Blizzard outlines 'acceptable use' for machinima
by Krystalle Voecks 
Sep 8th 2007 at 9:02AM
One of the things that I learned last weekend at Dragon*Con was a great deal more about machinima than I'd ever really known before. Sure, I've got FRAPS, and I've tried to make cool music videos too. Then I realized that I'd need something more interesting than my Tauren Druid running around to my favorite Rush song. So my dreams of making machinima went by the wayside, best left to the machinimators with that little thing called "talent." One of the things that I always wondered about was just precisely what you could and couldn't get away with in regards to making films using World of Warcraft. After all, the characters on my account are Blizzard's IP. I could argue about not being paid for it, but I've always been curious about the larger legal issues involved.
Blizzard has finally put out what they consider to be their acceptable use policies in regards to machinima created using Blizzard's IP. After listening to the talk that Matt Kelland and Clint Hackleman gave during the Machinima 101 panel at Dragon*Con, I'm pretty happy to see that Blizzard has taken such a step to reach out to the community. This open letter lets artists know they have the potential ability to get licenses to show their work, and just how much commercial "sponsorship" is acceptable. It also defines where many of the boundaries are (for example their edict that movie/video content remain consistent with World of Warcraft's "T" rating) that I feel will hopefully help to clear some things up on where the artists stand in all of this legally.
For those of you who are budding machinimators, check out Blizzard's open letter. It's fairly straightforward reading, and they've gone so far as to put a contact email address in for specific concerns not outlined in their letter. With these guidelines in hand, hopefully artists will feel free to go in even more creative directions in the future.
[via Hugh "Nomad" Hancock, author of Machinima for Dummies]
Filed under: Machinima, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hugh "Nomad" Hancock Sep 8th 2007 9:14AM
Just a quick note to add to that - I've written some commentary on these rules over at the Machinima for Dummies blog:
http://www.machinimafordummies.com/articles/2007/09/08/blizzard-posts-machinima-rules
And Shattered Keyboard and Brandon "Oxhorn" Dennis both have coverage too:
http://shatteredkeyboard.blogspot.com/2007/09/more-gaming-companies-come-out-of.html
http://oxhornbrand.blogspot.com/2007/09/blizzards-official-position-on-wow.html
Hexadril Sep 20th 2007 2:31AM
So does that mean that websites like warcraftmovies.com violate these rules by having a bunch of "premium only" downloads?
Seems all the high rated stuff needs you to pay them so you can see it.
Sterling Sep 8th 2007 11:27AM
@2: They will probably say something to the affect of: "Due to the overwhelming popularity of this video, only premium members are allowed to view it in order to offset the bandwidth cost."
I'd recommend doing a torrent search for the premium ones. Until somebody makes something that is officially endorsed by Blizzard (that South Park episode for example), they can't legally make money from it, so a free distribution network should be okay.
I haven't read Blizzard's letter to see what they say about who has copyrights over what. But, if somebody were to make a stink about their video being shared over the torrent network (and, therefore, not getting paid), they should probably add in all the legalese that is at the very end of movie credits, pay royalties to whichever music artist they acquired the song from, and pay royalties to Blizzard for the use of their intellectual property.
This is just a vague overview of shoulds. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on stage, TV, film, open mic night, the "massage parlor", or any other place where one would expect to see somebody openly admitting to being one. I'm a video artist by degree and had to know how far I was able to use somebody's work without getting into too much trouble.
potatowedge Sep 8th 2007 11:29AM
I'm really glad they're doing this. Now pardon me, as I have to get back to capturing footage for a school project ... it's a relief to know that I'm not going to get sued for just doing homework.
Guernia Sep 9th 2007 7:16PM
So does that rule out "The Internet is For Porn"?