# Fur Affinity, Fan Art/Fiction and the DMCA



## hara-surya (Feb 20, 2009)

In the past the VCL has received a DMCA take-down notice from Disney and Warner Brother, to which Ch'marr had no choice under law but to comply with and not only removed the infringing material, but made a blanket rule to ban all fan art/fiction unless the artist/author has received, in writing or other personal agreement, permission allowing it.  To that end several prominent Furry artists have sent letters, most of which I think were lost in their Wiki crash, allowing fan art and fiction under certain guidelines.  Among the artists I can remember, from memory, was the creator of the Shanda the Panda comic book.

My wonder is that Fur Affinity has taken the VCL's mantel as the largest and most popular Furry art/fiction archive and if it hasn't yet it will in the very near future.  Do the Fur Affinity admins have any plans when, not if, similar take-down notices are served to them?  Is there any thought to being proactive and making rules regarding the issue before this happens?  Finally when this happens, not if, how would users react to this?


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## Armaetus (Feb 20, 2009)

There's gonna be a lot of butthurt furries when they find their favorite fanpieces gone if something like that happens.

IP is protected too vigorously in this country, it's like people will think some goddamn fanart is infringing on their property...give me a break...at least most are not selling drawn fanart!


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## hara-surya (Feb 21, 2009)

Well it's well within their rights to protect it.  Fan Art/Fiction is technically illegal, the creator having sole rights to derivative works, though different creators have different thoughts on the matter.

Many anime companies see fan art/fiction as a source for the next generation of writers and artists, but Disney, Warner Brothers and other "family friendly" companies like Nintendo come down like the Hammer of Thor on people infringing.

There is the fact if IP is not protect vigorously it will lose it's protection, perhaps not legally, but in the eyes of the public, as Bill Watterson found with the "peeing Calvin" on so many redneck's vehicles.


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## Stratelier (Feb 21, 2009)

> There is the fact if IP is not protect vigorously it will lose it's protection, perhaps not legally, but in the eyes of the public, as Bill Watterson found with the "peeing Calvin" on so many redneck's vehicles.


Funny you should mention Watterson, he fought long and hard to keep his artistic rights over the characters and to keep commercial interests from merchandising Calvin & Hobbes to death.


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## hara-surya (Feb 21, 2009)

Stratadrake said:


> Funny you should mention Watterson, he fought long and hard to keep his artistic rights over the characters and to keep commercial interests from merchandising Calvin & Hobbes to death.



Oh, I know that.  Very little of Calvin and Hobbes merchandising is official and most of that is books.  But, I've also seen those Calvin decals as an example to use about how copyrights can be weakened.


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## Strawkitty (Feb 21, 2009)

With the world much more internet savvy now I would think Disney etc. might not want to bring any sort of attention to this place.


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## Rhainor (Feb 21, 2009)

As long as you don't make money off it, fanfiction is not illegal.  Ch'marr shouldn't have caved; DMCA takedown notices fanfictions are only valid if the writer of the fanfiction is making profit on it or otherwise causing the copyright/trademark holer to _lose_ profit.

I might be a bit off on this, since IANAL.  That said, if DMCA takedowns for fanfictions were valid, FanFiction.net would have been shut down long ago.


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## Stratelier (Feb 21, 2009)

Rhainor said:


> That said, if DMCA takedowns for fanfictions were valid, FanFiction.net would have been shut down long ago.


Interesting point -- I seem to recall FF.net receiving actual C&D letters in regards to various IP.


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## hara-surya (Feb 21, 2009)

Rhainor said:


> As long as you don't make money off it, fanfiction is not illegal.  Ch'marr shouldn't have caved; DMCA takedown notices fanfictions are only valid if the writer of the fanfiction is making profit on it or otherwise causing the copyright/trademark holer to _lose_ profit.
> 
> I might be a bit off on this, since IANAL.  That said, if DMCA takedowns for fanfictions were valid, FanFiction.net would have been shut down long ago.



Money means nothing, it's a derivative of a copyrighted material and therefore illegal.  It doesn't matter AT ALL whether you've made money on it or else all of the people sued by the RIAA and MPAA wouldn't have been sued and, for the recorded Fur Affinity HAS made money on it from the ads all over the pages.


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## Rhainor (Feb 21, 2009)

ciaranskye said:


> Money means nothing, it's a derivative of a copyrighted material and therefore illegal. It doesn't matter AT ALL whether you've made money on it or else all of the people sued by the RIAA and MPAA wouldn't have been sued...


