What violates copyright?

[rickyh]

Alright, so I've made my own deity book for my custom campaign setting.

It has about 28 deities in it. I've pulled their pictures from various sources online to use personally between me and my players. But I've also made it into a .pdf. I've seen other sites do the same thing. For instance I used some 3.5 art pulled from wizards.com/dnd art gallery for my deities, and a coulple of other independent pictuers online.

I'm not using these for profit. I'm using them to depict how I imagine the deity.

I don't have much art skill, and I don't want to pay a lot of money to have an artist draw 28 deity pictures. However I DO want to make a site dedicated to my campaign site and have the deity list downloadable.

For what its worth (if anything) i've added this to it:

"The whole entirety of this book is not original. Some of it is. The deities were mostly drawn or inspired from real word mythos, other campaign setting mythos, or from myself. The art is pulled various places online. It is not my original art, and I do not take credit for it. So I could go on and on and fill this page with useless information, but what needed to be said, has been. So without further delay, read on!"

Can someone help me with this, let me know the truth good or bad.

The last thing I want is a lawsuit for a bunch of money when all I intended to do is make a deity book for my players for fun, and to illustrate it to others through my hobby little site about my campaign.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks.

[Breakdaddy]

We have at least a couple of lawyers around here somewhere, hopefully one of those guys can give you the skinny on what is and isnt acceptable for public distribution.

[miller6]

I'm no lawyer, but i do know it's best not to use artistic or written content you didn't create without asking the permission of the artist/author first (unless it's old enough to be fair game - i.e. the author/artist is long dead). Also cite the source of the material on your website.

Why not have a friend or relative with artistic talent take a crack at drawing your deities?

Brian Miller
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"The adventure continues"

[dcs]

rickyh wrote:
I'm not using these for profit. I'm using them to depict how I imagine the deity.

It doesn't matter whether you use it for profit or not. Copyright law is concerned with distribution, not profit making. So no, you can't take a copyrighted image from somewhere else and then give it away for free.

Quote:
"The whole entirety of this book is not original. Some of it is. The deities were mostly drawn or inspired from real word mythos, other campaign setting mythos, or from myself. The art is pulled various places online. It is not my original art, and I do not take credit for it. So I could go on and on and fill this page with useless information, but what needed to be said, has been. So without further delay, read on!"

Can someone help me with this, let me know the truth good or bad.

The truth is that it doesn't matter whether you credit the owner of the copyright or not. You still need his permission to use his copyrighted material. Sorry.

Hope this helps.
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[Traveller]

Which is the prime reason my OD&D/AD&D/BX/RC hybrid is not available online. Since the premise behind the book was a version of the Holmes Basic Rulebook that didn't get the severe edits that cut it down to 48 pages, I had to use the cover from the Holmes rulebook, the title page and forward page art of that rule book, and I pulled character portraits from WotC. Everything else is clipart, but even if all the art were freely redistributable, I couldn't distribute the book. The text is not original.

In the case of the deities book, because the art isn't original, the artists can send a cease and desist. If the text is original, remove the art and offer it that way.
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[angelius]

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the previous poster.

I own a media company, www.bluesquashmedia.com and been through this a ton. It's best to make original art if you can. Legally, copyright covers a ton of things. Even stuff that doesnt say that its copyrighted is copyrighted by law.

You can easily get license photos and pictures tho...look around for them. You'll have to pay $ tho.
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[gideon_thorne]

Quite. Far better to be original. Easier on the pocketbook too. Many artists can be rather prickly about their stuff being used. Especially in this day and age of advanced digital piracy.
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[serleran]

Yeppers. That's one major reason I avoid reading fantasy works. I wouldn't want to be accused of "lifting" it. This way, I can be accused regardless, but at least I know it was new when I thought of it.