ID:181099
 
Is it illegal to own a fan game and run it off of a server your own at home, then ask for donations to pay the electricity bill?
It's illegal to make money off of someone else's intellectual property.
Yes.
In response to Lugia319
The thing is, I'm not making money off of it.

If you're taking donations to keep the server hosted on a shell it's fine right? Well what if I'm hosting on an actual Windows XP Server in my own home? I need to keep that running. What keeps it running? The electric bill. So I'm not making any money.
In response to Ganing
If the only thing being run on the service is a fangame you're basically profiting on the fangame, because it's coming from the fangame solely and only going towards keeping the game going.

Now if you had another original project running on the server and asked for donations for that project and used those funds to keep the server going it would be a different story.


-- and no, asking for donations to keep a shell server going aren't legal if it's for a fangame and coming from a fangame.
In response to Nadrew
Sorry sir,

But you can create a game similar to a series you like, as long as you don't include character names, objects, attack names and all.

You should really check this topic out. It talks about how close a game can be to a series without crossing any illegal lines. http://www.byond.com/developer/forum/?id=787416#787416
Not even that.

This is why US law can be pretty funky.

Illegal tends to mean a fairly specific thing when you and I usually say it, we usually mean "against criminal law". Stealing for example (the obvious kind if you will, taking candy from a store) is illegal. Nigerian money scams (fraud), is illegal. Murder, pretty illegal. Illegal of course also tends to imply imprisonment or similar punitive action.

Intellectual property law obviously isn't quite of the same scale, no-one (at least in the US I would sincerely hope) is going to throw me into a prison for making fan-art of a series. So you and I would commonly suggest that no, it's not illegal in the sense we usually think of the word, and to call it illegal I suspect is actually pretty misleading and fearmongering, because of what people commonly think when they think of the consequences of illegality.

Of course, intellectual property law is still law, and permits the intellectual property holder certain rights and protections, should they wish to use them. In the US, for 99% of cases, doing pretty much anything with someone's intellectual property that they didn't expressly permit will give them the option to use their protections and rights against you, if they see fit.

So if you're talking 100% safe on the matter of intellectual property, your answer is in the answer to the following question "Do you have the intellectual property holder's express permission to do that?"

If the answer is yes, you're fine. Also, well done for writing to them and getting appropriate permissions to do whatever it is you wanted to do, as usually 'all rights are reserved' until you ask.

If the answer is no, you shouldn't be doing that.

That's the 100% safe, moralistic answer to your question. There are principally no exceptions to this, and if in doubt, assume your case is not an exceptional one.

If we're going for 100% safe, then unless you have permission particularly, you're probably just in violation of the intellectual property holder's rights by virtue of just having a fan-game. nevermind the matter of donations.

Whether you realistically should care or feel this is fair of course is another matter, but I'll assume you're a respectful and upstanding individual who feels the law is never unjust and should always be obeyed at all times. ;)

It'd be cool if you'd read up on US copyright and intellectual property law actually, to get yourself educated for being a voting adult US citizen. Maybe with a more general education on the matter, there'd be more inclination to balance the law and make it more reasonable again.
In response to Truseeker
If people actually care about this, they should seek proper legal advice. If they don't, then I dunno why they're asking really.
Ganing wrote:
Is it illegal to own a fan game and run it off of a server your own at home, then ask for donations to pay the electricity bill?

The underlined part is irrelevant and the answer to the remaining relevant part of the question is "yes". Making a profit might make the IP holders more likely to take action but they can take action (in other words, shut the game down) whether you're making money or not. All DBZ games were removed from BYOND whether they had subscriptions, accepted donations, or were completely free.