Project Redcap:Copyrights

This page explains necessary legal information about copyrights. All contributors to Project: Redcap are expected to read and follow these guidelines. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

Our Policy: The Rights You Grant Us

By editing the pages of this site, adding files to it, or so on you agree to let this site publish and modify these contributions. In the case this site or its URL are abandoned for any reason, you further allow similar rights to any future sites of similar purposes, serving the Ars Magica fan community. In so doing, you do not claim any right over Atlas Games' intellectual property, and commit that any use of such property is in good faith and should only be published subject to Atlas Games' permission. Note that Atlas Games has generously given this site the permission to make limited use of Ars Magica related intellectual property.

Our Policy: Contribution Guidelines

Do not post copyrighted material to this site unless you happen to be the copyright holder, or can show explicit, written permission. That includes maps, images, and the text of Ars Magica books. Note that even though ArM4 is available for free online, Atlas Games still owns the copyright.

We can still make this site a useful resource by writing articles that act as a companion to the books. We can write brief summaries explaining how a rule works or what a game concept is, or commenting on it, or adding original material. Don't quote whole paragraphs from the books. Don't paraphrase in detail, either. (Paraphrasing is not a clear copyright violation, but it could still potentially hurt Atlas' sales, so we don't do it.) Keep text summarizing rules or Canon brief, and give references to the Ars Magica books instead of quoting from them.

Also, please don't bother the people at Atlas Games requesting permission to post this or that. They already have an open invitation to contribute any of their own copyrighted material they want to. If it's not here, we can assume they don't want it here.

Permission to Use Artwork from Atlas Games Web Site

Atlas Games has kindly offered all Ars Magica players their permission to use images from the Atlas Games Web site to help promote Ars Magica..

You may use on this site any image you can download from the Atlas Web site. Permission is not given to use other artwork owned by Atlas, for example scans from Ars Magica books.

What is this 'Copyright'?

Copyright is a legal concept that makes the publishing industry possible. Simply put, under copyright, a person or company (the copyright holder) has the exclusive right to make copies of a written work or image (such as a book, article, photograph, or Web site). No one else may make copies of that work without the copyright holder's permission, so the copyright holder can make money by selling copies of the work.

From the point of view of copyright law, electronic distribution -- posting to a Web site or even sending via e-mail -- is a form of publishing. Posting copyrighted material to the Web or sending it by e-mail is a copyright violation.

Copyright laws vary from one country to another. In case it matters, Ars Magica is published in the United States and is subject to U.S. copyright law. For an accessible overview of copyright principles, please refer to the Copyright Basics and FAQ on the U.S. Copyright Office Web site.

What is a 'Trademark'?

Trademarks are not the same as copyrights. People often confuse the two. Trademarks are a bit too complicated to explain here, but an excellent summary may be found at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Why Worry About Copyrights?

Ars Magica is published by Atlas Games. Atlas holds all the copyrights to published Ars Magica material, and most of the trademarks.

Atlas Games encourages players to create Web sites and participate in the Fan Community, and have been very generous in their support of that community. They do ask us (the community) to respect their copyrights and trademarks.

There are two reasons we worry about copyrights.

1. We, the maintainers of this site, could get into trouble if copyright violations occur. As a practical matter, any kind of legal trouble would probably cause this site to go off-line, permanently. That would be a big loss to the community.
2. Atlas Games is run by nice people, and they've asked us to be careful. They are concerned that customers won't buy Ars Magica books if people can get the same information for free online. It's in the best interest of Ars Magica fans if the game continues to be a profitable business for Atlas.