Bioware owns you... or at least your fan art

by Seraphina Brennan May 31st 2009 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Business models, Fan art, Legal, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Games and fan art go together like mashed potatoes and gravy -- you just don't have one with out the other. But how would you feel if you found a legal disclaimer in your favorite game's website terms of service that claimed that any fan art you produce, regardless of your intentions, is owned by the game company just because you depicted the IP?

That's what Woody Hearn from GU Comics found inside of the Bioware Tems of Service on the Star Wars: The Old Republic website. The paragraph in question (found in section 7 of the terms) essentially states that all fan art derived from any intellectual property of LucasArts and/or Bioware is explicitly the property of LucasArts and/or Bioware. So that stormtrooper picture that you drew? Yeah, it belongs to LucasArts.

Hearn has already explicitly stated that GU Comics won't be featuring any more Star Wars: The Old Republic or other LucasArts / Bioware titles until the policy changes. While he is covered under the fair use law for satire, any other pieces drawn by other artists may not be.

Tags: bioware, copyright, fair-use, gu-comics, lucasarts, satire, star-wars-the-old-republic, swtor, terms-of-service, woody-hearn

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Jack said on 5:12PM 5-31-2009

LOL the game is not even out! Bioware Tems of Service are a joke I fear for this new mmo!!

Artemis said on 5:25PM 5-31-2009

Read the rest, its worrying tbh. part of me doesn't want them having my details.

"you expressly grant to BioWare and LucasArts a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, complete and irrevocable right to quote, re-post, use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the Content, or any portion thereof, in any manner or form and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without notice, payment or attribution of any kind to you or any third party."

run that one by me again hotshot Bioware! what can you do to anything i do/write/play ingame or your forums.

and how do our fansites work?

NT_ said on 6:25AM 6-01-2009

Without attribution? Now that's cold...

FrostPaw said on 5:30PM 5-31-2009

I'm not sure I see what the issue is, if you draw a picture purely for recreation or satire, show it to some friends or post it free to view on a website theres no issue. However if you then attempt to make a profit from it by providing it as content or something similar then of course the IP belongs to the creator of the IP because without the IP the picture wouldn't exist for the artist to be inspired by.

Seems like just another case of internet storm in a tea cup.

Cheesecake Bandit said on 6:17PM 5-31-2009

The main problem with this is when you have Advertisements on your website to earn money or pay for the site. This is counted as "earning money" off the art for legal purposes sometimes, and can cause problems. It also means that you might not be allowed to even stick your name on it to say you made it, but that's just conjecture by me, and I'm not a lawyer or anything so...yeah...

LaughingTarget said on 8:03PM 5-31-2009

Satire, at least in the US (not sure about anywhere else), is already protected from this sort of thing. If you went and did a full-on Star Wars comic and went around selling it on a website, ads or otherwise, you'd fall under this. If you're some guy doing a joke about this legal clause, it would fall under satire and they can't do a thing about it.

Besides, things like these exist in every TOS you run across. This brouhaha just goes to show you that none of you actually read a TOS before and just shoot straight to the accept button. It's your standard language that pretty much gets, ironically, copied and pasted around with a few minor word changes.

Skipjack said on 5:40PM 5-31-2009

That is actually pretty mild compared to Disney. Eisner was driving past a kindergarden where the kids had drawn some pictures of Mickey Mouse. He had the kindergarden sued for copyright infrindgement. No kidding.

LaughingTarget said on 8:04PM 5-31-2009

I call BS on this one until you pull up an actual court documentation from a .gov site.

Verit said on 2:23AM 6-01-2009

@laughingtarget

Read it and weep: http://snopes.com/disney/wdco/daycare.asp

LaughingTarget said on 7:13AM 6-01-2009

Time to trim your overzealous attempt at a burn. They sued a profit generating entity, corporate daycare, not an elementary school. It's a company suing another company, not some kids painting a playground.

Call of BS stands tall and proud in the face of a weak attack.

Lemmo said on 11:52AM 6-01-2009

And they were 5-foot tall painted murals, not drawings by little children. Sounds like they were trying to draw clients with Disney characters, which is a pretty reasonable infringement.

Skipjack said on 3:57PM 6-02-2009

The case mentioned was only one of many actually.
Believe it or not, it is true.
I was trying to find more than just annectodal evidence of this in a quick websearch but most pages came up as dead links. One reason for that is that it has been so long ago.

Cheesecake Bandit said on 5:48PM 5-31-2009

I'm not sure if this is the fault of EA or Lucas Arts, but i highly doubt a development studio would come up with that kind of crap. My experience with Lucas arts is limited, but if this is EA's doing, they certainly are not trying hard to improve their worsening image among the dedicated gamers. DRM, crap titles, and now this?

I wish ranting meant something but the vast majority of EA's customers are suburban scrap who don't care about anything more than making sure their kids have nicer bikes than the neighbors' kids. Board members love this crap and since so few(comparatively speaking) give a crap, it will keep getting worse until they pull a Sony and start BREAKING peoples computers...

Neurotic said on 5:56PM 5-31-2009

What FrostPaw said.

Anonymous said on 6:00PM 5-31-2009

I like the picture, It made me lol.

Kaamos said on 6:29PM 5-31-2009

They can have my fan art- when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Graill said on 6:55PM 5-31-2009

I am just biding my time until i slap lucas arts and bioware with my lawsuit of devastation. Back in the 70's i was having a meeting with a few folks and we wrote some great ideas on a wet dirty napkin regarding stormtroopers and a sarcastic princess.............i see big money coming.

....anyway, if you think biowares Eula is harsh or will be read some of SOE's Eulas, nasty things, cant believe folks digitaly sign anything.

I know i dont, i simply walk away from the keyboard and my pet monkey starts mashing keys, i cant help it if it hits the agree button, i never did............plausible deniability.