A couple tokens

[jedorian]

Here's some tokens I felt like sharing with everyone. I used paint.net to clean them up and make them usable for gaming.

[Trenloe]

Thanks for sharing, these are nice tokens.

But, are these freely distributed images or your own work? If not, you can't go publicly sharing these without permission of the artist (or whoever owns the rights). Sorry to be the copyright police here, but protecting RPG artist intellectual property rights is important.

[jedorian]

These are images I found with a Google search. To my knowledge, they are not trademarked or copywritten. I've come across fan art of these and more images that have not resulted in the lawsuit of the person that drew them. And as I'm not asking money for these nor am I stealing them, I see no problems here.

[Trenloe]

I suggest you read this thread:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/p1RLzKuha68


And as I'm not asking money for these nor am I stealing them, I see no problems here.
Just because you are not charging for anything does not release you from the copyright laws.

You have modified an artists original art and are publicly redistributing it without giving them credit or without their permission. This is breaking copyright.

What you for your own private use is fine - grab as many images as you want and use them for your own games. But as soon as you distribute anything publicly you are breaking copyright.

[jedorian]

Those images were not copywritten, Tren.

[Trenloe]

Those images were not copywritten, Tren.
Are you absolutely, 100% sure that the original images these are derived from are not copyright?

For example, the flaming skull image is cut from Marvel's Ghost Rider:

https://marvel.com/images/gallery/issue/4815/images_from_ghost_rider_2006_2

The terms of use for this site (https://marvel.com/corporate/terms) state that you can download content only for your own use (term #2) but you are expressly prohibited from distributing content (term #3): "you may not download, post, display, publish, copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, modify, perform, broadcast, transfer, create derivative works from, sell or otherwise exploit any content, code, data or materials on the Web Site."

I know you probably got these images from other website that may or may not have mentioned copyright or where they got the images from or what use of the images is allowed - but these websites would have been breaching copyright. Therefore, by using the images from these websites so are you.

I know this is hard to work out what is copyright and what isn't. But, a good rule of thumb is that everything is copyright unless you are expressly told otherwise. If a website doesn't specify a copyright for an image, I would be suspicious and guess that they are displaying that image without permission or against the rights of that image/artist.

[dr_venture]

If visual art is anything like music (at least in the US) then simply publishing your work automatically grants an implied copyright... you don't even have to have the little (c) symbol and such. As a guy whose band spent 9 years (don't ask) putting together music album only to find it being distributed for free on a torrent site within 24 hours of releasing the CD, I tend to fall on the "sensative" side of the artist's rights issue. Jedorian, not trying to pile on here - I very much appreciate your taking the time to share assets with the community - thanks... just trying to be clear on the rights/copyright issue.

[Blacky]

Adding to that, “copyright” is a US legal notion (and a strange one, a “right to copy” stopping you from copying it… well). For example there is no copyright in France, if you create something you own intellectual rights to it that can't be sold or transfered (you can license it of course). And you don't have to register it, put some disclaimer on it or whatever, it's automatic. And I think that's more or less the case in most parts of the world.

In US language, assuming everything is copyrighted unless otherwise clearly specified (like almost all art on Wikipedia for example, wich is usually either public domain or Creative Commons) is always a good policy.

[Invictys]

Adding to that, “copyright” is a US legal notion (and a strange one, a “right to copy” stopping you from copying it… well). For example there is no copyright in France, if you create something you own intellectual rights to it that can't be sold or transfered (you can license it of course). And you don't have to register it, put some disclaimer on it or whatever, it's automatic. And I think that's more or less the case in most parts of the world.

In US language, assuming everything is copyrighted unless otherwise clearly specified (like almost all art on Wikipedia for example, wich is usually either public domain or Creative Commons) is always a good policy.

Sorry to object but Copyright isn't a US legal notion it's a British one dating back to the early 1700's. Since then though basically every first world country has copyright laws that conform with the international Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in the late 1800's.

The US has the same principles as the French version including the fact that its automatic to have the intellectual rights. The difference is that in the US you have the rights but if you want to actually sue for statutory damages you must have registered the copyright. So to say there is no copyright in France is inaccurate, the rights are basically the same. The difference lies in the requirement to register in order to sue for infringement.

The point is, in INTERNATIONAL language, by default something is copywritten unless it is released under some sort of license like the Creative Commons.

[Nightfiend]

Quick question on images. I know we can't post these images to redistribute. Are we allowed to use images downloaded off google in a scenario?

[Trenloe]

Quick question on images. I know we can't post these images to redistribute. Are we allowed to use images downloaded off google in a scenario?
Anything you do in the privacy of your own game is fine - download images from google and use them in your private games. It is the redistribution of material that is the issue here - don't let anyone have the campaign/FG module in which you put these images.

[Blacky]

It totally depends on local laws applicable to you.

Where I live, as long it's private (friends&family) and unprotected I can do pretty much anything I like with anything I want.