Signatures

It's *impossible* to prosecute every of those billions of fan sites who quote lyrics, publish covers and band pictures, sound samples, etc............. In case someone uses an album cover for an ad for a commercial site, that's another story.

Ricochet wrote: Out of interest, Mike, does Prog Archives have copyright on every single cover of every single album?

I don't know, but I doubt it. Then again amazon probably also don't have permission to publish all the covers ... theoretically they would have to mention the author with every cover, which they don't. And that's the minimum requirement due to copyright law, even if you're just using the work under the terms of "fair use".

BTW: It should be pointed out that the recording artist is usually not the one who created the cover art. So when people say (which they often do) "By publishing the cover art I'm only helping the artist, why should he want money for me promoting him?". But the author of the cover art usually doesn't get any money from the recording artist or the record company from the album sales, or concert revenues. So by publishing the cover and *not* mentioning who created it, and how to reach him/her ... you're not helping that artist, but instead abusing his work to make your website more appealing (and on a website which heavily uses advertising you're also making money with it).

The Miracle wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: I used to do some pretty advanced stuff - have a look: I don't do these anymore because the cover art images are all copyrighted ... so: use at your own risk! (but the risk is very small, admittedly). So What's In Your Cd Player, avatars, Guess The Cover etc are illegal now? I think that's pushing it a bit... isn't it illegal only for commercial use?

No, it's illegal to *publish* them on the internet. This involves posting then in a forum, and it's only a matter of time until someone gets prosecuted for that. First it was only about audio files, then they moved on to song lyrics ...

But as I said: The risk is very small for people who just use copyrighted files for a forum signature.


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - September 16 2006 at 02:52

MikeEnRegalia wrote: I used to do some pretty advanced stuff - have a look: I don't do these anymore because the cover art images are all copyrighted ... so: use at your own risk! (but the risk is very small, admittedly).

So What's In Your Cd Player, avatars, Guess The Cover etc are illegal now? I think that's pushing it a bit... isn't it illegal only for commercial use?

This'll do for now...or is it too large and irritating?

I can build banners with about the same skill and loving care that I could play an epic for food...

I.e., I'd better start studying those of my peers.

Er, is this the right spot for this topic? Does anyone out there specialize in the creation of banners for the signatures? Anyone? Thankee.