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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 3206176" data-attributes="member: 307">This is what happens when people try to give legal advice over the internet. I am actually a lawyer, and I wouldn't. If I wanted a real legal question answered, I would consult an attorney knowledgeable in the subject matter area and give him all the relevant facts so he could evaluate the situation.But, for a general background of IP law:Copyright is intellectual property law. So is patent law, trademark law, and a couple other sundry areas of law.Fair Use, which has been bandied about a lot here, is not a blanket safe haven for minor copying. There is no "10% rule" that applies generally. I know that there are some court cases that have said that no more than 10% is "nominal", but to be Fair Use, the use has to fall into certain categories of use - review, commentary, education, parody, and so on. If your use doesn't fall into these categories (and I'd consult a real, live, intellectual property law specialist to make sure one way or the other on that), then even a tiny fraction of copies work constitutes an infringement. You don't want to know what the statutory penalties are for copying (even if you make no commercial profit off of your infringing copies, they can get damages for the infringement, a set amount per infringement).Copying for use in your home game is, technically, an infringement in many cases (but not all: some game books have a disclaimer, usually on the title page, that says "you can use copied material from this book for your home game"). However, as has been noted here, this sort of infringement is usually overlooked, as there is almost no liklihood that it will be brought to the copyright holder's attention, and it probably won't be something that the copyright holder will act upon anyway. So long as the copied material is being used by you and your friends at home, it probably isn't going to become an issue.</blockquote>

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