Games Workshop ban fan-created film! Petition needs signing!

[IBBoard]

Reading Slashdot this morning I saw an article about how GW Legal have killed the Damnatus fan film

The people behind Damnatus have now set up a petition that I've signed, and which I encourage everyone else to sign. If people like George Lucas and Paramount can allow fan-created films (and Paramount, like Games Workshop, allow fanfiction).

Now I know they're particularly picky about army builders, as I was on the wrong end of that at one point, but fan-created films are just the next step on from fan-created rules or fan-created conversions, stories and artwork. All of them provide extra (good) promotion for GW, and all of them are the fans showing their appreciation and love of the mythology. I can see this only ever ending up as a bad thing for GW.

Even worse, GW Legal have gone to the extent that they've added a specific exclusion to their Can Do, Can't Do page:

MOVIES

The video games that our licensing partners have created have done an incredible job of bringing the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 games to life, and we appreciate that hobbyists may even want to make movies based upon our intellectual property. Unfortunately, due to the nuances of the law in some territories, we cannot allow any unlicensed movies to be created which are based upon our intellectual property.

I wonder if it'll ever be leaked to BitTorrent and make it as an underground P2P thing

More detail is available on the Damnatus news page.

[Radulykan]

Man this isnt right or fair ,Look at all the litterly HUNDREDS of fan based mini movies the fans of the Star Wars mythology have produced,You don't see any complaining from the folk's at Lucas Art's,Heck it just promotes their platform/pc games and movies more for free no less ,It can be nothing but good promotional stuff for GW and the fanbase as a whole to allow it,I myself am signing this petition from Damnatus .Later and have a good one .

[The Urban Cannibal]

The people behind Damnatus have now set up a petition that I've signed, and which I encourage everyone else to sign.

I understand people's frustrations, but there's really no point. GW only care about their bottom line - they do not and will not listen to any points of view which won't result in them realising a profit. The company has long since stopped being run by gamers; the top brass are all money-men, plain and simple. Jervis Johnson is the last of the old guard left. It's a crying shame.

[IBBoard]

Politicians only care about what they think is best as opposed to what the people want, but that doesn't stop people petitioning them

Also, it may not do anything but even if it doesn't then at least it shows the extent of people's dissatisfaction with the decision. If no-one signed a petition then GW would assume everyone was okay with it. When people sign the petition then even if GW don't change their stance then at least they know gamers are upset.

[CLAN WARLORD]

i cant believe GW would do that to a film created by people who just want to show their love of warhammer to others its ridiculous i mean how many warhammer mini movies are on youtube whats so wrong about this one

how do i sign this petition anyway

[IBBoard]

Firstly: 1) Please calm down with the number of smilies and 2) please use the edit button rather than double-posting.

GW have done it for the same reason they do everything else - they're a big corporation and they've learned too much from the Americans and their corporation/legal system.

As for how many Warhammer miniature movies there are on YouTube, a) they might be different because they're "moving photos" of people's models rather than a fully crafted movie and b) I'm sure that if GW Legal had the time and resources they could get them removed - just because they haven't done so far doesn't mean that they're not in breach of some law.

As for the petition, the topic is a year and a half old. There was a link in the Damnatus news article, but the petition probably closed a long time ago.