Could there be legal reprecussions for using a TV show/Anime/Series as a design for T-Shirts? For example, if I wanted to make a T-shirt of a character for the Arrow Tv series, but I drew it myself/designed it myself. Is it legal for me to sell products (T-shirts) of it?
You can make a derivative work if: the original is not under copyright, you are the copyright owner, you hold a licence from the copyright owner that says you can, or your usage is fair use or fair dealing as applicable. For your proposal, the image is copyright, you don’t own it, you don’t have a licence and what you propose is neither fair use nor fair dealing. You can’t do it and you can be sued if you do.
The reason is 17 USC 106: the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following... (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work The original picture is the underlying protected work. The ASCII reproduction is a derivative work. If you get permission to make the derivative work, it is okay. Otherwise, it is copyright infringement. There is an escape clause, "fair use", which amounts to taking a chance that you won't be sued and then arguing that you didn't do them any prohibited harm. If you make any money off of the game, you have a major strike against you. I suggest reading the fair use FAQ; basically, it is really hard to know how a fair use defense will fare, but based on prior cases, I'd say it's infringement, not fair use.
Of course you'd be in legal trouble, the contract is still valid. I also don't know why you don't consider virtual goods to be goods. Take this example: You buy a 1 year subscription for (example) netflix. The next day they cancel your subscription but don't give you the money back because its not a "real good". This should make it clear that virtual goods are goods too in the eyes of the law. Question is if police/lawyers care about it as much as for "real" goods.
Whoever "derived" the illegal derivative work most likely has copyright in his derivations, unless they are not worth copyright protections. Say I take the Harry Potter books and add a few chapters and try to sell it - that's copyright infringement of course, but I have the copyright on these additional chapters. However, I don't have the right to allow you to copy the derived work. And even if you have the right to copy the original work, you don't have the right to copy the derived work because it is a different work. I could extract my changes, and allow you to take them and do with them what you like. You could then create an illegally derived work yourself. I couldn't sue you, but the original copyright holder could. To the comments: One, a work and a derivative of the work are not the same, so even if you have the right to make a copy of a work, that doesn’t give you any right whatsoever to copy a derivative work - they are not the same work. Two, the copyright holder has the exclusive right to control copying and the creation of derivative works. If the copyright holder doesn’t want derivatives to exist, then creating them, copying them etc. is always copyright infringement.
Generally, it's illegal. You are creating a derivative work and you are not allowed to do that without the permission of the copyright holder. Some jurisdictions may have exceptions, such as fair use under US law. However, this generally protects uses that are intended to comment on or parody the work. It doesn't sound like that is the purpose of your image modification. NOT including: faceswaps, modifications that would shame or affect negatively the reputation of the actors on the image. That doesn't make it legal. I share it in a way that I don't make any economic profit out of it, and clearly stating that it is a modified image (not sure if inside the image, or in the caption under it) and state who is the legal owner of the original image. That doesn't make it legal, either.
This is known as "film novelization"(For example, the novelizations of the Star Wars movies are film novelizations, created under license), and is copyright infringement unless made under a license from the copyright holder. Specifically, you would be making a derivative work of the original, by changing the medium. One of the rights provided by copyright is the right to control the transference from one medium into another. This, in my (non-lawyer) opinion, is unlikely to be found as fair use. There are four test factors for determining fair use(source), decided on a case by case basis: Transformative Character of the Derivative Work: Unlikely to be found in your favor, as nothing is transformed ("I don't change anything, the name are the same, everything is the same, it's just a conversion to textual form"). Nature of the Original Work: A narrative entertainment film, thus unlikely to be found in your favor. Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Taken: You've taken all of it; not in your favor. Effect on the Potential Market: You are essentially providing a free version of what copyright holders can often charge for; negative effect on their potential market. Not in your favor.
If I lock you in a room without access to anything and tell you &quot;Write a novel&quot; and you write a novel with characters, you have copyright in the work. But it's not absolute: If you use your own characters, you own all the copyright in the work, but not in the idea, as ideas are not copyrightable, see Feist v Rural. If you use someone else's characters extensively (as in more than a short hommage/cameo), you very likely make a derivate. You own a copyright in your part, as in the expression of the story or pictures you created, but you do not gain property interest in the existing characters' expression. Since the copyright to the characters lies with the owner of their IP, you need their OK to release (and also to even make) your work - as with the owner of a copyright is the sole right to decide on distribution and creation of derivates under 17 USC § 106 (2). Also remember that making an unlicensed derivate work risks having nothing you can sue for in case the original copyright owner lifts your ideas and scenes-a-faire parts and adapts them for their own derivate, see Anderson v Stallone The strange case of fanfiction chains... Now, there is a strange situation when a work is based on a work which is based on a work... Then, publishers and editors start with red ink and the result is, that what people know as Twilight now has nothing to do with the fanfiction it started as (It wasn't Vampires in the original draft), and 50 Shades of Grey ended up striking any and all supernatural from it, despite it having been a Twilight fanfiction originally. By making own characters and own expression of the world, there could be no copyright infringement. US law vs Egypt law? Both Egypt and the US have signed the Berne convention, meaning that copyright is very very similar in the broad strokes that the right to allow or disallow derivates is with the copyright holder. Also, since Ben10's copyright owners are to the best of my knowledge in the US (Cartoon Network Studios &amp; Men of Action Studios), they will sue in a US federal court.
Yup, copyright statutes and case law cover these situations. In Canada, look at at Copyright Act Section 30.7: It is not an infringement of copyright to incidentally and not deliberately (a) include a work or other subject-matter in another work or other subject-matter; or (b) do any act in relation to a work or other subject-matter that is incidentally and not deliberately included in another work or other subject-matter. The US doesn't have this in statute, but some defendants used a fair use defence, some successful, some not. (http://www.iposgoode.ca/2010/04/cindy-incidentally-the-incidental-inclusion-exception-in-canadian-copyright-law/) If you're using a piece of art as part of a tutorial, or being illustrative of a point, or subject of commentary, review, or criticism, that may be fair use or fair dealing.