I'm making a map of the world, with some changes (I subdivide Brazil, India, Indonesia, and added some countries: Mozambique, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Greece, Morocco ...), but I kept some things from the original map, the creator of the original map can sue me?

if anyone would be sued, it would be fizzer.. you are making no financial gain from it..
and I don't think maps can be copyrighted.. *don't quote me*

<This will be a long post. It may also be a bit technical.>

This is mostly from the Terms of Service. I included all of the sections needed in full so that they can easily be read in full, but you do not have to fully read the first section. Only until you hit the "[-]" (A bit hard to find, but the Terms of Service are located at the bottom of the Welcome area in the Home tab.)

[Link Here](http://warlight.net/TermsOfService.aspx)

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Terms of Service

I. Terms
By visiting or using this web site or any WarLight, LLC.’s products, software, data feeds or services, you are agreeing to be bound by these Terms of Service, all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. If you do not agree with any of these terms, you are prohibited from using or accessing this site. The materials contained in this web site are protected by applicable copyright and trade mark law.
“Accounts” in this document refer to a User who registers with WarLight, LLC to obtain permission to access certain site features.
“Content” in this document includes, but is not limited to, text, photos, graphics, maps created via the map designer, maps uploaded to the map designer, or any file uploaded to WarLight, LLC.'s web site.
[-]
“User(s)” in this document refer to a person or persons who have visited any website owned by WarLight, LLC.
“WarLight, LLC” in this document refers to WarLight, LLC, a limited liability company governed by the laws of the State of Washington, formed 2/1/2011
“Web Site” in this document refers to any web content originating for WarLight, LLC which includes, but not limited to, warlight.net and any pages therewithin.


II. Use License
Permission is granted for Users to temporarily use the materials on WarLight, LLC.'s website for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title, and under this license you may not:
modify or copy the materials;
attempt to decompile, reverse engineer or modify any software or data feed contained on WarLight, LLC.'s web site;
attempt to disrupt service to WarLight, LLC web site;
remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the materials; or
transfer the materials to another person or "mirror" the materials on any other server.
This license shall automatically terminate if Users violate any of these restrictions and may be terminated by WarLight, LLC. at any time. Upon terminating your viewing of these materials or upon the termination of this license, Users must destroy any downloaded materials in the Users possession whether in electronic or printed format.

...

IX. Content

Users shall be solely responsible for User created Content and the consequences of submitting and publishing Content on WarLight, LLC.'s web site. Users affirm, represent, and warrant that they own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to publish Content they submit; and you license to WarLight, LLC. all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to such Content for publication pursuant to these Terms of Service.

Users retain all of ownership rights of Content they submit to WarLight, LLC. However, by submitting Content to WarLight, LLC., Users hereby grant WarLight, LLC. a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and WarLight, LLC.'s (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. Users also hereby grant each User of the Service a non-exclusive license to access their Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service.

The Content on the Service, and the trademarks, service marks and logos on the Service, are owned by or licensed to WarLight, LLC., subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights under the law.


XI. Governing Law
Any claim relating to WarLight, LLC.'s Web Site shall be governed by the laws of the State of Washington without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

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Sorry for the long post as it already is, but I believe that those are all the sections that refer to this, though I can easily be wrong.

What I believe that the Terms of Service mean is that you might not be officially allowed to do so, but Fizzer's word would be law, technically speaking not realistically, so anything that Fizzer says about this can overrule any attempt to apply the Terms of Service to anything on the website.

To start with my guess on the matter, all of the maps are considered "Content" according to Section I and are talked about in Section XI.


Section XI starts of with the fact that: "Users retain all of ownership rights of Content they submit to WarLight, LLC."

Basically, the person who submitted the map retains ownership for creating the map from what I have read.


Some possible good news for the future is that Section IX also says: "Users hereby grant WarLight, LLC. a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to ... prepare derivative works of ... the Content in connection with the Service and WarLight, LLC.'s (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including ... promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels."

If I did read the above correctly, then a user who posts a map to the site grants WarLight the ability and power to create and/or modify content provided on the site. If Fizzer allows it, that could possibly be extended to allow others users to do so as well, but currently does not allow it.


Finally, the reason that Section II is up there in the post is due to this bit here: "II. Use License
Permission is granted for Users to temporarily use the materials on WarLight, LLC.'s website for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title, and under this license you may not:
modify or copy the materials;..."

Materials could possibly be extended to include Content which would mean that you would not be allowed to copy a map. Taking a map and editing it might be allowed, but I am unsure about it in the end.


I will add that if you do get permission from the original creator of the map and include a source in the description of you map, then you would likely be fine as you would be granted permission to use and submit the map.


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If Fizzer does make a post here about it, then ignore what I have said, unless Fizzer says that it is correct or something similar.
***

I didn't read SGV_STH's post, but just two things. Also, IANAL.

First, maps can be copyrighted perfectly well.


Second, **whether you can modify the map, or actually whether you can reproduce it at all, depends on a particular license**.

If it was copyrighted, then you can't do any of these things and, if the copyright holder cared enough, you could possibly be sued. Note that hardly anyone would sue you for something as "silly" as a map for some online game - Fizzer would just receive a takedown request and that would be it. (I think.)

If the map was released into public domain, you can do anything you want with it, copy and modify, and even monetize (if you found a way to do it ;) ).

If the map is released under one of free licenses, like GFDL or one of Creative Commons ones, then you can always freely reproduce (assuming you attribute the work to original author), usually you can freely modify (it depends on a license; of course with attribution, as above), and you can only sometimes monetize (CC-BY-NC is one of licensed that forbid it).

When the map you found had no license information, you should assume it's copyrighted. That's why it's best to take maps for Warlight from Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons (they're always properly licensed, usually with CC licenses, and even better, often already in SVG format).