The copyright/trademark owners seem to tolerate 'fan-art' they perceive to be good for them. They want their brand visible and at the same time don't want anyone to benefit from it. If you are really concerned with something, my suggestion would be to email the folks here, and if nothing happens email the trademark/copyright owner. I think you'll find that you are the only one that cares 99.9% of the time.

I think that is part of the problem then.

Why is it that when I contact the copyright holder I get a return email saying basically 'who cares? what is the problem?' or just a 'I don't understand why your contacting us, if your not selling it what the big deal?'

...sometimes I don't know if I am talking to a kid or a lawyer who doesn't care!

Looking at the use policies it would seem that they can inact them at any time but choose not too... or don't care unless it involves money.

I don't know... anyone here how works as a lawyer?

don't know... anyone here how works as a lawyer?

..what do you want to know?

If I were to create any kind of "fan-art", I think I would only stick to creating Nintendo "fan-art" since they do encourage "fan-art" at their website by linking to personal websites with Nintendo fan-art and asking visitors to send their links to their "fan-art". They also encourage "fan-art" in Nintendo Power magazine by publishing their favorite "fan-art" submissions that was recieved over the last month.



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#17 by yrag - 11/16/2003 12:09:59 AM don't know... anyone here now works as a lawyer? ..what do you want to know?

Everything state above to be precise. What do companies mean by using their images? How do they apply it?

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#18 by Sir Tech Cat - 11/16/2003 12:10:56 AM If I were to create any kind of "fan-art", I think I would only stick to creating Nintendo "fan-art" since they do encourage "fan-art" at their website by linking to personal websites with Nintendo fan-art and asking visitors to send their links to their "fan-art". They also encourage "fan-art" in Nintendo Power magazine by publishing their favorite "fan-art" submissions that was recieved over the last month.

... and Warner Brothers doesn't?


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I do not know if Warner Brothers does or does not encourage fan art. I just know for a fact that Nintendo does since I am a big fan of Nintendo that visits Nintendo sites and reads Nintendo Power magazine.

They have fan art websites. Superman, Batman... they have images and everything... and it would seem the only way to become an official fan site is to create one (as in Go Live with it) and then contact them.

Bugs Bunny (loony Toons) and the lot.

Unless they changed their policies in the last 2 months since i looked at those sites.

i am betting that most entertainment companies encourage fan-art because it is a free way to advertise their products. It would kind of be stupid for them not to.

The legal baseline states that any material created by 'x' is owned and protected under the various International Copyright Laws ( the U.S. is party to the International Copyright Conference) and cannot be used my anyone else excluding permission. Most countries have added amendments to those laws. Many Companies (and persons) have reasons for allowing (all self-serving) such infringements if it enhances their exposure to the pubic and such and will simply 'overlook' it. That in itself does not in any way relieve the 'user' of such protected property from legal liabilities covered under copyright laws.

Thanks for all your input everybody, however, I'm still not clear on the issue. I will read over the Copyright law that oSoShameless provided (thank you). But from what I have read so far and because WC does seem to be accepting submission without apparent copyright permissions, and because nothing that I upload here is for sale anyway, so I will not be profiting from anything ,then I'm not going to worry about too much. Does that make sense? I'm tired

Does that make sense? I'm tired

I like it...sleep tight

Night all. And thank you

I think the first thing that MUST be considered/done is to include links to the source of any and every image, etc used and intended as 'fan-art' to provide a formal record  to distinguish what is being claimed as original work and what is not.

An acceptable concept of 'fan-art' fair use is NOT the plagiarizing of one person's wall image of Donald Duck being re-distributed under another person's nick.

In an 'ideal' world, NO image would exist on the Internet UNLESS uploaded by the original copyright holder, or be present in modified form without accompanying permission/s from the original copyright holder.

Website admins are charged with an impossible task....which is largely disputed, if not just plain thankless, but generally the idea is to protect as well as is possible/workable.

It is the bane of our existence that such a concept of 'fair use' even exists, but such is life and we're all in it for the living...

I think that I can help clear this up. My son has a band and we have one of the biggest managers and biggest attorneys in the music/entertainment business. There is one word that starts drawing the line, "COMMERCIAL". Our songs are protected by the copyright laws just like art, however, once it's recorded and published it becomes public. Meaning we can't stop anyone from singing it or completely changing it or whatever as long as it is used personally. They can pretty much do what ever they want with it (even record it) as long as they don't use it "COMMERCIALLY" or mis-represent it. Commercial is also a broad term also and doesn't have to imply money.

It can mean advertising, promotion, marketing, etc... If they do, they first have to have permission and in the case of a situation that is non-profit for them, they have to negotiate a fee with us.

I think the confusion we have here and a real tough question to answer is this. Anyone can "Play" our music at a party or something but they can't duplicate it and give it away (although we don't care). Which I think is the issue here. We can actually use any art from anywhere for anything for ourselves but we can't re-distribute it. However, the reason we really don't see any real problems is because even though it's being used it's not being used in a commercial fashion.

It's one of those things that we can put Jafo in charge of monitoring and trying to keep the obvious ones out and for the others, when someone yells, you simply take action first and study later to determine if their request is justified.

I also uploaded a Bootskin that was rejected, I don't know why, but some that have got through are surely copyright protected, I won't mention any of them because I'm sure you can see for your self which ones they are

I would also assume that it also depends on the Mood of the Moderator at the time