User blog:Deleca7755/Overview of Copyright



With licensing of Images officially being complete, this Is a write-up that attempts to explain the basics of copyright.

I am not Yanfei a lawyer. But I did do research on this to the best of my ability ( to the extent that's necessary for us ).



Summary From what I understand, almost everything that exists Is copyrighted―any creative work or design, that Is. Copyright(©) Is a law that exists to protect people's work. It's In the name; the right to copy. If you created Pikachu, you wouldn't want others copying It claiming It as their own, right? Though, It only protects the physical work, not the Idea. In essence, If you too created an electric rodent-based creature ( the "Idea" of Pikachu ), that would be your own provided It Isn't a carbon-copy of Pikachu or Its home franchise Itself. Pokémon conveys the Idea of befriending monsters and fighting with them. Series like Digimon and Temtem convey similar Ideas, but not the work Itself.

In order to use copyrighted works, a license would be needed. The author of the copyrighted work In question can have a license already applied. A great example of this Is Fandom Itself and wikis under It. Fandom automatically licenses text―and text specifically, that we publish on wikis under the "Attribution-ShareAlike" license by. For short, this license is known as CC BY-SA. It means others can use the work If It's attributed properly to the author, and "shared alike" by putting the media the work Is being used In under the same license.

If a license Is not applied to a work already, people tend to buy a license to use it. Because we and other people who simply want to create fan-works do not have a license, we get around this by slapping "" notices on files that are copyrighted. Fair use exists because It's not entirely fair ( but also Impossible ) to restrict people's use of media that's obviously globally popular.

Trademarks(™) are a little different from copyright. I'm not 100% sure about all the factors, as we mostly won't be dealing with solely trademarked works on this wiki. For example the logo of the Pokémon franchise Is a trademark. It's similar to copyright In that you don't want other people claiming property you made as their own. The reason trademarks are used over copyright Is because things like logos from companies, the type of media often trademarked, often don't convey enough creative liberty to be copyrighted. To quote the Simple English Wikipedia's public domain article; "The Google logo is made of simple shapes and is thus public domain. It is still trademarked, however."

As for what the public domain Is, It's explained In the linked Wikipedia page but tl;dr when a copyright holder goes byebye from Earth, most usually several decades after the existence of the copyright, or the work Isn't seen as enough of an original creation ( thus Ineligible for copyright to begin with ), It enters the public domain. A creator can release a work to the public domain from the start, as well.

OMG will I get arrested or sued for uploading a pic of Eevee?

No, there's thousands of cases of either copyright violations or Improper/nonexistent licensing on Images all across Fandom. Fandom holds responsibility for anything deemed Infringing ( given they're the one hosting the sites ), not you/us, so they will deal with any consequences. The worst that will happen Is they get a DMCA and will have to nuke the Image.

It's worth noting that even with copyright tags on non-licensed/non-free Images, the copyright holder still gets to do whatever they please since they own It, regardless If you believe to be using the work under fair use. HOWEVER, I do stress that copyright Info/tags should be there anyway. That's just how It works. If you use something you have to denote the way that you're using It at the least, and give credit/attribution.

has existed for many many years, holding so much more content of the franchise than us, and has got by just fine. Even If files weren't licensed ( which, they haven't been for a decade now ) we're at no real risk, but this Is just something that should be done, period. Because, what If one day we were at a risk and It did matter? PMU and this wiki also don't do any of this for commercial purposes. Non-profit Is not a surefire way of protection by any means, but It does play a part In keeping us safe.

In the end It would seem that sometimes copyright just doesn't matter, and can be boiled down to "It depends". By chance things get taken to court, Its up to the judge, and for definitive advice for any one given situation that pertains to copyright, people will hit you with "hire a lawyer". As I said, copyright holders have the final say on whether something Is or Isn't Infringement. Copyright violations seemingly don't matter until or unless the copyright holder wants to do anything. Videos for example, of video games In particular, would be Infringement to people who hold the copyrights to the game. But of course thousands of videos of gameplay exist. Copyright holders are obviously not going to double down on harmless free advertising though... usually.

I've seen people say things like "they'll lose their If they don't protect It..." with regards to The Pokémon Company being aggressive about fangames ( comes to mind ), but It Is not possible to lose copyright from not defending It. You can lose a trademark this way though, and Pokémon™® happens to be a registered trademark, so I suppose It's the same thing.

Additional notes

I wanted to mention this somewhere―as for fan-Illustrations people make: If you were to draw Pikachu, that is a derivative work. Copyright of the character belongs to the holders still, but you own your Interpretation of It. Based on what I know If someone took your Illustration they would be Infringing the rights of your arrangement and the copyright holder(s) of the original work.

Screenshots of software and operating systems are copyrighted to the manufacturers. I got mixed results while researching, but from what I gathered whether or not It's possibly Infringement depends on the terms of said software or OS and If they are complied with.

Photographs taken with a camera, phone, et cetera are copyrighted to the person who took It. As for the contents In the Image, say a Pikachu plushie, they actually do hold relevance, but I think It depends on the context In which you are using the Image? I'm not sure.

I've used Wikimedia as reference throughout this, and I'd like to mention that the reason they are so strict about Images In particular Is because the entire thing Is meant to be free. Something about the project scope. So, they don't like non-free Images. Wikipedia, though, can host Images separately from Wikimedia Commons, which Is why you can find on Wikipedia anyways. A/N: I find It funny how "no free alternative" Is used as part of fair use rationale, but Images aren't objective requirements to have on a page.

 Feel free to correct me on anything. Copyright and law will make your head spin; I only touched on what felt relevant for the content of our wiki.

 I'm with stu   pid  04:36, 30 September 2022 (UTC)