Hello, everybody. As we announced a couple days back, the Fan Art mark was implemented to let people know when a model depicts copyrighted designs and ideas from third party companies not related to you or Blend Swap. Here are some guidelines and updates on what's all this Fan Art thing about:
We've been concerned about Fan Art on the site for quite a while, and we've been torn as to what to do with all the hundreds of Fan Art we host on the site. Fan Art marking is an old pending feature we needed to implement and didn't know how to go about it until now.
NO. Again: NO. The Fan Art marking has nothing to do whith the fact that you made the model, but with the fact that the design it is based upon is not yours, the original design is copyrighted by a third party company, and as such noone else but the company that created the original design is allowed to use it commercially, regardless of the model being licensed under Creative Commons license.
Not much really. As stated above we won't take the model off line, we just need you to visit the model page, enter the edit form and check the Fan Art checkbox in there, so the model is immediately disclaimed of commercial use. If you don't do it, normally an admin will mark your model as Fan Art. Sometimes, if we don't know if the Fan Art Claim is real or not, we might talk with the author to see if there's something to be done about it, but in most cases the models are indeed Fan Art and are marked as so.
Good luck with that. Remember that according to our Terms Of Use, by making use of the Site and our services, you agree that you take full responsibility for any copyright infringement you may incur, and that in no case will Blend Swap be held responsible for the content you upload to the Site. By marking your models as Fan Art you are, at the very least, disclaiming you model for commercial use which is a good way to get Fair Use exemption and safe distribution of your blend file.
However, beware that this commercial use disclaim, is NOT a warranty of you being safe from getting sued for copyright infringement. If you'd feel more comfortable with the blend being taken down definitely, please let us know through the contact page.
This also means that if a company complains to us about any amount of their designs being depicted on blends we host, and wants them taken down, we will take them down with no hesitation as they are the copyright holders of the design and have full power over it to ask the admins to take the models permanently off line.
So there you have it.
PLEASE, go mark your blends as Fan Art if you are making a character from TV, movies, comics, etc. so you are a little safer about the whole copyright deal.
Again, remember Blend Swap is not to be held responsible for any unlawful use of the site performed by any of it's users and so you're ultimately helping your self.
Finally we'd like to insist one more time, as we have done before, that if you want to be 100% safe about this matter, UPLOAD YOUR CONTENT ONLY OR CONTENT BUILT UPONG THE WEALTH OF OPEN SOURCE MODELS OUT THERE, AND HERE ON BLEND SWAP.
Thank you guys.
The Blend Swap crew.
dzerbs
Thanks for this post, it really clarifies what's Fan Art and what's not. Super helpful, I actually wouldn't have thought that cars were considered Fan Art, I only thought it was for stuff like superheroes or characters. Thank you again and keep up the awesome work, can't wait for Version 5!
Digitante
It's a good idea. It's definitely better to have this option!
But there are some questionable uses of it on the site now (and/or the warning message is incorrect). For example, models of particular real cars, including trademarks are probably not infringing, even theoretically, and they certainly are not a problem for commercial re-use in productions.
I highly recommend viewing Wikipedia's page on logos for guidance on this (they've had the same issue for longer):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logos
Most of the cases that would come on on BlendSwap are not-copyrightable, as described in this section of that page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logos#Copyright-free_logos
It's legal to depict a Coke can in a film production and I need no license from Coca-Cola to use their name in this comment. And if you were to loosely conflate trademark with copyright, it would be extraordinarily limiting -- Silicon Graphics owns a shade of purple, Harley-Davidson owns an engine noise. But the thing is, they ONLY own those things in a very limited context of avoiding fraud in selling similar products. You absolutely can use that shade of purple in other contexts and you absolutely can include a recording of Harley in a film or audio production.
So, a Chevy truck with a "Chevy" logo on it, is probably completely usable in a commercial animated production -- which makes the current "fan art" warning seem a little overwrought to me (if it's going to be used on these types of works).
Of course, you COULD be sued for using such works. But that's because you literally can be sued for ANYTHING. The relevant question is will such a suit ever make it to court (the judge would throw out most of these cases), let alone win?
Note however, that this is VERY different from true "fan art", where the model is depicting an existing character or prop from an existing production. These may well be under both copyright and trademark protection, and this is where the "fan art" label is really relevant. For these, you will get sued, and the existing "no commercial use" warning is completely valid -- this is really useful for people like me, who might not be up-to-date on all the recent anime and may not recognize a branded character from an original one.
I wonder if it might make sense to split this issue? You could either make a separate checkbox for "may contain trademarks" or perhaps provide three options for the "Fan Art" question.
poifox
Hi Terry, thank you very much for your input, this is definitely something we will think about and research more, as you must realize, it is pretty hard to draw the line on these matters as many cases are quite blurry and hard to judge. Again thanks a lot for the comment!
Cheers!
Rompompom
This is good.
Roachman911
Thank you for telling me exactly what 'fan art' actualy is. Much more clear now!