It's common sense to take them down. People watermark images precisely because they don't want them used without permission. And since we operate under a Creative Commons license, anything we use is assumed to also be available for use under that same license. Using a watermarked image is tantamount to saying "We know that you want a degree of control over where your image is used, and we don't care."
Well a few images like the one on Uranus Is Showing asked the author and said yes as long as the website was there.
edited 27th Nov '10 11:07:07 AM by Raso
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!that's Uranus Is Showing and I agree, if the author says it's ok as long as you have the website listed it's fine. I remember we got permission for that one.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickThat's not a watermark. That's just a copyright notice. We have a number of images up where we checked with the artist and received permission as long as we left the copyright notice in place or otherwise gave them credit.
A watermark is a faint (or not so faint) image or word printed directly across the image. Like this:
Maybe open a Image Picking discussion for any images removed? Some things are easily replaced its hard to know what is getting taken down....
The ones that have permission leave a note saying "Used with permission"?
And Now the one on Uranus Is Showing I emailed the author myself... That one shouldn't of been taken down.
edited 28th Nov '10 12:59:50 AM by Raso
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!Let's face it, almost every image we have is copyrighted. Even if someone drew it and gave permission, if they drew a copyrighted character, it's a derivative work and violates copyright.
"Fair use" lets you use an image for the purpose of commentary on the work in question, so having a picture of Superman on the Superman page should be okay, but even then, I'm not sure it counts as commentary if you have (making up an example) a trope about heat vision and are using an image of Superman to illustrate it.
What about demotivators from which we removed the border (ex. Curiosity Killed the Cast, which was a "Curiosity" demotivator)?
edited 30th Nov '10 7:10:02 PM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulThe act of creating a work makes it copywritten automatically under US law, though you're right in that demotivaters mostly start as derivative works and are circulated freely (enforce it or lose it).
Fair use arguments aside, using other site's watermarked images is unprofessional. I'm assuming this is about using images off of places like IGN. If it's a piece of someone's artwork, link it back to the source (which may be a work page, a person's Deviant Art page or whatnot), which in most cases will satisfy the attribution requirement, IMO.
Question, if we link fanart, should we do it in the caption or should we pothole the picture?
Fight smart, not fair.That's my personal preference as well, I was just curious as to whether or not Fast Eddie had a preference.
Fight smart, not fair.

So I don't know if this is one of those things I just now happened to notice, or if there's a trend or somethin' going around, but it seems like I'm seeing a lot of pages with watermarked images as of late. I don't mean when it's official art with (c)Trope Co at the bottom, but stuff with a URL at the bottom like on Quentin Tarantino's page.
Is this... kosher, or should this be one of those things that need to be fixed?
They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?