Wrong.  the RIAA/MPAA sue people on grounds that copying and distributing songs/movies cuts into the profit they make/would have made from those works (and that's not even getting into whether the arguments behind those lawsuits are valid or not).  If I write a fanfiction basted on a movie, I'm not duplicating anything that's copyrighted.  I may be using _trademarked_ characters, but *trademark != copyright*, and has a whole different (somewhat more lax) set of rules.



> ...and, for the recorded Fur Affinity HAS made money on it from the ads all over the pages.


No.  Those ads would be there whether there was any fanfiction/fanart on the site or not.  Therefore, the fanart/fanfiction is not responsible for any revenue the site may pull in due to those ads.


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## hara-surya (Feb 21, 2009)

What you have WRONG is that without the exchange of money there is no infringement.  It's a common LIE people tell.  It has no grounding in copyright law, it is a LIE.  I have STUDIED copyright and media law on a UNIVERSITY LEVEL.  What you're saying is WRONG.

Characters in a movie are covered under copyrights, not trademarks.  If the material is copyrighted, so is everything about it.  Titles, situations and character names cannot be copyrighted, but a character's likeness, including their behavior and actions, can be.  Oh, and trademarks are typically held onto more aggressively, just so you know.  Which is why Disney comes down so hard on people using Mickey Mouse without permission.

And the ads are on nearly every page, including infringing pages, thus they have made money on people looking at those images.


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## Eevee (Feb 21, 2009)

Rhainor said:


> As long as you don't make money off it, fanfiction is not illegal.


this is a load of crap fyi

you are using someone else's intellectual property

if they decide they don't want you too, tough cookies for you.  you can claim fair use sometimes, but "eeyore taking it up the ass from megatron" is very unlikely to be covered under fair use, as they can claim it degrades their image


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## krisCrash (Feb 22, 2009)

Fan work is often accepted (I remember a thread on this on conceptart.org), but you can clearly see that even non-professional furry artists do not allow fan art of their intellectual property  case-by-case thing.


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## tsawolf (Feb 22, 2009)

FurAffinity will comply with all properly made DMCA requests.

Under the DMCA, a properly sworn takedown notice cannot be contested by the company it is served upon; it can only be contested by the user who the artwork originates from.  If we receive a countertakedown notice, we will comply with that as well.

We have no legal leg to stand on.  That being said, before people get the idea to start filing DMCA notices on artwork they don't like, falsely swearing out a DMCA statement will get you in worlds of pain (criminal and civil offense).


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## hara-surya (Feb 22, 2009)

For popular artists/authors it's probably worth putting into words and placing in a prominent location on your FA page or your personal website your policy on fan art/fiction.  That way you can point to a document saying what you allow and what you don't.

The VCL has several, but as I said they've lost them for public display when their Wiki died.  I plan on reworking mine and placing it on both FA and my personal site, as well as the VCL.

And for the record, despite being a rabble rouser, I think the DMCA is one of the worst laws Clinton signed, possibly as damaging to IP, cryptography and other technology fields as NAFTA has been to major industry.


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## Firehazard (Feb 22, 2009)

That said, I doubt we have cause to worry; deviantART, which is known to be really draconian when it comes to these sorts of things, has no blanket ban on fan art (and in fact actively encourages it by dedicating a category to it) and they've never had any famous cases of having to bend to DMCA takedown notices.  And as for the adult material, well, unlike on the VCL, people aren't likely to find it by accident!

Still, this makes me wonder.  Does the DMCA deny the host from making any claims of fair use as long as the filer of the notice is verifiably the copyright/trademark holder?  Because it seems an awful lot of the takedowns I've been seeing lately on various sites would fall under fair use if, indeed, our legal system still believed such a thing existed.


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## tsawolf (Feb 23, 2009)

The DMCA gives the host no rights, except for immunity from lawsuits when they follow the DMCA.

The poster of the infringing work has to contest the takedown. That's where fair use would come in. The host itself has no right to assert a claim of fair use.


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## Valerion (Feb 23, 2009)

Firehazard said:


> Still, this makes me wonder.  Does the DMCA deny the host from making any claims of fair use as long as the filer of the notice is verifiably the copyright/trademark holder?  Because it seems an awful lot of the takedowns I've been seeing lately on various sites would fall under fair use if, indeed, our legal system still believed such a thing existed.



