Ahadi: East Africa Copyright Policies

Materials available on Ahadi:East Africa are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other countries.

This website, and original material contained herein, is the copyright of the site, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Reproduction or theft of any content without written permission of the site is expressly forbidden, unethical, and illegal—unless for the legal purpose of reviews, fair use, or satire.

The mention of or reference to any company or product on this site is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned.

All works created for the specific use and betterment of the site, including characters, fiction, forums posts, and the like, are considered reserved, however, authorship is considered collaborative and proper attribution is required.
This is to protect us from the hassle of individuals wanting us to remove posts or references to their characters if they want to leave. We will not ret-con storylines and in game associations simply because someone leaves in a huff.

Artwork created for the site is the copyright of the artist, with limited copyright for displaying elsewhere on the site granted to the site. It does not extend to other media or use. We will also maintain proper attribution.
This means, if you draw your character or someone else's character and you accept a request to post it, we can keep it posted as long as we like, but we can't use it for anything else.

All other artwork is used by permission of the original copyright holder, licensed for use, or purchased for use.
In these cases, if the artist or owner asks us to remove it, we will.

All fan fiction and derivatives of the World of Darkness® are legally copyrighted by White Wolf Publishing, Inc., although credit will be attributed to the author.
So technically, all those in game posts and stories referenced in the rule above belong to White Wolf anyway. As strange as it seems, that is the law.

Any reprinted book material is copyright of White Wolf publishing and is not meant to challenge the copyright of the published material or meant to replace that material.

All such work is used for private use. The site highly recommends the purchase of the original books or PDFs through White Wolf's site DriveThruRPG.com.

Copyright law does not protect "ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes," etc and does not cover the use of basic creation rules according to this exception to the law.

Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only.

Trinity, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Wraith: The Oblivion, Changeling: The Dreaming, Kindred of the East, Werewolf: The Wild West, Trinity: Battleground, Wraith: The Great War, Guide to the Technocracy, Technocracy Progenitors, Technocracy Iteration X, Technocracy New World Order, Technocracy Void Engineers, Technocracy Syndicate, Technomancers Toybox, Isle of the Mighty, Digital Web 2.0, Year of the Reckoning, Hunter: The Reckoning, Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade, Mind's Eye Theatre, Mind's Eye Theatre Journal, Dark Kingdom of Jade, Ends of Empire, A World of Darkness Second Edition, Mummy Second Edition, Mummy: The Resurrection, Clanbook Cappadocian, Clanbook Nosferatu, Clanbook Toreador, Clanbook Brujah, Clanbook Gangrel, Clanbook Salubri, Clanbook Baali, Clanbook Ventrue, Clanbook Tremere, Clanbook Assamite, Clanbook Ravnos, Clanbook Setite, Clanbook Malkavian, Clanbook Lasombra, Clanbook Tzimisce, Guide to the Camarilla, Guide to the Sabbat, Year of Revelations, Exalted, Games of Divinity, Vampire The Requiem, Werewolf The Forsaken, Mage The Awakening and all other publications by White Wolf are trademarks of White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned.

These products use the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only.

Reader discretion is advised.

Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com; alt.games.whitewolf and rec.games.frp.storyteller

White Wolf Publishing
735 Park North Blvd. Suite 128
Clarkston, GA 30021 USA

Need a Book for the site? Too expensive on ebay? Try:

We totally understand White Wolf's obligation to protect their copyright, even on out-of-print items, and will not offer or facilitate the copying and illegal distribution of their works. However, the materials used for playing Fera characters are in high demand and we will provide the basic character creation rules through outline form and mechanically through our character management system. According to www.copyright.gov, this is not even an issue of Fair Use since it falls outside of copyright. Please assist us in not distributing PDFs on the site or through site features.

So what is Fair Use and what can we use?

The Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107 states:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

the nature of the copyrighted work;

the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Often times, people who are accused of copyright abuse negligently refer to one of these as their reason why it is not. The law balances all four of these features into any decisions, so, even if you are not making any money on something, you can still be in violation. As I refer to each of these points, please keep in mind that all of them are relevant simultaneously and not seen in a vacuum.

