The Heavy Hand of Games Workshop - IP Rights

[HollowHills]

Intellectual Property Guidelines

For those that haven't seen GW is now banning fansites from reposting their material, making fan films or discussing stats and rules.

So websites like Goonhammer won't be able to do battletome reviews where they talk about or repost unit profiles from books. 

Likewise fan films on YouTube will cease to exist.

This seems incredibly heavy handed to me given how beneficial these fan sites and fan films have been to supporting and growing the warhammer community. 

 

[yukishiro1]

Is that actually new? It reads like pretty standard GW-speak. And it obviously has no legal authority, GW can tell you what they do or do not "permit" as much as they want to, it's the law that determines what is legal and what isn't. Those guidelines mean absolutely nothing unless GW actually goes after supposed "violators." And they'd have to be literally dumber than a box of rocks to go after the plethora of sites and youtube channels that actively boost their sales. I mean they send review copies of their books to these people, why would they be doing that while also trying to shut them down? There's the guy who gets free review copies from GW and literally reads each one page by page on a video so you can read the text on every page if you want to. He's not some random dude, he's somebody who gets free review copies. 

Edited July 21, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Grimrock]

25 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

Is that actually new? It reads like pretty standard GW-speak. And it obviously has no legal authority, GW can tell you what they do or do not "permit" as much as they want to, it's the law that determines what is legal and what isn't. Those guidelines mean absolutely nothing unless GW actually goes after supposed "violators." And they'd have to be literally dumber than a box of rocks to go after the plethora of sites and youtube channels that actively boost their sales. I mean they send review copies of their books to these people, why would they be doing that while also trying to shut them down? There's the guy who gets free review copies from GW and literally reads each one page by page on a video so you can read the text on every page if you want to. He's not some random dude, he's somebody who gets free review copies. 

I'm assuming it means that any reviewer that shows the book and discusses it will no longer be receiving those free copies, so the 'Man reads book' videos that come out on pre-order day will no longer be happening. It would stand to reason that if the channels want to continue to get those free early copies (so they can do a pre-order day battle report for example), then they will need to stop showing the book off page for page or discussing stats before the release. Personally I think that would be thoroughly unfortunate considering how incredibly helpful those videos have been for planning purchases or deciding whether or not to invest in an army, but maybe GW thinks they'll get more sales if the customer has no idea what they're pre-ordering. 

[yukishiro1]

So I looked into this a little more, as far as I can tell the only real change they made was to the bit outright banning fan films, which is obviously in response to their new Warhammer+ boondoggle service. I wouldn't worry that this shows any intention to do anything other than to ban fan animations, it's just about squelching the competition, which they have already done anyway by coming at all the successful animation producers and carrot/sticking them into signing up with GW. 

The other stuff was pretty much in there before and not enforced, I wouldn't necessarily assume they're about to start enforcing it now when they haven't been before. They were sending "guy reads book" guy free review copies of stuff as lately as GHB2021, it'd be pretty weird if they were ok with him reading that on channel two weeks ago but are now completely doing a 180. 

Edited July 21, 2021 by yukishiro1

[stratigo]

32 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

Is that actually new? It reads like pretty standard GW-speak. And it obviously has no legal authority, GW can tell you what they do or do not "permit" as much as they want to, it's the law that determines what is legal and what isn't. Those guidelines mean absolutely nothing unless GW actually goes after supposed "violators." And they'd have to be literally dumber than a box of rocks to go after the plethora of sites and youtube channels that actively boost their sales. I mean they send review copies of their books to these people, why would they be doing that while also trying to shut them down? There's the guy who gets free review copies from GW and literally reads each one page by page on a video so you can read the text on every page if you want to. He's not some random dude, he's somebody who gets free review copies. 

It REALLY isn't the law that decides anything.

 

For hosted videos, the hosts will decide everything. That means Youtube, who will side with the corporations.

 

The trick is ultimately GW is a billion dollar company. People doing videos, ESPECIALLY as their career, might have a few ten thousand in their savings account. Maybe even a hundred or so if they got themselves a nice inheretence. And a lot to all of that will go away if you decide to fight over fair use in court.

