There was an interesting conversation on BGG that was cut short. I suspect this isn't a grey area of law. It's either legal or illegal and hard to enforce. Anyone with a background in law care to shed some light?

[q=](1) IP law is complicated. If someone is not an IP lawyer, and certainly if he/she is not a lawyer, my friendly suggestion is that he/she refrain from advising about IP law because people can easily be misled.


Advising people to exercise extreme caution is hardly as problematic as the grotesquely mistaken cried of "Fair Use" which are getting people into legal hot water all over the place. I'll certainly agree, however, that it would be a mistake to rely solely on some claim in an internet forum for one's legal advice. Why, you might find someone who completely erroneously claims that:

...If I made a photocopy of a copyrighted book at a library so I could read it at home, I have broken no laws...


Which is, as even brief research demonstrates, completely untrue:
www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/copyright.cfm#fairuse_nee...
legal.wisc.edu/reference/photocopy-guidelines.html
fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/...
etc., etc., etc...all of which declare quite explicitly that it is a violation of copyright law to reproduce entire works from library collections.

... If I painted my own copy of a copyrighted painting to hang in my bedroom, I have broken no laws.

Turns out that's not so obviously "true" either:
painting.about.com/cs/artistscopyright/f/copyrightfaq...
c.f. Bridgeman Art Company v. Corel for the counter-corrolary, which held that derivative art which effectively reproduced existing art simply reproduced the original copyright conditions of the original, rather than establishing a new copyright or ownership by the maker of the copy.

(3) Also generally speaking, whether someone makes money by copying someone else's work certainly is relevant in copyright law. It is not necessarily determinative or required for infringement, true, but it is relevant.

To how likely you are to get sued, perhaps. But, for instance, I am allowed to charge my students the reproduction costs for materials distributed to them under academic Fair Use...but I can not legally make and distribute free copies of entire books from the library. Arguably, making and playing a copy of a game using copywritten materials would constitute distribution, in the same way playing or performing copywritten music in a public venue would.[/q]

Intellectual property is theft.

If you want to be sure, don't use any of the original artwork or phrasing. Game mechanics aren't IP, so you can just do what the guy who did MoV or the Magic Realm remake etc did and make a new rulebook with new phrasing, etc and use totally different art.

If you make your own copy of an OOP game, then more power to you. It's a lot of work. I have no qualms about making your own version of a game that can't even be purchased in a way that benefits its original creators. It's always fun to get the "original" game, but it isn't always feasible. Also, some people just like to craft things.

Legally, it's totally fine to make one personal use copy, and here's why:
1) If it's personal use, you'll probably never get caught.
2) If you got caught by someone who had the rights to do something about it, one copy isn't worth their time.

I recently had this conversation with my wife about burning a few old Dreamcast games:
Wife: Is that legal?
Me: According to who?
Wife: I don't know, it doesn't sound legal.
Me: If someone was publishing these games, in retail packaging, at a reasonable price, then I would buy them. They aren't, so I won't. But I will still find a way to play them.

Ethical vs. legal argument could go on forever. I find making out of print games ethical, but the original argument is about legality. So therefore...

Gary Sax wrote:


The ability to prosecute and the effectiveness thereof is more important to the idea of legality than the ridiculous amount of text written into law. I do not accept that something is "the law" because it is written that way. If someone makes their own personal use copy of an out of print game it is perfectly legal simply due to the fact that it pointless to prosecute and causes no harm to anyone.

IP "crimes" are just like speeding tickets and parking meters: They're one hell of a fundraiser.

If you are ethically opposed to the idea, don't do it. If not, go ahead. You won't get sued.

If you are trying to find out if you are ethically opposed to it based on what the law says, you obviously aren't.

wadenels wrote:

You keep using that word. I do not think it means...oh, you know the rest.

Hey this is serious bro. Any day now the police could kick in my door because I printed out 1830 a few years back. Don't be like me. Don't live in fear.

Ethics and the likelihood of getting caught is outside the scope of what I'm looking for. I'm just interested in what the law dictates. I couldn't care less what everyone decides to do and what their ethics dictate.