White Wolf states that a site must be non-profit and non-revenue generating, including advertisements. This is an over simplification of the first criteria. The point of the criteria is, are you distributing or making money off of the White Wolf material? If a site is making money off of a banner ads, generating money for charity, generating a donation drive to pay for site features, or referencing an Amazon affiliate program to get a player to buy a book, we do not believe it fails this legal criteria. If the site's purpose is to make money off the materials or services, or the character is to charge for the distribution of these works, we believe it would (and should) fail. As such, Ahadi East Africa does not feel obliged to follow the mandate of this Dark Spiral rule since it is more restrictive of the real criteria. As further clarification, we will not charge to play or do anything that we feel breaks the purpose and character of this legal criteria. Any monies gained through sponsorship donations will go into the site's features for everyone to enjoy (ie, licensing, site hosting, new features) or will be gifted to a charity (likely reflecting Africa Wildlife Conservation). Any incentives for these donations will be purely in terms of general chat benefits (ie, special forums privileges or allowed characters) and will in no way challenge White Wolf's copyrights.

Legal precedent for the nature of the copyrighted work' has relied primarily on non-fiction vs fiction, as well as social usefulness (which has no part in this situation). To wit, facts and ideas are separate from copyright, and this entitlement is the reason that the process of character creation is allowed to be reproduced, but the examples are not. Ironically, White Wolf's policy to allow a site to supercede the rules (ie, we allow 50 freebies) is actually against copyright law [Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F.Cas. 342 (1841)].

The third criteria, amount and substantiality, assesses the quality or percentage of the original work in a new work. In general, the less used, the more likely the subject is Fair Use. Yet, a case (Sony Corp v. Universal City Studios) in which entire programs were used for private viewing, was upheld as Fair Use, whereas in another case (Harper & Row v. Nation Enters) was lost on less than 400 words. Based on these cases, we can assert that all of White Wolf's Dark Spiral rules regarding the amount of words or images are without legal merit or precedence. While it doesn't excuse wholecloth reprodution of their works, is does mean that appropriate reproduction is legitimate if it meets the other criteria. It is our policy that any work posted will be for private use for our game and will not be accessible to the Internet at large. Additionally, nothing posted is meant to be used as a competitive replacement for the original works.
Buy the original or the PDF!

The final criteria, the practical effect of the market value, is whether we are 'taking money' from White Wolf or harming the perception of the original so that it loses value. This is generally the most important factor of the four. I think it is fair to state that in no way is there intent or possibility that a small fan site such as this will cause harm to the resalability of the original (especially since it is not for sale) and moreso because we encourage its sale. Although I am sure a case could be made that various excerpts or character creation rules compete with the original work, we believe only a total boob would accept anything we posted as enough to truly play or understand the game. Although the issue of whether it is unpublished or not, by itself, be a bar for finding if it is fair use, in the context of the other points, we feel we are playing fairly. Anything we put up is simply to consolidate and summarize what should already be in front of you.
Buy the original or the PDF!

So, back to White Wolf's Dark Spiral rules. Frankly, I don't understand them. Some things are more restrictive than Fair Use law legally allows, other claims are not even backed by copyright law, and other things actually put their own copyright and trademarks at risk. There is no law that requires you to follow their rules for legal Fair Use, so everything about links to them and their banners is bunk. All of their limit rules are not backed by the substantiality argument. Personally, by not following their rules, we are being more responsible than most of the sites that they approve.

So where are we breaking the rules? Well, honestly, using the glyphs and the artwork from the books is almost always against the rules. That's probably the biggest offense. Additionaly, we are gaming in a publically accessible location, and being online is sometimes interepreted as 'publishing.' That means, that everything we type in a chat or a forums is a form of derivative work and that's illegal. But then again, a demo game in a hobby store is also a public forum (and done with the incentivized reason of increasing sales), bluebooking via livejournal is illegal, and posting character art is illegal. But this all goes back to the first criteria of the purpose and character of use, which is to use their materials to have fun without turning it into some sort of illegitmate reproduction or money making operation. Online play and the resources used to do it are no different than an electronic version of a LARP in which people may pay dues or chip in for a venue space, print out house rules, or offer derivative material so that players know the setting and scenarios.

For more information see Wikipedia's Fair Use article and The Library of Congress' Copyright Office site .