Thread:Janus100/@comment-28398720-20160726205730/@comment-27794543-20160826114628

Special care is required regarding Ricky/JR or Lexa's death b/c there are fans that get up in arms if you don't conform to their side, because 'obviously' their side is right. On the other hand, discussing fair use & legalities is boring to most users.

Given practically all disclaimers on wikia are written by non-copyright-lawyers, it means every single disclaimer is "original research". Thus, I see nothing wrong with discussing how to best write our original-research-disclaimers. Reading about copyright laws doesn't make my opinions fact (and given how much lawyers argue with each other, it's questionable if there is fact), but it means I have some basis from which I draw my opinions. Other people have basis for their opinions too. From what I've seen on wikia, the vast majority have little understanding of fair use, instead using it as a magical blanket. For example, even a user writing a community blog entry explaining fair use of images recommends others to write in their fair use statements that an image is replaceable "by a higher quality" one. As one commenter pointed out, for fair use, you should use an image that is "as low-res as possible", not ask for it to be replaced by a higher-res one.

There are plenty of interpretations and plenty of grey area. If I was posting something on my own website, I would follow a stricter interpretation than I do on this wikia because I don't want to need a lawyer. I've read enough cases of bloggers & small websites being sued for taking even a single copyrighted image (and not just a takedown notice, but also a demand for damages to be paid). Here, we're protected by Wikia, i.e. the copyright owner is likelier to go after Wikia than the actual person who posted the copyrighted material (unless Wikia has something in their ToS that puts all the blaim on the users...), thus it's safer for us to have a liberal interpretation of copyright law.

I actually think that IMSBb has a much better claim for educational use than this website. Film students and aspiring scriptwriters would find such a resource very helpful for their studies. On the other hand, relatively few people watch this TV series for homework. And even the few who are doing one or two school assignment (e.g. the person last week who wanted quotes from the book), don't need full transcripts of the TV series. Compared to IMSBb, we have much less "educational use". The transcripts are basically for fans to have easy access to the info.

While Wikipedia is certainly not the end-all of fair use, I definitely question fair use of certain material on this wikia. For example, can you confirm that all of the images of cast/crew are public domain, CC-licensed, or there's permission for general use? Images of people don't qualify for fair use the same way as a screenshot from a TV show does. For fair use, a non-copyrighted image cannot be made (e.g. the entire TV show is copyrighted so there is no way to get a non-copyrighted image of it). Since people aren't copyrighted, it's possible to obtain non-copyrighted images, thus fair use doesn't apply. On Eliza Taylor, we have 43 images – how many of them are public domain, CC-licensed, or other permission? (BTW, if image isn't in public domian, e.g. CC-licensed images, most the time there is a requirement for attributing the work, which this wikia generally doesn't, thus we're breaking licensing for those images.)