately common sense are not required in a court. btw did you know that Britain have no constitution?

Until proven, GWs stocks are rapidly plummeting in my values.

We actually do have a constitution, it's just not written down in a single document. It's more amorphous and easier to bend.

Don't know squit about copyright laws other than once a playwright been dead for fifty years their works are fair game (there are exceptions to this).

The bit I always find amusing about GW and IP is that their entire mythos is derivative.

Okay, I've looked up UK Copyright Law and gotten a fairly large amount of information on it. Did so when I first researched it, and did it again just now to see if I could find definitive answers on that.

I know it's possible to lose IP rights: trademarks and patents can both be lost by not defending them adequately. Copyright itself, in the specific sense instead of the umbrella term it's also come to be used as for all intellectual property, is protected for specific time periods instead of being renewed, like trademarks. Registered trademarks have to be continually maintained and defended, or they can be removed from the register. This is where GW's vehemence comes in, as the UK laws that deal with copyright, trademarks, patents, etc. are more restrictive in both directions than in the US. They aren't just exercising the rights given to them by the laws their trademarks are registered under, they're obligated to do so under penalty of losing the trademarks.

EDIT: Also, the information is all there on Wikipedia, with sources cited. Try searching in there for "Trademark", "Fair Use", "Fair Dealing", and "UK Copyright Law".

Bertolac said:

Always gives me a chuckle, too. However, they got away with it because the originators of the ideas failed to defend their own IP...

Cheers

Sparrow

This is a bad move on FFG and GW's part.

Lyinar said:

thanks for sharing your information. I think it's fair and informative to know that British laws are harsher than american laws.

Still if that's the case maybe they should have a warning on the box that says "no fan made content"

www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2010/01/08/32643#comments

rpg.geekdo.com/thread/468517/gw-cease-and-desist-letters

There's a good conversation there as well.

Pulling GW fan material from websites has been happening all over. boardgamegeek posted a cease and desist letter from GW. this has nothing to do with FFG. i don't really buy the "restrictions in UK are different" thing. maybe they are, I just don't care. I have zero sympathy for GW. GW is a hostile company, they are the same guys who bought the rights from TSR to make D&D minis but didn't make them. They just wanted to screw TSR. its capitalism. I think people should keep doing what their doing and just not worry about not being able to upload it to FFG. It is really not FFGs fault. The best thing that could happen is that GW tanks and FFG gets permanent publishing rights for the RPG line. I vote for never buying any GW minis but buying every good WFRP 3ed product that comes out. what else can you do?

we could send a bunch of hate mail to GW, instead of complaining about FFG who have never been anything but cool. I mean really. I had a question about running eye for an eye and Dave Allen, the guy who wrote it (I think), answered personally. How awesome is that?

Bindlespin said:

GW is a hostile company, they are the same guys who bought the rights from TSR to make D&D minis but didn't make them. They just wanted to screw TSR. its capitalism.

I guess I must have imagined buying these boxed sets, and several blisters packs from this range. I can understand, even sympathize with, a certain animosity towards GW, but unless you're referring to a different range of figures, I can assure you that these models were in production and readily available for sale in the UK and the US.

Sinister said:

You may not care about the artwork, but IP law does, both in the US and UK. If you start using GW artwork online - whether for profit or not - GW can lose their claim to it. GW have to be seen to be defending their IP.

Copyright and IP laws are complex and weird. Simply reading the laws (as some have done here) isn't enough - you have to actually understand how they are implemented. Some elements of IP law are non-intuitive from the reading and might surprise you.

As for WotC protecting their IP and copyright - they do it all the time. I'm surprised how much I'm seeing WotC been used here as an example of a company that is free with its IP - it's not. They have, of course, released the OGL and GSL, but they very carefully monitor the use of both and they protect their IP with a vengeance. You couldn't put up a free websupplement, for example, that contained artwork from WotC books. Hasbro lawyers would have a C&D letter in your mailbox by the end of the week. And they are right to do so - because if they don't, they lose their artwork.

That said, obviously fan-material can be beneficial to the game. Fan-material that threatens the company is not. FFG have stated that they are going to release some more info on how you can do so in a way that doesn't threaten their licence with GW. How about we wait and see what happens?

Bindlespin said:

I don't really buy the restrictions in the UK are different either. If it were a case of protecting copyright, GW would have lost the rights to WHFRP YEARS ago when the system was basically not being published but TONS of fan content WAS being made available online...and GW...didn't pursue them...using that as precedent would be EASY to basically say they didn't really defend it then, it was public, and hence they lost the rights...IF it were as someone has been stating.

Obviously, GW DIDN'T lose the rights to WHFRP and it still is their IP today. I think there's new management at GW that has taken a heightened stance towards copyright and protection rackets for their IP and we are seeing the results of their rampage. Probably something similar to the T$R days of the mid 90s where TSR sued any and everyone for their D&D IP. Of course with how TSR over extended themselves and the bad relations, it didn't work out too well for TSR, but we'll see how this works out for GW.

I'm not too particularly dismayed at the loss of the stuff thus far for WHFRP, I think the guys with Bloodbowl have a LOT MORE to whine about to tell the truth. I think it will lose GW sales, as prospective people who have played the system, and have a curiousity will not be able to really explore it as easily, hence those who MAY have gotten a greater interest in the system will never develope the interest they may have from gazing over fan made materials, as well as upsetting a few fans (as seen here in this thread alone, much less other threads), but who ever is in charge of GW's legal and Human relations department as well as publicity has seemed to have made a decision in regards to many fan made items over the past year. GW has always been rather protective of certain elements of their IP, it seems that they've shifted it up to a MUCH higher gear recently though.

However, if you enjoy WHFRP and want to see it prosper the best you could do is probably do as suggested above and buy every good WHFRP product that comes out, and try to introduce others to the system.

@Cronevald: zing. ???

The aggressive policies seem to date from the mid-eighties when Citadel Miniatures bought out Games Workshop. Different outlooks on corporate positioning took over and profit became the goal (prior to this GW were very much a hobbyist's company). They go through phases of letting things go (such as Bloodbowl sites and living rules, etc.) and then have purges. Maybe it's because they're a market leader that they think they're vulnerable to being caught up if they let things slip.

What always make me smile is the fact that I'm constantly reading on forums how GW is being foolish and will surely lose their customers if they continue acting in this way, and yet they are still going strong 35 years after the creation of the company. They clearly feel that they need to act like this (although I'm sure there's a middle ground somewhere), and it's an approach which has worked so far.

It still feels crappy though.

@ cronevald: they stopped distribution in the US and there were some major re-negotiations that happened, all of which I read about in somebodies blog that I can't remember anymore. none of which is important, what is important is that GW alienates its fans. just read the "Dear Games Workshop" thread on boardgamegeek. my point was that this has nothing to do with ffg and everything to do with GW. typing in chinese just makes question marks for some reason.

@Greylord: thanks for the support. by the way, i think the Games Workshop up here at the mall of georgia closed down. i walked past where I thought it was the other day and it was a weird UGA paraphenelia store. i checked the store locator and couldn't find it.

Deleted because I can't edit my post properly. I tried to repost below, but I just can't figure out how to get this forum software to understand quotes. I'd appreciate it if someone could fix it for me. I dare not touch it anymore.