Sunday, August 17, 2008

WoW and intellectual property

DeSlisser is asking a tricky question: Where is the border between good fanfiction and bad theft of intellectual property. He found an intentionally misspelled WaoW comic in a shop, which clearly was using Blizzard intellectual property in telling a funny story of a n00b in Westfall. But then Blizzard clearly allows and even promotes online fan comics and machinima.

And then Blizzard themselves aren't squeaky clean when it comes to intellectual property. Hands up everyone who believes Blizzard paid a license fee to the IOC for their Spirit of Competition Olympics event, with its fancy 4 colored intertwined rings logo! Hmmm, don't see any hands. So where exactly is the difference between Spirit of Competition and WaoW? Is World of Warcraft, like the Olympics, so much part of the general culture that you can make "cultural references" to it without breaking intellectual property laws?

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