Propaganda Posters (WAR! update) Licensing

[Emil_Rusboi]

Hello! I was looking through of old tf2 updates and came across with propaganda posters of the "WAR!" update. I thought "It would be nice to add them to the game as overlays!". But I thought about copyrights. Therefore, I did not dare and asked here.

Can I take good posters, redo them as vtf and upload them here on the site?

I opened one of them and there is some information and license

So, something about license. But since the moment I do not understanding copyrights and licenses I cant easily choose what I should to do

I will be grateful if someone answers me about it and tells about copyright!

 

[fubarFX]

Well if it is indeed copyrighted by Valve, you legally can't do anything with this poster; you have no rights. Doesn't mean valve won't let you get away with it. It's very much the same deal with decompiled maps and such, in theory we have no rights to distribute those things but Valve understands that it creates value for the playerbase so they let it slide. Valve's copyright is usually not an issue as they tend to be very permissive. They'll only shut you down if you do something truly egregious (and even then they might not care).

BUT, the other thing is that the existence of Valve's copyright doesn't exclude the possibility of other existing copyrights that are not listed, such as a copyright by the original creator. I doubt submitting your artwork to that contest made you forfeit all your rights. It likely only granted a license to Valve to use the work, and that's the license you're seeing here.

So here's the deal, technically you can't use it for the purposes of modding (altho you likely can get away with it). But, if the map was to go straight into the game, that'd be fine because Valve already has a copyright to back your usage of the poster (that is, if the wiki is to be trusted and Valve actually has a copyright over that artwork).

I'm not a legal expert by any means but that's the situation as I understand it.

 

[ics]

In addition to what fubarFX said, they basically don't seem to care if your creation benefits their values or IP as a whole, and you're not trying to make money with the content you have meaning it has to be free (excluding their video policy).

But in terms of TF2, you should only use the content freely available for it. Ingame content or downloads of work created by other people and credit them for it. Using copyrighted content without permission leads you to dead end.

 

[Emil_Rusboi]

@ics @fubarFX
Thanks! Catch my appreciation!