A guide to the new Fan Art marking.

Hello, everybody. As we announced a couple days back, the Fan Art mark was implemented to let people know when a model depicts copyrighted designs and ideas from third party companies not related to you or Blend Swap. Here are some guidelines and updates on what's all this Fan Art thing about:

Why now, when did Blend Swap start worrying about this?

We've been concerned about Fan Art on the site for quite a while, and we've been torn as to what to do with all the hundreds of Fan Art we host on the site. Fan Art marking is an old pending feature we needed to implement and didn't know how to go about it until now.

Will my model be taken down after getting reported for being Fan Art?

NO. Again: NO. The Fan Art marking has nothing to do whith the fact that you made the model, but with the fact that the design it is based upon is not yours, the original design is copyrighted by a third party company, and as such noone else but the company that created the original design is allowed to use it commercially, regardless of the model being licensed under Creative Commons license.

My model got reported what should I do?

Not much really. As stated above we won't take the model off line, we just need you to visit the model page, enter the edit form and check the Fan Art checkbox in there, so the model is immediately disclaimed of commercial use. If you don't do it, normally an admin will mark your model as Fan Art. Sometimes, if we don't know if the Fan Art Claim is real or not, we might talk with the author to see if there's something to be done about it, but in most cases the models are indeed Fan Art and are marked as so.

What blends qualify as Fan Art?

• Any model with texturing or mesh features depicting a company Logo like models of Apple computers, cars, and other manufactured products whose designs are copyrighted.
• 3D models depicting characters, vehicles, weapons and other items from TV shows, and movies.
• Trademarks from food franchises, supermarkets, and any commercial shop/store/business like banks, corporations, drugstores, and other recognizable brands, famous or not.
• Recreations of company/corporative identifications like 20th Century Fox's famous intro screen and all those little clips you see at the beginning/end of movies and TV shows.
• Anything not designed by you that is not released under some sort of Open Source/Premissive/Creative Commons licensing agreement or marking.

What blends are NOT Fan Art?

• Your original ideas. Your original ideas. Your original ideas.
• Recreations or modifications of Open Source blends like those coming from the Blender Institute Open Movie/Game projects or any other Open content you may find on the web.
• Recreations of Public Domain content, like making a bust of Beethoven based on an ancient drawing or sculpture.
• Recreations or depictions of third party designs of which you have express consent to represent.

"I won't mark my models, I don't care"

Good luck with that. Remember that according to our Terms Of Use, by making use of the Site and our services, you agree that you take full responsibility for any copyright infringement you may incur, and that in no case will Blend Swap be held responsible for the content you upload to the Site. By marking your models as Fan Art you are, at the very least, disclaiming you model for commercial use which is a good way to get Fair Use exemption and safe distribution of your blend file.

However, beware that this commercial use disclaim, is NOT a warranty of you being safe from getting sued for copyright infringement. If you'd feel more comfortable with the blend being taken down definitely, please let us know through the contact page.

This also means that if a company complains to us about any amount of their designs being depicted on blends we host, and wants them taken down, we will take them down with no hesitation as they are the copyright holders of the design and have full power over it to ask the admins to take the models permanently off line.

So there you have it.

PLEASE, go mark your blends as Fan Art if you are making a character from TV, movies, comics, etc. so you are a little safer about the whole copyright deal.

Again, remember Blend Swap is not to be held responsible for any unlawful use of the site performed by any of it's users and so you're ultimately helping your self.

Finally we'd like to insist one more time, as we have done before, that if you want to be 100% safe about this matter, UPLOAD YOUR CONTENT ONLY OR CONTENT BUILT UPONG THE WEALTH OF OPEN SOURCE MODELS OUT THERE, AND HERE ON BLEND SWAP.

Thank you guys.

The Blend Swap crew.