[yukishiro1]

Of course they can put pressure on youtube. But that's my point: they'd have to actually start doing that. We already know they were doing that to animation creators, and the change to the terms to purport to completely ban fan animations is in line with that. But there's no reason to think from this that they're going to start doing it with anyone else. 

I mean maybe I'm wrong and they are going to take this chance to suddenly start enforcing all these things against their own youtube partners they send free review copies to. But even for GW that'd be a bizarre and stupid u-turn, so I'm not going to assume they're going to just because they changed some text: re animations to try to promote Warhammer+. 

[Beliman]

54 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

Intellectual Property Guidelines

Not a big deal. It's exactly what other companies are using to defend their own IP. They still need to take the first step and those guidelines are used to draw the red line.

Btw, @No_Tables (war40k fan that directed a fanmade 40k series) was offered to work for GW, but he rejected (he had his own reasons). He can still work on his own 40k project but  cannot use it to earn money. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

16 hours ago, Grimrock said:

I'm assuming it means that any reviewer that shows the book and discusses it will no longer be receiving those free copies, so the 'Man reads book' videos that come out on pre-order day will no longer be happening.

I will be surprised if that actually happens, because man reads book has definitely been doing his reviews in his style for a long time and still continued to receive advance copies from GW. Of course there could be a change in policy now, but it would mean that they suddenly decided to shift from enabling this type of review/preview to trying to shut it down.

[Golub87]

This is basically setting the stage for WH+ nonsense.

And yes, it is up to the hosts and yes, a billion $ company can put pressure on YT that small authors can't fight.

Like in the example of the way that the lack of digital releases has hurt customers with impaired vision, GW has proven time and again that they are willing to ****** over the customer for profit. To be fair, this is like any other company, but GW has a position of commanding near-monopoly on the market, as well as unreasonable brand loyalty, stemming from a mixture of sunk cost fallacy and community "leaders", who basically work for them in shielding the company from criticism under the guise of "protecting the community from negativity".

[HollowHills]

15 minutes ago, Golub87 said:

This is basically setting the stage for WH+ nonsense.

And yes, it is up to the hosts and yes, a billion $ company can put pressure on YT that small authors can't fight.

Like in the example of the way that the lack of digital releases has hurt customers with impaired vision, GW has proven time and again that they are willing to ****** over the customer for profit. To be fair, this is like any other company, but GW has a position of commanding near-monopoly on the market, as well as unreasonable brand loyalty, stemming from a mixture of sunk cost fallacy and community "leaders", who basically work for them in shielding the company from criticism under the guise of "protecting the community from negativity".

100% agree. Why do you think this site prevents posting leaks or sharing access to pirate materials? It's because the owner has a very close relationship with Games Workshop. 

People might say it's not that big a deal, but the content creators who made fan films etc got a start at doing what they do because there was some freedom here. Now that's gone.

[RuneBrush]

In truth, the IP rules hadn't been updated properly for some time, so it doesn't surprise me that we've seen some updates, especially seeing that we now have Warhammer+ on the horizon.  It's split into two sections - guidelines and then infringements.

My own interpretation is that GW is trying to ensure that people aren't profiteering off their IP - something that is actually pretty reasonable if we're honest.  The new guidelines also now protect them from somebody creating a Warhammer fan site / YouTube channel and basically using it to slate GW or as a platform to push oddball political agendas.  I also think this may have been influenced by the some YouTube videos about that basically spoiled every page of the AoS3 releases in their preview videos.

