The Lawbringer: Paying for addons and the spirit of the TOS

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-30-2011 @ 7:51PM

JCinDE said...

I believe the spirit of the TOS is that they do not want any third party making money off their game. Period.

That being the case, if a hypothetical person were to look for and find some of these addons on file sharing sites and download them, their authors would have a hard time making the case that it's piracy.

Not that I, personally, have ever visited that sort of file sharing site. But if I hypothetically did, I wouldn't feel hypothetically guilty for it.

9-30-2011 @ 8:01PM

mak said...

Addon authors do not give up thier copyrights to the code they write for WoW just because they are not permitted to charge for it. Nor does someone who writes a guide vacate thier rights by making it sbout playing WoW.

Using Blizzard IP and properties in the guide would cause issues though, that's for sure. I don't think you could write a leveling guide without calling it "Hillsbrad". The level 20-25 undead zone just doesn't have the same ring.

9-30-2011 @ 11:02PM

DarkWalker said...

@mak:
You can't copyright really small snippets such as single names. Besides, game guides most likely would be a prime example of fair use (as long as the author of the guide doesn't go on copying large stretches of the product - say, reproducing all quest text - on it's guide).

In the end, Blizzard can't really win a copyright suite against authors that write and sell an unauthorized guide for WoW, as long as the author does not do anything dumb. Does not mean they can't use the threat as a scare tactic, though.

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.