What constitutes copyright infringement?

Question

Looking at the question on teleportation, there is this answer that appears to quote a body of text from PHB3. I don't actually own that book, so I couldn't check it out. But that got me thinking about copying text from sources that are not freely available online. How much quotation from published material is too much? Is there a good rule of thumb? Do we need to be on the lookout for it?

Followup question: If we do need to worry about it, is that a good reason to use the flagging system?

Answer 1

I think that we need to do only two things.

1. In the FAQ or other prominent place, warn people against plagiarism. (and/or copyright infringement, blah blah)

2. Take down stuff IF a copyright holder complains or issues a DMCA takedown notice.

We as moderators/site people do not need to be engaging in unschooled Lawyer Junior behavior. In fact if we do we become more legally liable for policing the content on the site. Plagiarism is bad, and we should say "don't do it," but should not try to make our own "calls" about it beyond the clear remedy by US law (DMCA).

Edit - this seems to be the general tone of the Stack Overflow legal page. "It's on you the subscriber to not post anything naughty. Report violations using the DMCA."

Answer 2

Previous meta.stackoverflow.com discussion: here, on flagging and appropriate actions.

Stanford has a great explanation of fair use in United States law. The four factors to evaluate:

1. Are you transforming the source work in some way? Parody is the classic example, but scholarship also counts. Did you add value? Just quoting a chunk of text doesn't add value; adding explanatory material might.
2. Is the original work fact or fiction? It's more likely to be fair use if it's fact. I am not sure what gaming texts would be in this case.
3. How much did you take? If you didn't take much, you're safer; if you didn't take key elements, you're safer.
4. Are you hurting the market for the original work? This is a particularly scary bit, IMHO -- if someone can come here and ask a question about (say) how to make Over the Edge characters, and they get a good answer, we're making it easier for someone not to buy the book.

Now, there's also legal precedent that you can't copyright rules, but how that applies to RPGs is untested to my knowledge. (Again, US only.) See John Kim's page on RPG copyright.

Answer 3

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice (even though it sounds like it.)

Really, the Copyright circulars make it pretty clear that small quotes are not infringements, provided they serve some valid purpose. Valid purposes include scholarship, parody, critical examination, and review.

Such valid use requires some additional content aside from the quote; it doesn't require the content be by the same contributor, merely that the quote not be stand-alone. Since, axiomatically, answering a rules question often is best done by quoting the rules, even a bare rules-quote answer is part of a value-added situation - the quote has value because of the non-quote question.

Answer 4

Elaborating on my comment that it wasn't plagiarism, though it would be copyright infringement.

4th edition isn't licensed under the Open Gaming License (OGL) nor considered Open Gaming Content. Instead, 4th edition makes use of the OGL's significantly less-cool cousin, the Game System Liscence (GSL).

Both the OGL and the GSL have System Reference Documents, but the GSL FAQ site explicitly states...

The SRD is a reference document detailing Terms, Tables and Templates that are available for license under the GSL. It is a reference document and not a reprinting of the rules.

It then continues to state...

None of the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons product line is considered Open Game Content made available to third parties through the Open Gaming License (OGL). Certain content from 4th Edition is available royalty-free for specified uses subject to the GSL.

So while 4th edition has an SRD, unlike 3.5th edition, the 4th edition SRD only contains a list of terms which may only be referenced, as opposed to content which can be used, modified and distributed.

If they had cited the PHP3.5, what was posted could be passed off as OGL and consequently reproducible, but reproducing rules from a 4th edition rulebook is a no-no.

There is a Fan Site Kit but it's just a bunch of pictures (cover art and stuff) which one can post on a web site. (Big whoop; thanks a lot WotC :P)

Other instances (such as the tables I copied from some rulebooks while answering Beyond Hit Points: Injury in DnD) are - as I understand it - acceptable; the first table was from Mutants and Masterminds - OGL - and the second was an optional side panel, from an out-of-print book, for a product which Wizards no longer has the license to sell... which I feel falls within Bryant's definition of Fair Use ;)

But I'm not a lawyer... so don't take my word for it ;)

Edit

So Bryant pointed out some interesting points about conflicts about the OGL and the Creative Commons license... I don't fully understand those.

He also brought up the fact that OGL content has to include the OGL legal-jargon. However, in the OGL FAQ It states...

Q: I want to create a website that contains many different pages with Open Game Content. Do I have to include a copy of the License on every page?

A: It will be sufficient to include a link on every page containing Open Game Content to one centralized copy of the License.

... so CC versus OGL aside, linking to the OGL would be enough, were it not for incompatibility between the OGL and CC licenses.