For me the slightly worrying bit is that the guidelines prevent the use of imagery to be used basically for anything - want to use the AoS logo on a cheat sheet?  Nope, not allowed.  Want to use a really cool image as a backdrop on your computer?  Nope can't do that either.  These guidelines wouldn't be as worrying if there were some kind of "fan pack" you could download which included logos and other resources to use, but we don't have that.  The other item that to my eyes is basically impractical is that one Infringement is unauthorised use of GW's trademarks - let's consider that and remember that Warhammer and Age of Sigmar are registered trademarks 🤔

However in reality the proof of the pudding is going to be seeing how GW actually applies these new IP rights.  With luck they'll continue to take a light handed approach on the whole, but the new rules will give them a bit of additional clout on the odd occasion they need to bring the legal big guns in.  From the perspective of channels doing reviews, I don't think anybody who's been given a review copy will have too much to worry about.  Reviewers in general may need to be more careful with what they show - a review of a book that means the viewer doesn't need to purchase the product may well be frowned upon.

[Beliman]

52 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

People might say it's not that big a deal, but the content creators who made fan films etc got a start at doing what they do because there was some freedom here. Now that's gone.

Do you have a source about that? I'm really interested.

I've never saw any Warhammer IP's guidelines for "personal and/or comercial use", and it's something I'm dealing every day (marketing and designer here!). That's why I'm asking.

[HollowHills]

24 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Do you have a source about that? I'm really interested.

I've never saw any Warhammer IP's guidelines for "personal and/or comercial use", and it's something I'm dealing every day (marketing and designer here!). That's why I'm asking.

I suppose it's more the question of intent. Previously there was no mention of fan films, now there specifically is a section banning them. With wh+ that indicates a new level of intent on their part to prevent these.

[Clan's Cynic]

It'll be interesting to see what happens to battle report Youtube channels now, whether they'll keep them sweet as a form of continued free advertising, 'permit' them silently but yank their free stuff or actively push to get them taken down because they want to funnel people to Warhammer+ the same way they are with animations.

[Sarouan]

3 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

I suppose it's more the question of intent. Previously there was no mention of fan films, now there specifically is a section banning them. With wh+ that indicates a new level of intent on their part to prevent these.

Most people doing 40k animation videos do have a patreon. So there is a renumeration intent...and it's exactly what GW is targetting in their IP guidelines.

If people do it with no ad money / patreon, they won't be where the hammer hits. But as usual, a particular side of people not liking GW no matter what they do wants to use that as the "proof" GW wants to crush everything, including the fans not doing this for money.

Not anything really new, just an update to be clearer and include some recent stuff that will incluse their Warhammer TV+. Same old debate about IP and the need or not of its very existence.

[PrimeElectrid]

> not post or display rules or stats copied from from any official Games Workshop material

top kek

So can we assume that GW have initiated an IP infringement suit against Facehammer for splurging the entire contents of the GHB21 on their live stream? 🤔

 

[Reinholt]

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in UK law, but much of this is transparently unenforceable under US law and in many US states would lead to GW having to shell out $ to anyone they sued thanks to how our anti-SLAPP laws work in many cases.

Discussion of rules, stats, and posting of some of GW's material in the context of reviews, good faith discussions, parody, etc. are clearly protected under fair use doctrine in the United States, after all.

Essentially, GW can write anything they want but it doesn't prevent people from doing some of this stuff (the fan projects in animation using their IP to make money actually probably are illegal) and in fact probably hurts GW's ability to enforce it (as you can point to transparently illegal motives in court citing their own website); GW doesn't make laws and doesn't have unilateral rights to restrict discussions. 

 

Edit: obligatory this is not legal advice, talk to a lawyer, etc.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Reinholt

[Sarouan]

5 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

Essentially, GW can write anything they want but it doesn't prevent people from doing this stuff and in fact probably hurts GW's ability to enforce it (as you can point to transparently illegal motives in court citing their own website); GW doesn't make laws and doesn't have unilateral rights to restrict discussions.

That's why it's called Intellectual Property Guidelines on their website.

But the title of this topic says "The Heavy Hand of Games Workshop - IP Rights".

So the original poster already interprets it in a very specific way and takes a side, even though the guildelines don't especially say GW will go for everyone right away...

It's just there to say their stance on several topics and questions some people may be asking themselves.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Sarouan

[Beliman]

17 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

I suppose it's more the question of intent. Previously there was no mention of fan films, now there specifically is a section banning them. With wh+ that indicates a new level of intent on their part to prevent these.

