Copyright concerns

(Note to Jacob: I really will actually reply to the comments -- but I also want to keep posting the seeds of ideas, to keep a stream of topics running through the heads of the thousands of readers. Dozens of readers. OK, reader.)

Once a new online D&D campaign actually gets spawned from here, I want to incorporate as many colorful resources as I can (ideally, without too much effort). Over at dndblog, Scott's graphics have really brought things to life -- not just the maps, but pictures of mountain lions and images from the Monster Manual too.

The graphics from Wizards.com, although hard to find (hence the lack of link), generally have text around them indicating that they intend you to use them to enhance your own campaign. On the other end of the spectrum, a typical book with lots of artwork has very dire warnings against using any of its art for any purpose at all.

I want to solicit from people likely to play in the campaign where their vision of "fair use" lies. While the chances that some litigious copyright holder is going to trip upon this blog (or wiki, or whatever) are remote, I want to make sure everyone is comfortable with anything that gets uploaded from anyone. So we should all be on the same page in terms of what's appropriate. I'm going out on the limb of assuming no one's going to upload pornography to a D&D site, so next on the list is "possibly infringing material".

Let me first state my attitude. I think I tend to fall more in the "yeah, it's fair use" camp than "no, you can't use anything without permission" camp. For example, I'm of the opinion that links to images on the web (img src="somewhere.com/picture") aren't really much in the way of copying: someone's made the image available to be viewed on the web, and making it appear through a window on our page isn't meaningfully different from viewing it in situ. But that's just me. You might feel differently (and might have case law on your side; unfortunately, the courts haven't yet adopted the "Bob reasonableness standard").

One might ask whether worrying about copyright is even relevant: I mean, the vast majority of stuff is going to be created by us, and what little snippet pictures from magazines or books or what have you we throw in has gotta be fair use, right? That may well be your point of view, and certainly in terms of a local D&D game, using some visual aids with your group seems like fair use to me. However, if our online stuff is accessible to everybody in the world, scanning your favorite Boris Vallejo print and putting it up on the campaign website lets more unscrupulous people, unassociated with our D&D campaign, grab that art and print it on T shirts. Are they violating copyright laws? Of course. Might they try to pin it on us and get us involved? Maybe. Might _we_ get unfriendly cease and desist letters? Unlikely, I think, but possible.

Some possible resolutions to this:
- don't put possibly copyrighted material on the blog at all. This is somewhat annoying, since, for example, I'd like to use images from coffee table books about the Crown Jewels to show the cool treasure you've just discovered. Also, it's hard to tell what's copyrightable/copyrighted/usable and what's not. What about the geomorphs at the back of the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, or a map made from them? How about a picture taken of lead figures on the tiles from Dungeon Floor Plans? (That said, Flickr.com and Google's Advanced Search options, and everything Creative Commons does, can help find images that are explicitly usable. And convenience in and of itself is no excuse -- it's cheaper for me to steal food instead of buy it, but that doesn't make it right.)

- make a secured, "login" part of the page (or the whole campaign website), so that only a small group of people have access. Now you're not sharing a picture of your Boris Vallejo print with the whole world, but only with 6-10 people. Trying to justify to yourself that this is fair use is a lot easier. Of course, this means you have to login to the page, and someone has to figure out how to manage Web security, at least a little.

- analogous to this, the page could have only public domain/licensed to share stuff, and occasional color material could be delivered by snail mail (or email). I kind of like the idea of players getting occasional mysterious funky envelopes with arcane bits of parchment inside, and/or pictures of treasure or monsters or whatever.

- Possibly, I'm blowing this whole issue out of proportion. We put up what we like, and in the unlikely event someone complains about it, we take it down. No harm, no foul -- at least, that's our story and we're stickin' to it.

The most important thing is, everyone feels comfortable with the policy we take at the outset. I know some of us are professionals and copyright holders ourselves, and might feel strongly about these things. I don't want someone not playing D&D, or worse, quitting D&D, because I put something up on the web that they don't want to be a party to. I would like to be sensitive to all concerns.

But if it's no big deal and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I'm okay with that too. Whatever you want.

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