Reminder: Copyright and hotlinking

[MedO]

Hi everyone.

Due to a recent development, I would like to remind you of two things:
- Posting copyrighted content without permission is illegal and against the forum rules. This also applies to images.
- While not explicitly mentioned in the rules, hotlinking images without permission is also considered illegal. Of course, using services which explicitly allow embedding (youtube, various image hosters) is fine.

If we are made aware that you have broken these rules, the offending posts will be deleted and strikes/bans will be dealt out as by the forum rules. Therefore, it would be in your own best interest to check your old posts, avatars and signatures as well and either remove hotlinked images or copy them to an image hoster, if you are allowed to use them.

Thanks for your time.

[NAGN]

How are we supposed to verify copyrighted images?

[Footpöp]

If it has a copyright watermark in some corner, as quite a few professional pictures do.

[Dusty]

Uhm, aren't just about all the damn images on this forum copyrighted in some shape or form?

How will we post images that we ourselves didn't make then? Such as the 'Art you didn't make yourself, but wanted to share' thread?

[Phantom Brave]

fair use etc

[MedO]

How are we supposed to verify copyrighted images?

With difficulty. If you are talking about moderation, this is not something you can reasonably check for every image. As for posting, you need to make sure that the person who created the image is ok with having it redistributed - either due to licensing conditions on the original site (e.g. Creative Commons), or by asking, or because of the nature of the image. Many people are very relaxed about this and happy to have more people look at their work, but don't want to concern themselves with licensing questions. If you are sure this is the case, you should at least add a link to the source and mentioning who the artist is isn't a bad idea either. However, you are responsible for what you post, and if there are founded complaints, we are legally required to remove the offending posts.

Edit: When in doubt, better use a normal link to the original site instead of embedding the image.

[♫Sani Sani Disco♫]

Ill give you guys the gist of what happened; MedO got an email that was probably from a bot or something about hotlinking. The message itself is horseshit but it brings up a point of interest for us.

We're held under german law since this is a german server, and there are some particular historic events we can't discuss without the admins- specifically MedO- getting shit from the german manifestation of "the man." If you do it, you'll likely get a warning or strike. If you do mass spam of that shit even once, though, you're likely gonna get banned. End of story.

Be careful about where you link images from, too. This is common sense for most of us, but you shouldn't say, copy the link to a 4chan-esque site and post it here, especially if their "no hotlinking" image is goatse. Upload it to a mirror, like Tinypic or Imageshack. Dropbox is a wonderful service since you can install the software to your computer and upload images simply by dragging them to a folder.

Use your heads when posting

[NAGN]

 

[MedO]

The point is that whoever sent this mail is legally right, and we are required to make sure no illegal content is distributed through this site (not limited to racist stuff), so hotlinked images that could be changed by someone unknown are a risk (not just for us, but for the person posting as well).

As an aside, of course "particular historic events" can be discussed, you make it sound like the third reich is a forbidden topic. What is illegal is the use of certain symbols outside of an artistic or history discussion context, and to be on the safe side we don't allow them here at all.

[Speed of Dark]

Therefore, it would be in your own best interest to check your old posts, avatars and signatures as well and either remove hotlinked images or copy them to an image hoster, if you are allowed to use them.

Well, avatars and signatures are updated for all your posts if you change them, so it's just a matter of checking your current one, but you want us to go through literally thousands of posts over the course of years searching for hotlinks and watermarked images?

Weak.

[Meower]

Don't be silly speedo, medo's just asking to take extra care when getting pictures that might get us in trouble, and edit pictures that have been changed to something unpleasant while you weren't looking, were you to stumble upon 'em.

[Brooklyn And Me]

no gelbooru allowed

[A Shogun Named Marcus]

Oh dear, this is going to be a pain

I guess I'll just post gg2 stuff now to be safe. But wait... Does this also apply to say... Screenshots of other games, like for instance if I want to show off something cool I did, would what be violating this, because Mojang teschnically owns the contents?

[MedO]

Mojang have always said that they are completely ok with this kind of thing. Besides, iirc it falls under fair use.