100% as @Sarouan has said. One of the artistist working on a 40k serie has already taken out his own patreon, but he is still working on his project. 

4 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

the fan projects in animation using their IP to make money actually probably are illegal

You can even try to defend your product as if it was your own IP (even if it's based on anothers IP) if there are some diference between the original source and your own (likeyour own Space Marine chapter in a completely unique story).

I'm not saying that you are going to win every trial, but that's something that no company wants to deal with.

[Golub87]

I think people severely misunderstand why companies pull stunts like this. It is a numbers game. The goal is not to completely eliminate every kind of fan work, it is to reduce it by X% in order to make WH+ subscription that much more enticing. They aim to create a void and slowly expand into it. This is a long term thing.

Some content creators will get hit, most will not be affected immediately, few will get discouraged and shut down on their own, some will get assimilated into WH+ where they will have more stable income and more access, some new creators will not even launch due to all this. People will then flock to WH+ and this will cut off revenue from those creators who were not hit, who were not discouraged and who were not assimilated. This is how these things are done and how you build a monopoly. Will it happen 100%? Of course not, most corporate attempts like these fail miserably due to a variety of factors - resilient community, inconsistent corporate efforts, people in charge half-assing it... but this is the idea behind it and it can hurt some people in the process.

[RuneBrush]

44 minutes ago, PrimeElectrid said:

So can we assume that GW have initiated an IP infringement suit against Facehammer for splurging the entire contents of the GHB21 on their live stream? 🤔

I think most people who get preview copies get a set of T&C / NDA that will override the general IP rules laid out on this page.  However it wouldn't surprise me to see those T&C be updated to prevent this in the future.

16 minutes ago, Golub87 said:

I think people severely misunderstand why companies pull stunts like this. It is a numbers game. The goal is not to completely eliminate every kind of fan work, it is to reduce it by X% in order to make WH+ subscription that much more enticing. They aim to create a void and slowly expand into it. This is a long term thing.

Not really.  This likely is to ensure that GW is actively protecting their IP which is something that US courts expect to see should anything ever an IP lawsuit be raised in the US.  It's something that they were stung with in the past with the chapterhouse case.  Simply going "yup, that's our IP, we created it 30 years ago and here's the book" isn't enough.

[Kaleb Daark]

I read it as more to do with preventing others from using your IP to generate income.

That was the case with chapterhouse and others.

They're not going to come after some poor animator or comic artist putting his stuff up on line for the enjoyment of it, but start charging a subscription or wanting funding off the back of it and it's a different story.

The whole chapterhouse et al, thing was no different.  The case revolved around two arguments, one that the items being produced were not in production by gw, the other that whther in production or not, it was not the third party's IP to do with as they saw fit or to trade off the back of.  No, we don't have a kholek suneater model, but we don't want you to make one and sell it as Kholek suneater, and have it looking a dead ringer for our artwork.

It's no different to an artist going after a dance hit because they've sampled a track or riff of his and argue that there's so little of it or that it's so old that they shouldn't pay royalties on it.

With respect to the book reviews, there is probably an embargo in place when the thing lands in their lap - no release of the video / blog / article etc till 12:00gmt on this day for example.

There will also be strict review guidelines and etiquette, and these probably are in the spirit of a review rather than lets read the book word for word and screen shot every single page.  Look at it as a RAW vs RAI argument, which ultimately boils down to the individual concerned knowing tha they've overstepped or are overstepping the mark.

On the back of this is the fine line of needing that particular community and creatives to push your brand for you, so you don't want to go pissing them off or stifling their creativity, but you do have to exercise a modicum of control as there will always be someone who will push it, and there will be always someone who decides that by dint of what they've said or who they are, the mothership has their back and that person is expressing the official stance or opinion.  When those collide, you have a bit of a PR disaster and lots of winning hearts and minds to do - especially in this current world of people want and go looking for things  to be angry at.