The person filing the takedown notice swears under oath that he/she/it is the copyright holder.  The host of the work cannot contest this at all, they are forced to take it down.  The only person that can then claim fair use is the person who posted it, who then has to file a counter-takedown notice (again, under oath).  The host puts the information back up and the copyright holder now gets to sue the poster in court.


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## Freehaven (Feb 23, 2009)

The DMCA itself doesn't cover fanfiction/fanart, copyright law in general does.  Generally, fanfiction/fanart isn't technically legal unless it falls into the already-gray area of "parody"; copyright/trademark holders all treat fanfics/fanart differently, with some aggresively protecting their IP while others tolerate or even outright accept fan works.

If FA's approached by a copyright/trademark holder and asked to prevent fan works of their IP to show up on the site, FA would most likely not refuse because they'd want to avoid getting their collective asses taken to court.  However, I think they'd probably try to at least offer some sort of compromise to the copyright/trademark holder first before it came to killing fan works of that IP (both preventing future works featuring that IP to show up and deleting works that are already on the site).

There's really no cut-and-dry, black-and-white easy answer concerning this issue on either side.


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## Strawkitty (Feb 23, 2009)

Freehaven said:


> If FA's approached by a copyright/trademark holder and asked to prevent fan works of their IP to show up on the site, FA would most likely not refuse because they'd want to avoid getting their collective asses taken to court. However, I think they'd probably try to at least offer some sort of compromise to the copyright/trademark holder first before it came to killing fan works of that IP (both preventing future works featuring that IP to show up and deleting works that are already on the site).



That other part yes but how can they sue FA for not agreeing to prevent fan works from being posted on site? (since they can't really prevent it) Isn't it the holder's responsibility to find and send DMCA request on infringing works?


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## hara-surya (Feb 23, 2009)

Freehaven said:


> The DMCA itself doesn't cover fanfiction/fanart, copyright law in general does.  Generally, fanfiction/fanart isn't technically legal unless it falls into the already-gray area of "parody"; copyright/trademark holders all treat fanfics/fanart differently, with some aggresively protecting their IP while others tolerate or even outright accept fan works.
> 
> If FA's approached by a copyright/trademark holder and asked to prevent fan works of their IP to show up on the site, FA would most likely not refuse because they'd want to avoid getting their collective asses taken to court.  However, I think they'd probably try to at least offer some sort of compromise to the copyright/trademark holder first before it came to killing fan works of that IP (both preventing future works featuring that IP to show up and deleting works that are already on the site).
> 
> There's really no cut-and-dry, black-and-white easy answer concerning this issue on either side.



I'm in school for media Informatics and this is a very major open problem within the field: How do you automatically stop copyrighted material from being uploaded to a website?  How do you identify it with enough of a degree of success to not only prevent legitimate files with similar features, but also "fair use" of a given IP.  Considering Google is having a hard time doing it with YouTube, despite being one of the most innovative companies on such things, it's likely to remain an open issue for a long timme.


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## Freehaven (Feb 23, 2009)

Strawkitty said:


> That other part yes but how can they sue FA for not agreeing to prevent fan works from being posted on site? (since they can't really prevent it) Isn't it the holder's responsibility to find and send DMCA request on infringing works?



You're right, they can't sue FA's admins as long as they do their best to remove infringing content (the Safe Harbor laws introduced in the DMCA is about the only good thing in the DMCA); blame my fondness for hyperbole and my lack of sleep for my original statement.

They could sue FA only in the event that they don't remove infringing content upon request under the DMCA.  However, asking for fan content of a specific IP to be removed (and then prevented from being published on the site) usually doesn't bode well for the copyright/trademark holder's image/status with fans of the IP in question.



ciaranskye said:


> I'm in school for media Informatics and this is a very major open problem within the field: How do you automatically stop copyrighted material from being uploaded to a website?  How do you identify it with enough of a degree of success to not only prevent legitimate files with similar features, but also "fair use" of a given IP.



There's a very simple answer to this: you can't.  And you want to know how I know this?  I beat the DMCA on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqdJkFM3pSM

Yes, it's a shitty parody of both Back to the Future and CSI: Miami, but shittiness aside, it's still a parody (and parody falls under Fair Use).  However, my video got flagged for copyright violations and was taken down for the standard two-week period as per the DMCA regulations, and I think their "automatic copyright detection" system (or whatever the hell it's actually called/referred to as) was to blame.  So after looking around the 'Net, I sent YouTube a counter-notification, and after the two-week period was up, the video went back up without so much as a peep from the copyright owners or YouTube.

