ZUN Copyright? What can and can't be done?

[Wriggle Nightbug]

I would like to hear your opinions about this subject:

I want to buy a present for my best friend and another for my girlfriend.
Both are huge fans of Touhou so I thought it'd be nice to buy them T-shirts with Touhou images printed on them. But I can't help but wonder if this is acceptable considering the characters in those images are not mine, but ZUN's. What do you people think? Are T-shirts with Touhou Images printed on them acceptable or not?

[Helix ⑨]

Ofcourse you can D: It's not like you are gonna mass produce 10k t-shirts and sell them on the black market, are you?

[Recon 5]

Whatever ZUN really thinks about his copyright, the fact is he hasn't taken action against the hundreds of Japanese groups who use his characters in comics and games and who sell remixes of his music without giving him more than a credits listing. Just don't spoil the endings of any of the games on your tees. That he doesn't want.

[Doomsday]

IIRC, ZUN said he doesn't mind people making derivative works from the Touhou series.

[Cadmas]

ZUN is just one man so the amount of time and money it would take to fight the large amount of doujin circles just wouldn't really be worth it. He wouldn't be able to make new games and end up running out of money.
Does that suck for him? Yeah kinda, but in return touhou spreads like ants after you crush their pile.

No one can stop you from making a shirt with any image on it.
It's protected under free use because its nonprofit and hell it's free advertising.

[Nobu]

About the only thing I heard ZUN having a problem with when it came to fanworks was the Anime being done by Maikaze. And his reasons seemed more because he thought the Anime would attract people to the series that didn't play the games, thus circumventing the games entirely.

All the doujin, merchandise, and fanworks just serves to hype up and promote the game and series even more. All of his profits are from the games themselves.

[Aisha]

You can't sell your Touhou shit commercially (large-scale), and you can't try passing it off as an official Team Shanghai Alice product. I think that's about it.

And really, what's ZUN going to do? Show up at your doorstep in the Netherlands and threaten you with a broken bottle of beer?

[Wriggle Nightbug]

Thanks people^^ I feel much more confident now. And indeed I'm not going to sell any shirts or stuff like that. It's just a present for some very good friends, thats all.
Thanks alot~

[Nobu]

I don't think it'd be a problem even if you sold stuff for profit. Just don't grow a business to the point to where it eclipses the game or ZUN, or tries to pass itself off as officially endorsed by ZUN, and you're fine.

Be sure to post pictures of the T-shirts after you make them! You may even get commissions, who knows.

[_Zac_]

ZUN's guidelines for derivitave works:
-Only sell it independently (or small scale, this is pretty debatable)
-No Ending spoilers

So creating two shirts for personal use by your friends would be fine, hell I think you could put anything on the shirts and no one will sue you.

[Wriggle Nightbug]

Be sure to post pictures of the T-shirts after you make them! You may even get commissions, who knows.

Oooh that'd be nice^^. But I don't think that's gonna happen since I live all the way in the Netherlands and I'm not the one who prints the shirts. There's a small shop in Amsterdam that prints images on shirts.