DM T-Shirts

THE Materializer · Post by **THE Materializer** » Thu Jan 01, 2004 8:42 pm

I read one of Beowuuf's replies to a forum entry.. theres T-SHIRTS!??! I would like one, definetely.. what kind are there? I guess I should check E-bay?

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Thu Jan 01, 2004 9:10 pm

Unfortunately, there's not. Cowsmanaut raised an issue about copyright problems which more or less closed the discussion. Since these fora are more or less accepted by those who still hold the copyrights on various sources mainly because there is no indication of anyone selling/gaining anything from our hobby activities here it might be a dangerous or at least thoughtless step to use copyrighted material on a T-Shirt without explicit consent, nice as it would be.

Very nice picture by the way!

Regards, PitD

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Thu Jan 01, 2004 10:57 pm

as long as they are not used/sold commercially, it surely is no preblem to make a DM-shirt. of course that won't be too cheap (i guess the regulars here can't share one printing shop...) and you need a motive in a format the printer can use (i think jpg is ok).

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Thu Jan 01, 2004 11:03 pm

If you do not use any of the material included in the games (original pictures, Dungeon Master logo ...) it should be possible, because it's your own artwork then. But it won't be cheap, that's definitely true.

Regards, PitD

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Thu Jan 01, 2004 11:11 pm

i think it's even ok to use copyrighted motives as long as it is non-commercial.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 4:51 am

well, the thing is.. if it just says Dungeon Master Like the logo above does then you have to figure that while it's close it's not exact. We all know what we are associating it to.. however it's not exactly the same since the fonts are different and the layout different in fact the whole shebang is unique in it's own right. Though there is enough similarity to the orriginal for any fan (or creator) to make the connection.

So it then comes to the Dungeon master title.. it's a common term used long before they made use of it. It's a term from D&D and it's been used in books and movies without the need to pay FTL for it.

So, it depends on what you are using and how it is used. I would be so inclined to make a design and find a silk screening place to make them if people were interested.. however out of respect for the team I would love to include them some how. Heck if I could incoporate their signatures on the back and then send them a portion of the money made off it.. hey it would be cool.

Otherwise.. I would be instead inclined to email the design to anyone who wanted it and they could find their own place and print it out of their own money and I would take nothing from it. This would be legal so long as it wasn't being mass produced and sold for profit. It's indivdual use.

many many things to think of here.

(oh and they don't usually like Jpeg.. BMP, PSD, and mainly other Mac compliant formats) Seems like they mainly use macintosh computers.. at least the ones I've talked to.

moo

Simon · Post by **Simon** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 8:57 am

Perhaps it would be better to produce your own designs, rather than T-shirts using the graphics, and make them free to download. Then there is no hint of any commercialisation. If you want to then print one for yourself, you can. Here are two places I know that do it, one is in the US and one is in the UK:

US:
http://www.cafepress.com/

UK:
http://www.tshirtstudio.com/

There may be more. I for one would like a DM T-shirt but I'm terrible at designing stuff like this.

I have seen someone wearing a Dungeon Master 2 T-shirt before - I don't know whether it was homemade or not.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 12:20 am

huh? how'd i start this one? *tries to remember if I got drunk enough*

i would agree with what cows said, especially about the DM name (they couldn't have copyrighted it, thoguh the font/laypout of the name, certainly) and distribution - so easy to get an e-mail with a cool design and get it printed yourself, so much cheaper too, plus you know the colour and size are exactly what you want! : )

I think even for your own personal use, its against the letter of the law to reproduce anything. Personal copy of a tape/CD for listening? Bad. Names and images copyrighted? Bad. I remember the action sheets in gamebooks had to be marked that you could reproduce them with the permission of the author.
Anyone making their own t-shirt with whatever graphics they want could get away with it because it would be too small to be worthwhile, rather than because of legal reasons. So go for it! I do think that when you distribute it, even without any profit, dodgy...very dodgy...
Even as nice as the DM people have been about everyone's use of their imagines in this community, that might be the thin end of the wedge that would make them go 'umm, actually...' once they found out

DM2 t-shirt - gambit/christophe probably know, but it does sound like something promotional they may have released at the time the game came out...

