If I made a world of warcraft cheat site, would it be illegal to use images from warcraft in my websites logo? Or post pictures of warcraft stuff around my site?

edit: ** important, what about if I used some of the names of the warcraft characters? do names count too?

pretty much everything is illegal on some level . . . if i were you I'd do it anyway, i don't think anyone is showing up to your house with an axe to do battle for using their screenshots and art work. I think you'll be just fine

Depends. Use a .cn domain and have the hosting in China. Not illegal in China

Technically yes illegal under US law eyes but find some place where not illegal

theres no rules on the internet

If they get mad just take it off. But since there's 1,000+ websites already doing that, I think you're good.

yes illegal, unless you are a distributer/reseller of the company, selling their products.

Let me ask you this....

Who ever became wealthy worrying about legalities? As others have stated it is pretty well wide spread and the owners of the game see more and more sales from this kind of activity.

Just be careful, one time some guy kept harassing me saying he was going to take legal action against me for copyright infringement, and that he demanded i pay him $80 or he would proceed via the police, I gotta say it was pretty scary he got my address and stuff, but really for $80, to this day i wonder if he was just bluffing, but we settled for $50, so again just be careful cause it was some scary threats he was sending me and it was on my mind 24/7, you don't need that

The only thing I'm concerned about is that im not using "some guys" pictures... Im using images from a huge company like Blizzard Entertainment lol... Im pretty sure they wouldn't go after someone small like myself anyways.

With games, movies and anything in the media that is this big there are usually some sources for images that are free to the public. Of course that doesn't mean they're free for commercial use. I would say search for royalty free images distributed by Blizzard if you are paranoid.

And to go a step further add a line to your website disclaimer/policy, something like:


"The images used on our website are royalty free and they primarily belong to Blizzard Entertainment (link). We do not claim ownership of these images and only use them for representational purposes."


You can use whatever wording you like, that's just an idea.

Dont worry man, my site is full of images that I took from Google images. Many different sources ofcourse so if one complains I'll just remove it and search for a new one. Many of my "borrowed" images even rank in G-images.

Originally Posted by Tosty

The only thing I'm concerned about is that im not using "some guys" pictures... Im using images from a huge company like Blizzard Entertainment lol... Im pretty sure they wouldn't go after someone small like myself anyways.

Unfortunately, the people that are most likely to go after you are the big companies. They have lawyers on retainer. Forcing to remove the images then even pay them for damages does not cost anything additional.

"Some guy" does not have a lawyer on retainer, so the only free thing he can do is ask you to remove them or threaten you, anything else he will need to pony up 5k for an attorney. That's just for starters. Even a threatening letter from an attorney will cost at least 500 to 1500 dollars