When "automatic" filters are in place, it's impossible for Fair Use to be taken into account because such filters aren't built to take Fair Use into account; they're built to detect specific things and flag them as violations, whether or not they're used under Fair Use statutes.  Human oversight is necessary.  (Additionally, I'd just like to add that the takedown system in the DMCA fucking sucks.)



> Considering Google is having a hard time doing it with YouTube, despite being one of the most innovative companies on such things, it's likely to remain an open issue for a long timme.



It will remain an open issue for the remainder of time, so long as Big Content has its way.  And it's all because they want to protect the copyright system as we know it today...except they have yet to realize that the current copyright system is horribly broken thanks to the advent of the Internet as a communication / information-sharing platform.


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## hara-surya (Feb 23, 2009)

It's as simple as copyright law needs to be rewritten to take into account new media.  Most all copyright law is about 70 years out of date and doesn't even take into account new technology.  Remember the Sony decision (over Betamax) is just that, a court decision, there's no actual law allowing it.  The most recent copyright law written, that I'm aware of, was the Sonny Bono "Mickey Mouse" Copyright Extension Act, that ensured nothing that came under copyright in my lifetime will fall out of copyright in my lifetime.

Fair use needs to be re-evaluated and expanded _de jure_ to take into account new technologies.  It's worth noting in some countries just ripping a CD you bought at the store for your own personal use is illegal (the UK comes to mind specifically), and American laws only just cover that right.

If it were up to Big Media you'd have to buy DRM encumbered files rather than just ripping the disc you bought, and you'd have to buy a new CD for you home, car, work, etc, rather than just copy the track under Fair Use.


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## PKBitchGirl (Feb 26, 2009)

Well, if FA ever decides to disallow fanart, then I've no reason to come here again



Stratadrake said:


> Interesting point -- I seem to recall FF.net receiving actual C&D letters in regards to various IP.



There are a few authors whose work they don't allow and they have a blanket ban on Real Person Fiction (it's a shame they don't follow their own guidelines and delete all the Jonas Brothers crap and Jonascest when its reported, it's a plague in sections that have nothing to do with the JB) after they received C&Ds from celebrities who were unimpressed with being the subject of real person slash



Eevee said:


> can claim fair use sometimes, but "eeyore taking it up the ass from megatron" is very unlikely to be covered under fair use, as they can claim it degrades their image



Eeyore and Megatron? Please tell me you haven't come across that....


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## Dragoneer (Feb 26, 2009)

ciaranskye said:


> Do the Fur Affinity admins have any plans when, not if, similar take-down notices are served to them?  Is there any thought to being proactive and making rules regarding the issue before this happens?  Finally when this happens, not if, how would users react to this?


No. I will only comply with a DCMA if the same DCMA is served upon DeviantArt first. When DeviantArt complies... I comply, otherwise I say "THFFFFFPT!".

VCL was served those notices while the internet was growing in popularity, back when companies were afraid of the idea of people taking their material and actually using it through Fair Use. Companies used to fear the internet. Now they're learning how to live with it.


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## Carenath (Feb 26, 2009)

Glaice said:


> There's gonna be a lot of butthurt furries when they find their favorite fanpieces gone if something like that happens.


To say nothing of their characters, if their characters are infringing on someone elses copyright and the owner doesnt like it.



ciaranskye said:


> Many anime companies see fan art/fiction as a source for the next generation of writers and artists, but Disney, Warner Brothers and other "family friendly" companies like Nintendo come down like the Hammer of Thor on people infringing.


That and I doubt "family-friendly" companies would appreciate the prolific erotic artwork their character creations are depicted in... I can name one or two popular artists who's artwork violates another's copyright like this, for drawing pokemon in erotic poses...



Rhainor said:


> ... If I write a fanfiction basted on a movie, I'm not duplicating anything that's copyrighted.  I may be using _trademarked_ characters, but *trademark != copyright*, and has a whole different (somewhat more lax) set of rules.


Characters can be copyrighted, and the owners can sue you for drawing them in an erotic pose and distributing the image, profit made or not. Some authors have explicit rules regarding fan-fics, and allow them provided certain names or places are not used, others seem to turn a blind eye.

