Re: Permission to send a SWAT Kats flood.

From: chance <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 07:26:50 -0700

>Okay, those pictures in rat.org aren't copy-righted or anything like that,
>are they?

Well, okay...here's the sticky part. There's been a long and largely uninteresting
legalese battle raging on alt.tv.animaniacs about screen-grabs and such, and
it appears that Warner Legal is closing down sites with relative impunity
irrespective of content (in other words, the 'offending' sites seem just
as likely to carry naughty pics as they do "straight" grabs similar to those
on the Warners site). In other words, technically, screen grabs and
official artwork, the scripts, characters (and literary/visual representations
of same - fanfic, fandrawings or otherwise) and so forth all fall within
the broadest definition of "copyrighted", though there's considerable
leeway concerning enforcement.

Generally, fans distributing screen grabs to one another, most fansites
dedicated to a particular cartoon or literary work, and fans creating
works of fanfiction/drawings are left unmolested as long as they aren't making
a nuisance of themselves, or portraying the characters in ways contrary to their
established personalities. In point of fact, Warners Legal-Beagles only got
a bad case of tight-ass when the "Hollywood Reporter" visited a "Tiny-Toons"/
"Animaniacs" site and found a bunch of, well..."limited interest" artwork - making
it front page news the following day.

It's one thing for these companies to know of the existence of such
technically copyright-infringing use of their characters - even the innocuous
variety - but quite another if such infringements are brought to the attention
of the national press. It's *then* that someone puts the legal machinery in
gear and crushes everyone underneath.

Since your frame-grab postings to apbc are unlikely to attract such attention,
there shouldn't be a problem!

(BTW: Most entertainment entities adopt the credo "anything goes so long
  as it's privately beneficial without being publicly harmful". Sadly, that
  wonderful piece of balanced logic is being replaced with greed-based
  legal rhetoric all over.)
_____________________________________________________
"Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed
 antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters,
 through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in
 the winter of 1925. Endurance, Fidelity, Intelligence." -- "Balto"
_____________________________________________________

Received on Mon Jun 24 1996 - 11:00:12 PDT