Am I allowed to...?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
#1

Hi all,

My girlfirend is busy making a website dedicated to games but she doesn’t know whether or not she can use the original title logos of the games she’s reviewing. This will be a non-profit website and the graphics will only be used to present the original product. For every review, there will be links to the official homepages of the game, developer studio & publisher.

Does she need to ask permission to use these graphics on her website and what are the restrictions. Can she hot-link images from other official websites to be displayed on her own web pages?

Any info would be helpful, especially from a fellow webmaster.

Thanks

Jon

#2

I would say don’t risk it, go ahead and contact the people who made the game or are the company. You don’t want a legal mess that you could have avoided. As far as I know you are free to mention a game, and if this site isn’t receiving major hits then the companies probably won’t care, but if it starts getting major hits they might start caring.

Long story short, just ask the company to avoid messes.

#3

If its non-profit and she isn’t claiming that its her work, then I don’t see any laws being broken.

#4

Yeah, I can’t REALLY see any breach of copyright here (not that I’m a lawyer), but still, you can never be too safe in a situation like this, can you? I also say ask the company to use thier logo, or whatever, or at least notify them of it.

#5

They arn’t going to do anything if your just reveiwing their game. Thats plain stupid, and its bad publicity.

If its a picture of the games cover you could just say you scanned the stupid case and used PS to get rid of the edges. They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, lol.

#6

Actually I have a bit of background in law and I’m about to go to law school, which hardly makes me an authority, but I can almost guarantee that no company will be upset for giving the publicity. If you sold it somehow, they might have an issue ($1 per download of the EA games logo!), but don’t worry about it. You can review all ya please, no one will give you issues.