My only guess regarding DMCA take-downs is that the characters owners dont want them shown in erotic poses on sites like VCL and FA because they see it as tainting the character's clean image.



Dragoneer said:


> No. I will only comply with a DCMA if the same DCMA is served upon DeviantArt first. When DeviantArt complies... I comply, otherwise I say "THFFFFFPT!".


Difference is, they might not mind the character derivitives being drawn on DA, DA doesnt allow you to post adult artwork as far as I know, but here, and VCL, adult artwork is almost the raison d'etre, so I would imagine you're more likely to be served with a take-down than DA is, on that fact alone. They dont want their characters being drawn as porn, so they sue. Though saying that, I wouldnt be surprised if a few copyright owners were anal enough to go after dA as well just to keep any unauthorised versions of their stuff being displayed.


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## PriestRevan (Feb 26, 2009)

Eevee said:


> this is a load of crap fyi
> 
> *you are using someone else's intellectual property*
> 
> if they decide they don't want you too, tough cookies for you. you can claim fair use sometimes, but "eeyore taking it up the ass from megatron" is very unlikely to be covered under fair use, as they can claim it degrades their image


 
This is true. Too bad Disney and Warner Bros. can't catch everyone.

But, just putting this out there, those characters whom look like copyright characters *cough*sonic*cough* are protected, correct (like, same style)?


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## Dragoneer (Feb 26, 2009)

Carenath said:


> They dont want their characters being drawn as porn, so they sue. Though saying that, I wouldnt be surprised if a few copyright owners were anal enough to go after dA as well just to keep any unauthorised versions of their stuff being displayed.


This is true, but I've seen some pretty risque stuff on dA, too. 

But then again, what about Bugs Bunny? Is Bugs Bunny porn illegal? I mean, the character dresses in drag and attempts seduce men into luring them into harm's way and/or traps. The character is already lewd. And what about Disney? Disney hid porn in its movies, innuendos in the Lion King ("Sex") and the suggestive Nala/Simba romance scene that later results in a cub being born in the movie. Or ol' Penis Knees from the Little Mermaid.


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## Aurali (Feb 26, 2009)

Dragoneer said:


> innuendos in the Lion King ("Sex") Or ol' Penis Knees from the Little Mermaid.



these two are taken extremely out of context.. only very dirty minds will say crap.. like the penis in the poster of Little Mermaid.. however there is a picture of a naked chick in The Rescuers

I would like to agree on some crap.. but I wouldn't care less if my Eli character was drawn into porn.


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## Carenath (Feb 26, 2009)

Dragoneer said:


> This is true, but I've seen some pretty risque stuff on dA, too.
> 
> But then again, what about Bugs Bunny? Is Bugs Bunny porn illegal? I mean, the character dresses in drag and attempts seduce men into luring them into harm's way and/or traps. The character is already lewd. And what about Disney? Disney hid porn in its movies, innuendos in the Lion King ("Sex") and the suggestive Nala/Simba romance scene that later results in a cub being born in the movie. Or ol' Penis Knees from the Little Mermaid.


Thats true too, it really does depend on the copyright owner in the end.. hypocrits or not.


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## Firehazard (Feb 26, 2009)

Dragoneer said:


> Companies used to fear the internet. Now they're learning how to live with it.



AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


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## Freehaven (Feb 27, 2009)

Carenath said:


> Characters can be copyrighted, and the owners can sue you for drawing them in an erotic pose and distributing the image, profit made or not. Some authors have explicit rules regarding fan-fics, and allow them provided certain names or places are not used, others seem to turn a blind eye.
> 
> My only guess regarding DMCA take-downs is that the characters owners dont want them shown in erotic poses on sites like VCL and FA because they see it as tainting the character's clean image.



"Copyright law will only protect the characterization of a fictional character if the character is portrayed in a copyrighted work."  In truth, it takes a combination of copyright and trademark laws to fully protect a fictional character.

And even if a character is copyrighted, that still means the character can be used without shelling out money to the copyright holder under Fair Use statutes and the parody/satire provisions in copyright law.  Whether or not your usage is legally Fair Use and/or a parody is a matter for the courts, though I think Disney has better things to do that to sue an Internet artist for drawing Gadget Hackwrench getting fucked by Chip and Dale and maybe Monterey Jack.

