Board Thread:Policies/@comment-24800939-20160420135146/@comment-100066-20160430123144

Sorry I am late to the conversation, but I have been reading everything. Here are my thoughts.

First, this is an excellent and well thought out discussion. I really like that we are discussing policies and actions more thoroughly on this site. It makes us better.

Second, the most important reason we should not have fan art on this site is because it is a copyright violation. Fan art is a copyright violation, not because the artist doesn't have Marvel's permission (although that is part of it), but rather that the user who uploaded it most likely did not seek the artists' permission to post it. Without the permission of the artist, no one has the right to post images from them.

Using Marvel-published art is different because we are using the artwork [http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Semanticdrifter/Understanding_Fair_Use "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research." (17 U.S.C § 107)] It is why we post images from comics, but not every full page of art from an entire comic book (a subject we should talk about later).

There are plenty of sites on the Internet for hosting fan art with artists' permission. We are not one of them. We don't need fan art images and we don't need any of the categories. Our policy should explain you can only use art that you have created or you have permission for.

Third, the bot can see tags, "links on page", and categories, so if it is tagged as Fan Art or in a Fan Art Gallery, the bot can catch it.

Fourth, we certainly should let users know that we will be enforcing Wikia's existing policy more aggressively. I understand that some users may lose images that they like, but if they don't have the rights to those images, they cannot host them on our site, whether or not they are in their User Galleries. To avoid being swept up by the bot, users can move the image or change the tag, but if we tell them that, they might hide some copyrighted images which will defeat the purpose of this work.