Sillmarilion

[Taqwus]

Hardest part might be dodging the lawyers, if they ever notice.

[NTJedi]

Taqwus said:
Hardest part might be dodging the lawyers, if they ever notice.

I contacted Tolkien Enterprises for permission on creating a Mordor nation for our dominion3 community, but they denied my request.

[Wahnsinniger]

Then just make one and pass it around the forums. Without a link to it on a website then it isn't official enough to be able to go after, no? Its not like it'll be "officially suported" by Illwinter or anything.

[Lingchih]

You guys are nerds.

Just joking. I would love a Silmarillion mod. Maybe change the names slightly, to avoid litigation? I know there was a Civ 2 mod that was very Tolkien based, but with the names changed. And it survived for a long time, and was very popular.

[llamabeast]

I don't think they would ever bother with litigation. They'd never notice for a start. And in the extremely unlikely event that they threatened you - well, you could just take it down. Nothing more serious than that.

Sombre's producing Warhammer mods, there've been no problems there. And the one he's finished already, Skaven, is quite excellent and worth checking out incidentally.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im afraid that doesnt work here. On non-corporate forums that would be the standard response and it would be true. But on company owned forums you will come up against the forum controls first. If it falls into a category that it COULD draw unwanted attention from another corporation then any link to it will likely be deleted long before any such action could occur.

You and I can operate that way but Shrapnel cant. They cant be insensitive to copyrights. We have had it happen on Shrapnels forums before and had to delete links to mods. In some cases people were able to ask and get permission from the copyright holders. If there are any that you feel use graphics directly, or use too much specific reference, feel free to report them so that staff can pass judgement.

[Wahnsinniger]

Alright, I'm not going to complain about your point, because Shrapnel and Illwinter do have to cover their rear's legally.

As far as copyright goes, copyright laws (and patent laws for that matter) exist to encourage creativity by ensuring that the creators will get some sort of financial reward. So if I were to make a Lord of the Rings game and started selling it, thats infrigement because that could be taking away sales from official games. The same can be said if you got a Copy-Machine and started makes Copies of "The Fellowship of the Ring" and selling them to friends. But creating a mod for a game such as this will NOT impact the copyright holder financially at all, and furthermore in this case the law is actually stifling creativity, which contradicts its purpose, and thus is one of the tragedies of copyright law. (piracy is a seperate issue)

However, since I won't be making any such mod anyway, it doesn't affect me. (And when I make board or video games, I have no need to use existing intellectual property anyway)

[Pratputajao]

Wow that is kind of a trip actually. I have seen dozens of differant star wars and star trek mods for many differnat games,(Stardock's site comes to mind) I highly doubt they all had permission from the powers that be... This is the first time I have encountered talk of copy right taken so seriously when talking of players making mods? So basically we can only post our own mod based on a story we created, we cant access the many great worlds and ideas already out there? Hmmm... First for me. Oh well I guess I will try and just Mod it for myself.

[MaxWilson]

Anyone who is concerned about involving Shrapnel in legal issues might consider posting a link to their mod in a different place. For instance, linking from Wikipedia or StrategyWiki, or asking Gandalf to host it on Dom3minions. I'm quite uncertain of the trademark issues myself (another reason my Malazan mod has not been released) but if the forum ownership is all that's stopping you, you could try it.

-Max

[llamabeast]

Yeah, if necessary put the file somewhere else and just let us know here. It's criminal if people have made great mods based on other fantasy worlds and they're forced to keep them to themselves.

To be honest any nation mods we make based on other people's stuff is just going to act as advertising for them anyway. They'd be very silly to make a fuss of it (not that I'm saying Shrapnel shouldn't - but I don't think we need to worry about be hunted down if we host the file elsewhere and just link to it here).