Marvel Database:Image Policy

The Marvel Database Project uses software that provides the ability for registered users to upload images from their computers to our database for use in our articles. This freedom of use does lend itself to an 'honour-system' whereby users are expected to upload appropriate images suitable for all ages and relevant to Marvel comics.

Because there are so many images being uploaded each day, it can be very hard to track where these images come from and if they should be allowed. If you have found an image that is offensive or violates our copyright policy, please notify an administrator.

Images created by Marvel contracted artists are used with permission (see above copyright policy page) and are perfectly legal for public display on our non-profit fan-site.

From time to time, images which contain characters copywritten by Marvel, but produced by fans are uploaded to our database. These images are subject to different laws and should be treated differently. In these cases, the original artist should be contacted and we should obtain clear consent to use their work.

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Hotlinking

Hotlinking, aka leeching, is the placing of a linked object, most often an image, from one site in a web page belonging to a second site. It can be used for such activities as linking images from personal home page storage into the online diary of the person controlling the personal home page.

This is controversial for us because if hotlinked images are added to our database when someone loads our page, it loads the image from the originating website, incurring bandwidth theft. This term refers to the unauthorized use of someone else's bandwidth. Inline linking to an image stored on another site increases the bandwidth use of that site, even though their site is not being viewed in its intended form. Since bandwidth is a commodity, unauthorized use can increase the financial costs of the website hosting the image, hence the term bandwidth theft.

We kindly ask that rather than hotlinking to images hosted on other sites, you rather upload the image, with permission, to our database so that our pages use only our own bandwidth.

Similarly, we ask that webmasters that wish to use our images do not hotlink, but rather transfer our images to their own site, so as to use their own bandwidth.

Image Quality

All uploaded images should be of a medium to high calibre. Small or distorted images should only be uploaded if no other alternative is available. In these cases, we aim to replace these poor quality images with larger, higher resolution versions as quickly as possible. Images can usually be found, large and clean enough, yet still be under 2 MB (MegaBytes) in size.

Image quality also refers to the content of an image as well. 'Watermarks', 'Logos' and 'Post-Creation Content' such as captions should be avoided at all costs. Images directly from Marvel.com or DCComics.com often display respective watermarks. These images should not be uploaded and especially should never be used as a primary article image or gallery thumbnail.

Fan Art vs Officially Commissioned Art

While the Marvel Database does allow the uploading of fan-art, we require express permission of the artist(s). Furthermore, these images should be appropriately tagged and never used within articles or galleries. These images can live on a users page, or within designated fan-art galleries. Fan-art images of offensive nature or images uploaded without permission may be subject to immediate deletion upon discovery.

Commissioned artwork may be uploaded provided it complies with appropriate Fair-Use law. These images are considered canonical and may be used within articles, news or galleries.

Copyright and Fair Use Law

First, some further reading:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use
• http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
• http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
• http://www.starr.net/is/fu.html

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