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 2:04 am

Yep, DM2 T-shirts were promotional items when the game came out -- I have one of them! Bit big for me though, being the skinny ribs that I am...

ParuNexus · Post by **ParuNexus** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 5:29 am

I have baught 6 shirts that someone else sold on ebay, simple white shirts with some pictures of a show & comic I like. I've asked if it was legal both the person on ebay and looking up laws, I've never been questioned aobut them. I have gone to places in malls etc that allow you to make your own, they said it is LEGAL. I baught this other shirt from a social group I belong to that has small pictures of about 30 different shows. Never been questioned, the group hasn't had legal recourse. Of coruse if someone is making one I'm intrested in buying one.(got to pay for the shirt itself.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 5:32 am

so what's the deal on this? Should one be made up? does someone have ideas of what they would like? I'm sure Gambit and I could wrestle some nice designs together

Right Gambit 'ol pal!

Perhaps if we try hard enough... someone might be able to get some kind of legitimate feed back from the original team.. but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

thoughts?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 11:44 am

Yeah, i mean i'm sure if we said 'hey, do you mind if we e-mail out a design using DM images that will end up probably on about 20 t-shirts around the world without any money or profit, do you mind' they would say 'sure, whatever' right?

but seriously, i can't imagine its fully legal - that said, how many times have you been at a big open-air concert/festival and people are sellign the cheap t-shirts outside...
hmm...

ok, why did i start looking at US copyright laws...they make my head ache...
ok, before i gave up, there is a thing in US copyright about 'fair use' - ie for new reporting, teaching ,etc reproduction isn't illegal...but afte rthat the wording gets wishy washy - ie fair use even covers commercial aspects, without full stop prohibiting them

"In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

right, on a printing site, here's a legal bit:
"All items are custom manufactured to your specifications. We cannot accept liability for copyright or trademark infringement on designs submitted to us by you and manufactured for you. By submitting a design of a copyrighted or trademarked item, you warrant that you have been authorized by the copyright or trademark owner or its agents or representatives to have that design manufactured by us on your behalf."

So there you go...what the heck? Personally i would imagine that's why you can get away with it (its not worth the while to try and argue that someone even selling a few t-shirts has ruined your market share, or is damaging your brand, etc) but i wouldn't say its not actionable - but then why do concerts have so many unauthorised t-shirt sellers outside!

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 11:53 am

http://www.splc.org/legalresearch.asp?id=32 is probably the easiest one i've found, its a student body talkign about trademarkign and copyrighting...

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 12:13 pm

So if there was a design the graphics could be emailed and everybody wanting one can get it nmade at a local copy shop provided it does not carry original graphics. I think you're right that it's not fully legal but in that way the commercial aspect would be completely covered since nobody is gaining anything except above mentioned copy shops and there's no harm to anyone as well.

Regards, PitD

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 3:41 pm

ok, lets talk about the law-stuff.

Federal copyright law states that an individual other than the copyright owner can use a copyrighted work without permission if the use would be considered a "fair use."

i think, that is a fair use.
1. noone earns money because we use copyrighted symbols
2. noone would buy the shirt because he might be thinking it's an official product of FTL
3. FTL doesn't lose money because they don't sell DM-shirts (that's the difference to the unauthorized shirt-vendors at concerts).
so as long as noone sells his shirt on ebay, there is no problem in my eyes.

but there's another question next to that if the shirts would be fully legal - would the authors of DM would like us to wear these shirts? if they would, they would never bring us to court, no matter how law-situation is, but allow it.
after reading some of the copyright-stuff, i'm not too sure if rtc or csb4win are fully legal in these terms - but i don't think someone got mail for that so far.

so i say the same as before - if you make a downloadable design which anyone of us can bring to a printing shop, there would be no problem at all.

btw: anyone knows if the authors read these forums? there was rumor about that in most fan-forums, but i never saw anyone posting...

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 4:22 pm

here we go.. I'll make it legal.. plain and simple. it's not a DM t-shirt.

I'll make a dungeon-master.com T-shirt.. this way we are essentially advertising the site not the game and it does not directly have any thing to do with the game.. it has to do with the site. Period.

I'm quite sure that solves the problem right there. Is this acceptable?

Will take me a while to do.. I was thinking of a dragon holding up the metal plaque curled around it in a hole in a stone wall.. I dunno if you get the idea of it.. but it's an idea..