TSR was a prime example of this, and the amount of flack it got for having demons in D&D and how various individuals in the wrong side of the news were also associated with playing D&D, which obviously is what made them not normal and go and do all those terrible acts.  Anyone who's posted in the complexity thread will remember a time when liking superheroes and pushing plastic around was just not seen as cool, or in fact normal.

But going back to the original thread, I think that this is nothing new, but perhaps just reinforcing the battlelines and letting existing and prospective incumbents know what's acceptable and what isn't.   I'm sure that if that animator is any good, and he approaches GW for some permission to show his small trailer he and his production will get invited onto warhammer+ anyway, but if he tries to flog the next episode for a cheeky subscription or "donation" then I can see (however unfair it is) why the mothership would want to have a word.

• Fan-films and animations – individuals must not create fan films or animations based on our settings and characters. These are only to be created under licence from Games Workshop.

 

I do think this particular infringement is a bit heavy handed, unless the + platform has a mechanism for budding animators to show their talent, perhaps much like the black library submissions.  I would have thought a simple disclamor like the static artwork at the beginning would have been sufficient and more than acceptable.  I don't think that one has been thought through very well.  I don't see animation any different to static artwork in this respect.

For me the question is more what's kicked this off?

Every few years something happens that makes the sleeping giant wake up and start growling and letting everyone know where his borders are.  This is no different.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Kaleb Daark

[stratigo]

3 hours ago, HollowHills said:

100% agree. Why do you think this site prevents posting leaks or sharing access to pirate materials? It's because the owner has a very close relationship with Games Workshop. 

People might say it's not that big a deal, but the content creators who made fan films etc got a start at doing what they do because there was some freedom here. Now that's gone.

Pirate materials open a website up to liability and that is absolutely not at all worth the stress and hastle the owners would have to deal with if GW came down on them, which GW eventually would.

 

Like, I think piracy can be understood in a moral dimension and wether it is wrong or right ethically is depending on context. But I also don't expect people to host pirated materials and essentially ask GW to hit them with legal action. That would suck, and the game is absolutely not worth that sort of sacrifice.

 

Also, like, come on dude, you absolutely know where to look, you don't need TGA to be posting scans.

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

In truth, the IP rules hadn't been updated properly for some time, so it doesn't surprise me that we've seen some updates, especially seeing that we now have Warhammer+ on the horizon.  It's split into two sections - guidelines and then infringements.

My own interpretation is that GW is trying to ensure that people aren't profiteering off their IP - something that is actually pretty reasonable if we're honest.  The new guidelines also now protect them from somebody creating a Warhammer fan site / YouTube channel and basically using it to slate GW or as a platform to push oddball political agendas.  I also think this may have been influenced by the some YouTube videos about that basically spoiled every page of the AoS3 releases in their preview videos.

For me the slightly worrying bit is that the guidelines prevent the use of imagery to be used basically for anything - want to use the AoS logo on a cheat sheet?  Nope, not allowed.  Want to use a really cool image as a backdrop on your computer?  Nope can't do that either.  These guidelines wouldn't be as worrying if there were some kind of "fan pack" you could download which included logos and other resources to use, but we don't have that.  The other item that to my eyes is basically impractical is that one Infringement is unauthorised use of GW's trademarks - let's consider that and remember that Warhammer and Age of Sigmar are registered trademarks 🤔

However in reality the proof of the pudding is going to be seeing how GW actually applies these new IP rights.  With luck they'll continue to take a light handed approach on the whole, but the new rules will give them a bit of additional clout on the odd occasion they need to bring the legal big guns in.  From the perspective of channels doing reviews, I don't think anybody who's been given a review copy will have too much to worry about.  Reviewers in general may need to be more careful with what they show - a review of a book that means the viewer doesn't need to purchase the product may well be frowned upon.

On the other hand, nah dawg, this ain't reasonable.

 

Fair use exists for a reason mate. And it should, IP stranglehold impoverishes all of us world wide, and the continued consolidation and extension of IP rights in the hands of smaller and smaller companies stifles creativity. We are, as a society, made dumber by it.

