Illegal Gray

[Arigatomina]

This topic is for all the non-amv fan-productions that might fall into the legal gray area of fair use. I'm particularly interested in things such as fanart, fanfiction, scanlations, and game walkthroughs.

To start things off, I'd like to look at game guides. The sort you find on GameFaqs. These claim to have copyrights. How is that possible and would it ever stand up in court?

A walk through reproduces stats and information taken directly from the game, often directly from the game screen. Can you copyright a chart you copied from the game screen? These guides tell you point by point exactly what happens in the game. Can you copyright a written list of all the action points in a game? Guides provide lists of weapons, monsters, items. Can you copyright any of those lists? Some guides take their lists directly from the official guides that are supposed to be bought by those who want access to those lists. Forget copyrighting that, can you even claim fair use for the blatant reproduction of such lists?

The only thing the writer of a guide owns is his own steps, his preferred way of playing the game which he is sharing in the guide. Is there enough of this 'original fan input' in a typical guide to let the entire thing be under a copyright?

I'm fairly sure you can't copyright a game guide because, if you could, there would be more 'unofficial' guides being sold. They have the little copyright symbol and the warnings against distribution, but I think it's all for show.

My questions:

What makes the creators of game guides and walkthroughs think they can copyright their work? And do you think they *should* be able to?

Here in the US the Harry Potter encyclopedia fiasco proved that no matter how much you research your 'guide', you still don't own anything and you certainly can't sell it. Are game guides any different? Should they be?

[Castor Troy]

You can sell fanart at artist alleys at cons.

[BasharOfTheAges]

You can sell fanart at artist alleys at cons.

Unless it's Otakon and you make lots of prints.

[Arigatomina]

You can sell fanart at artist alleys at cons.

I think that's like doujinshi in Japan. So long as you don't make a profit, they overlook it. They even allow them to be sold in stores. But if the owner chose to sue you, you'd lose.

Here in the US you can't even paint a recognizable pic of Mickey Mouse on a wall without being taken to court over it. There doesn't seem to be any fair use when it comes to images of copyrighted characters. You can fight over the legality of selling a fanfic, calling it a parody, and you might win since there have been cases in the US of similar 'parody' books. But a fan made comic book? I don't see how you'd get away with selling that in a store when you can't even draw a picture of the character on the wall of your own privately owned shop.