Thread:Janus100/@comment-28398720-20160726205730/@comment-27794543-20160728055145

Really, you can't trust anyone's videos for long term use. I've seen many companies take down (or mark private) old youtube videos. I've also seen many news websites take down (or put behind a paywall) old articles and videos. For old articles, there is hope they were archived in the Wayback Machine. For videos, there's less hope.

My imperfect process: Add official videos and links while they exist. Later, if a video gets taken down, remove it from articles and mark the file for deletion. If online page gets taken down, then see if Wayback Machine has a usable copy – if so, change link to archived copy; if not, remove link.

As for non-CW sources, there are two types: those that have agreements with the CW and those that don't. I won't link to copyright infringing material. However, I do assume media outlets (e.g. IGN, Zap2it, etc.) are uploading videos legally and have an agreement with the CW (though I have no way to confirm this). So since these videos were legally uploaded to the web, is it okay for Wikia to embed these videos?

Copyright laws are very complex and Wikia walks the line. For example, wikia users upload dozens of images from each episode claiming "fair use". If you tried to do that on Wikipedia, your account will be blocked for repeated copyright violations. According to Wikipedia's interpretation of fair use, 1 low-resolution image per article is allowed and only if a free image is not available. For real person (e.g. actor, author, crew member) pages, it's even more restrictive. Since it's possible to get a public domain photo of a real person (unlike fictional character for which all images are either copyrighted or fanart), fair use does not apply. In other words, this wikia is already skirting the lines of copyright violations with all the images.

Lets not forget the transcripts. The transcripts may not be the actual videos of the episodes, but it's still copyrighted material. If we uploaded only every fifth page of Kass Morgan's novels, could we claim fair use since it's not the entire books? No, it's still copyright infringement. So why are transcripts okay?

So is wikia genuinely concerned over fair use vs copyright infringement of videos that the CW allowed media outlets to release?

What about watermarked images? This wikia's policy is silly. It forbids "images that are watermarked by anyone other than the CW" due to copyright. Why is using an image watermarked CW fair use but using the same image watermarked by a non-owner organization (e.g. IGN, Spoiler TV, etc.) copyright infringement? In both cases, the image belongs to the CW. By putting a watermark on the image, the image doesn't suddenly belong to a different entity. Why is it fair use to 'borrow' CW's images but not IGN's images? Though, it's reasonable for this wikia to prefer non-watermarked images, as far as copyright goes, either it's both fair use or both copyright infringement.

So, now to videos. I'm focusing on the videos that are owned by CW, i.e. the episode trailers and scenes from episodes. If a video was directly released by CW, then this wikia says it's fair use to embed this video. However, if a video was legally released by a different media outlet, this wikia is worried about copyright? To me, this is the same thing as the watermarked images. The material of these videos are still owned by the CW. The uploader doesn't change fair use laws. Regardless, videos from the Wikia Video Library should be fine since they've been licensed for use on Wikia (thus no copyright issue).

To add complexity, Wikia embeds videos. The laws are quite murky regarding embedded videos and even lawyers aren't sure. The general rule: don't embed videos that you know are copyright infringing. As for legal videos (e.g. posted by the CW, IGN, etc.), it depends but many argue for it being perfectly legal. Now add YouTube's TOS: according to one interpretation of part 6c, that by uploading a video to YouTube, the uploader is giving consent for that video to be embedded elsewhere. If that is an accurate interpretation of YouTube's TOS, it means Wikia can embed legal YouTube videos without fear of copyright infringement. Since this wikia's only argument forbidding watermarks is fear of copyright, YouTube's TOS circumvents the issue.

At the end of the day, I don't make this wikia's policies. It was written in the pretense of following copyright laws without real understanding of these laws. (Not that I would want to be responsible for writing such policies – I'd just copy Wikipedia's copy (and attribute them with CC-BY-SA).)