The only reason places do things like Fanfiction.net's "don't write fanfics off of these authors' works" list or VCL's "no copyrighted characters please" deal is because the admins usually don't have the resources to sustain their case in a drawn-out lawsuit or other legal action.  (Well, that, and it's somewhat easier to keep certain content off a site than it is to fight to keep said content on your site.)

The DMCA, by the way, isn't some end-all be-all solution to copyright infringement, nor should it be the only tool people rely on to try and prevent copyright infringement.

And of course, if you really didn't give a damn about what's done with your work and your characters as it relates to copyright, you could always license your works under the Creative Commons Zero license.


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## Carenath (Feb 27, 2009)

Freehaven said:


> "Copyright law will only protect the characterization of a fictional character if the character is portrayed in a copyrighted work."  In truth, it takes a combination of copyright and trademark laws to fully protect a fictional character.
> 
> And even if a character is copyrighted, that still means the character can be used without shelling out money to the copyright holder under Fair Use statutes and the parody/satire provisions in copyright law.  Whether or not your usage is legally Fair Use and/or a parody is a matter for the courts, though I think Disney has better things to do that to sue an Internet artist for drawing Gadget Hackwrench getting fucked by Chip and Dale and maybe Monterey Jack.
> 
> ...


Im not a lawyer, I only know you can copyright a character of your own creation, and any artistic works your character is portrayed in which have been created by you.

Fair Use may not apply outside the US, not every country has legislation for it, and fair use, satire and parody protections wont apply to pictures of Disney characters getting buttraped in any case.

Copyright is badly biased against the end-user, and the DMCA erodes fair-use laws as soon as copy-protection measures are put in place.. They need to be updated and modernised to take the current culture and balance into effect. I strongly believe that so long as no attempt is made to profit from another's work, use of that persons work, without permission is acceptable in certain situations.


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## Arcturus (Feb 27, 2009)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> No. I will only comply with a DCMA if the same DCMA is served upon DeviantArt first. When DeviantArt complies... I comply, otherwise I say "THFFFFFPT!".
> 
> VCL was served those notices while the internet was growing in popularity, back when companies were afraid of the idea of people taking their material and actually using it through Fair Use. Companies used to fear the internet. Now they're learning how to live with it.


So you'd ignore a DMCA claim, Dragoneer? Is that the official position of Ferrox Art, LLC, that you will ignore lawful takedown requests?


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## Infinity (Feb 27, 2009)

It would hurt a company's image if they do that kind of stuff. Potentially making them lose profit.

Plus that means they gotta pay their lawyers to back things up and it becomes messy.


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## Firehazard (Feb 27, 2009)

Infinity said:


> It would hurt a company's image if they do that kind of stuff. Potentially making them lose profit.
> 
> Plus that means they gotta pay their lawyers to back things up and it becomes messy.


I'm pretty sure the big companies just hire lawyers year-round and pay them an annual salary rather than paying outside ones per-case.  Also U.S. corporations are pretty immune to image problems, unless they get busted for some major breach of law, and even then it's a crapshoot.  The media giants have already pulled some amazingly dunderheaded stunts in the name of copyright (all those lawsuits against alleged music pirates), and it's never put a dent in their pocketbooks.

That said, it's probably true that they've stopped caring about fan art at this point.


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## hara-surya (Feb 27, 2009)

Firehazard said:


> The media giants have already pulled some amazingly dunderheaded stunts in the name of copyright (all those lawsuits against alleged music pirates), and it's never put a dent in their pocketbooks.



Actually those lawsuits put a huge dent in their pockets and the fact the enormous settlements have been declared unconstitutional (UMG v. Lindor) and the open question of whether "making available" is even a violation (Capitol v. Thomas) has taken all the steam out of their lawsuit engine.


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## Freehaven (Feb 28, 2009)

ciaranskye said:


> Actually those lawsuits put a huge dent in their pockets



Yes, they have.  They've also caused a ton of PR damage that the record companies have yet to recover from.


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## Renard_v (Mar 1, 2009)

Carenath said:


> Im not a lawyer, I only know you can copyright a character of your own creation



You cannot copyright a character. You can copyright an image of one. A character would be a registered trademark of a company. It's not the same kind of property.


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## krisCrash (Mar 1, 2009)

We already had that document up earlier - characters are copyrighteable if they are special enough. They're a design. Barbie's face is copyrightable. Celebrity faces may not be reused for everything, and soforth. Logos and designs.

I'm just gonna post the link again; http://conceptart.org/copyright/


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