I can set up a dungeon-master.com store then which I've seen done by a number of people.. basically I provide them with images and then they do all the printing, ordering, etc and they provide you with a number of options. T-shirts, sweat shirts, mugs, caps, etc etc.

also I suppose I should mention that I have the sculpt of the dark wizard on his throne done and he just needs his final mold done and I can start casting and painting them. I have everything I need except the poly urethane for the mold and the plaster for the casts. So he'll be available too. .. and yes those I mentioned would be getting a free one are still getting that free one.

moo

Simon · Post by **Simon** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 9:43 pm

maybe this seems a little harsh, but I would rather have a Dungeon Master t-shirt containing 100% graphics from the original game than one of the website - it's the game I love not the site...

I'm sure its possible to throw some graphics together, even a t-shirt with a picture of the dragon from DM in the dungeon and some witty phrase below it would make a perfect t-shirt in my opinion, and perhaps the ftl/dungeon master logo on the reverse?

I don't care for copyright issues, I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, and if anyone chooses to contact myself or anyone else about it who is associated with DM then I'll gladly stop.

I dare say though that the rights to Dungeon Master belong to Interplay now because of their association with DM2, but this is purely speculation.

It's just some harmless fun making a t-shirt, you don't even have to sell the t-shirts yourself, just produce graphics, which cannot be any more or less legal than putting manual scans or screenshots on your website!

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 9:55 pm

it's not harsh.. however if you simply want a T-shirt containing orriginal GFX from DM then just rip them and take them to the printers. Simple enough.. You don't need anyone to do that for you..

The reason I suggested the website is that it would still have the "Dungeon master" most likley as seen in the default backdrop of these forums and the fantasy element. Still celebrating the game.. just being a little carefull is all.

Anyway, I might make the image regardless.. if no one is interested in having it on (insert item here) then I won't bother with the store..

no worries

moo

ParuNexus · Post by **ParuNexus** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 5:52 am

if you simply want a T-shirt containing orriginal GFX from DM then just rip them and take them to the printers. Simple enough.. You don't need anyone to do that for you..

since alot of us are far apart to, it woudl take time and to send money and shirt. Since people have mentioned there are local places etc they can do there own, why not do it yourself however you want.

Why would you need to rely on someone else for a shirt you want? this DM.com shirt is more symbolic of the members here and to a lesser extent the community aorund the game who feel like sharing there experince here.

I baught anime shirts on my own i can make my own but when my local anime club has doing it's 10th year bday shirt I went and baught one.

p.s. very sorry if i also sound nasty, just pointing out something.

-FoxBat · Post by **-FoxBat** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 10:19 am

OK... putting the name dungeon master on a T-Shirt isn't fair use, but naming a site dungeonmaster.com is...

I realise using actual logos and graphics may be a different matter... but as I recall interplay is dead or else dying now, what with all that trouble with Black Isle. Someone probably could press charges if they want to, but after the critical and financial failure that was DM2, I would bet that no-one cares anymore. No-one's even gonna remember Baldur's Gate soon enough fer crying out loud...

Simon · Post by **Simon** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 12:42 pm

Sorry but I have barely any skills at all, I wouldn't know how to take graphics from dungeon master or anything like that and produce something that looks effective from it

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 4:21 pm

this DM.com shirt is more symbolic of the members here and to a lesser extent the community aorund the game who feel like sharing there experince here.

I wouldn't put DM.com.. or Dungeon-Master.com on the T-shirt as the main design it would say "Dungeon Master" in a similar manner to that of the orriginal logo as seen in the sheild I made for the forum. One must agree that while being similar it is not the same as the logo since the fonts are different and the blood splash etc makes it unique. We have established that "dungeon master" can not be copyright since it's a common term. Their specific logo can be, their game is, and as such I would not use those things directly.

Secondly the community is what we should be celebrating here. We are the people keeping it alive. I never ever created this site for myself. I think that should be apparent from the way I allow everyone to have an opinion in how it is put together and used. So in promoting the site I'm only promoting the community and inviting others to share with us their enjoyment of the game. I don't think that's a bad idea. It makes sense to me that if i were to wear a T-shirt letting people know I love DM (which is really what we are doing by wearing it) that if somewhere there was a easy to remember URL to go to for them to join you and the rest of us. Again I stress it is not to be the main part of the image.