 

Reviews, batreps, tourney coverage is all explicit fair use, and you can legally very much use images of GW trademarked products in these things. Animations likely not, and that is sad.

 

2 hours ago, Sarouan said:

Most people doing 40k animation videos do have a patreon. So there is a renumeration intent...and it's exactly what GW is targetting in their IP guidelines.

If people do it with no ad money / patreon, they won't be where the hammer hits. But as usual, a particular side of people not liking GW no matter what they do wants to use that as the "proof" GW wants to crush everything, including the fans not doing this for money.

Not anything really new, just an update to be clearer and include some recent stuff that will incluse their Warhammer TV+. Same old debate about IP and the need or not of its very existence.

Yes they will. Like GW isn't gonna spare fan animators who have no income stream and they don't have to.

 

1 hour ago, Beliman said:

100% as @Sarouan has said. One of the artistist working on a 40k serie has already taken out his own patreon, but he is still working on his project. 

You can even try to defend your product as if it was your own IP (even if it's based on anothers IP) if there are some diference between the original source and your own (likeyour own Space Marine chapter in a completely unique story).

I'm not saying that you are going to win every trial, but that's something that no company wants to deal with.

 

No com pany might want to deal with it, but no individual can actually afford to, and we should not ask people bankrupt themselves (and then still lose because they can't pay the legal bills) to try and fight a billion dollar corporation overstepping its legal authority.

 

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

I think most people who get preview copies get a set of T&C / NDA that will override the general IP rules laid out on this page.  However it wouldn't surprise me to see those T&C be updated to prevent this in the future.

Not really.  This likely is to ensure that GW is actively protecting their IP which is something that US courts expect to see should anything ever an IP lawsuit be raised in the US.  It's something that they were stung with in the past with the chapterhouse case.  Simply going "yup, that's our IP, we created it 30 years ago and here's the book" isn't enough.

I don't think you understood the chapterhouse suits.

 

To be clear, GW won the majority of them. But it turned out you can't claim trademark on a model that doesn't exist or a military unit called imperial guard or a friggen shape. All things GW did try to do. The parts of the suit they lost wasn't because they failed to go after their IP voraciously enough, it's that they were trying to trademark things that could not be trademarked.

[yukishiro1]

You do not need to actively pursue your IP rights to keep them. That's a myth that people repeated enough on the internet that everyone started believing for some weird reason even though it had no basis in fact. You can enforce or not enforce your copyright rights precisely as much as you want to, it has zero impact on your future ability to enforce those rights; I guess it might theoretically impact your damages if you couldn't show that an infringing use was at your particular expense because of other infringers in the market, but that isn't remotely the situation here.

Trademarks are subject to dilution, but dilution is when your trademark becomes associated with the generic product, not when people make products using your IP. I.e. if "Adeptus Astartes" starts meaning generic dudes in space armor, they might lose their trademark. But some dude making fan videos in the GW universe using GW's Adeptus Astartes is not diluting the trademark, if anything they're reinforcing it. 

[Nos]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

I think most people who get preview copies get a set of T&C / NDA that will override the general IP rules laid out on this page.  However it wouldn't surprise me to see those T&C be updated to prevent this in the future.

Not really.  This likely is to ensure that GW is actively protecting their IP which is something that US courts expect to see should anything ever an IP lawsuit be raised in the US.  It's something that they were stung with in the past with the chapterhouse case.  Simply going "yup, that's our IP, we created it 30 years ago and here's the book" isn't enough.

No they're right.

What you're missing is that the nature of content providion/streaming of the past 5 years  Is already changing. The platforms are becoming increasingly prescriptive and demanding of what creators can show and what percentage they can take. And the owners of those platforms will be lobbying for a change in laws to suit them incessantly and with limitless funds. 

The democracy of the internet is over. In 5 years 90% of GW stuff on the internet is going to be controlled by them. Not all of it will be through their own channels, but nobody is going to be able to benefit or be sanctioned to produce GW related stuff without their express involvement.