Thirdly, the creation of a store does this. It provides a central location to get anything you want from, they handle the mass printing and such so if there are a lot of orders then it keeps the price down. which benefits everyone. However, I'm not adversed to providing the image(s) to everyone if they want to print elsewhere. The only issue I have with that is a T-shirt print resolution is around about 4000x3000 pixels in an uncomressed format cmyk colour.. this is a LARGE file. So where do I host it? just from regular images and text this site hit it's 1 gig limit and had to be raised to 2 gigs. so I can't keep it here. The other option is email but hotmail can not handle anything above 1000k and I'm not big on sending things from my home mail since I use that for family and bussiness.. the last time I used it for anything else I ended up with so much spam I had to delete the account and make a new one. also the PSD for my last T-shirt was 262 megs.. I think that was unflattened.. so it might go as low as about 60megs compressed to one layer. still very large though.

lot's of stuff to think about.

ParuNexus · Post by **ParuNexus** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 10:15 am

i was just teying to be helpful, didn't think all of that though very well.

must the picture be normal tshirt size? how about a thumbnail? and keep the real picture on computer for the real creation?
perhasps say the quality is this ifne but is X times larger. and have people just enlarge the picture that size. ... i dunno.

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 11:07 am

I can temporarily provide a location for an image on an ftp-server for say, a week. That means once a picture is available I can offer you to keep the download up for 7 days. Sorry I cannot offer you more, but that's about the maximum time I can argue it.

Regards, PitD

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 11:15 am

I have about 4-5Mb free on my dmjump account

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 7:08 pm

no worries Paru.. I should put more smileys in my text

I'm not comming down on you nor are my feelings hurt... I'm only defending my point and providing some additional thoughts for the community to digest.

PITD.. you realise that providing a 60-200 meg file for a user base of over 1000 could criple your site if enough people wanted it..

Anyway, as I siad before.. the orriginal smaller graphics could be used by anyone who wanted to set it up themselves. However, one of two things happen when you enlarge such images for print on survaces like a T-shirt.

1. you resample it and you get a rather fuzzy image printed depending on the ammount of resampling you can have a mix of fuzzy and pixelated or trueley fuzzy and still really horrible.

2. You get clear and concise pixels.. very large ones. This can look fine if it's intended design wise, otherwise it's not all that appealing..

in order to have a clear and decent quality image you need to make it the proper resolution and you need to convert to the printing standard as well this means converting RGB to CMYK.

everythings a trade off.. size, money, time, effort, and quality..

moo

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 11:03 pm

I think that out of 1000 people approximately a tenth will actually download the file. Over the course of a week that should be fine. I thought about the option before proposing it, should there still be any problems I may have to redraw the file but that should be about all.

Regards, PitD

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 11:28 pm

I now only have 3.7 Mb spare...so I can only host half a corner : (

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 1:29 am

sorry.. it's not 1000 people.. I was being over zealous. it's only about 394 users. Only about 12 of which post regularily. However I always try to plan for the worst. never underestimate the net I say.. or else the next thing you know somone has posted the link on some UseNet and ervywhere else they could think of saying "Limited time only!!" and bang you've got 1000's of hits :O

you're probably right though.. maybe no more than 20 or more people will actually download it..

I'll see what i can do about geting some visual ideas together so people can start deciding what they would like.. probably not untill later in the week..

moo

ParuNexus · Post by **ParuNexus** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:04 am

ack long message lost, i was looking up sometihng for an idea and it opened in this window not a new one GRR!

ok pretty much i have lots and lots of space on my computer, I leave all my IM on except icq(for which i rarely use now becuase of AIM and other reasons). I'm also on many IRC networks if that will make a difference either.

http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/introduction.html

sourceforge etc also have many BT clones etc. there are other tihngs to.

perhaps devolope a Direct connect HUB just for DM. well ok expand it to other games as well, even with all the user created dungeons etc it's still would be very small and not that worth while IMHO. toss in EoB , captive etc and perhaps. asuming people would be intrested in doing it and staying connected.
only one has to setup the server... but i tihnk this is going off an a tangent. the best way ot reach me is IM.

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