Embedding Pictures

[Brown Jenkin]

I'm not sure if this is the right place but it seems like it. I have a question about moderator policy over in the 4e forum. Specifically in the Daily Art Thread Daily Art Preview. The policy is now that we can't embed pictures in the thread. I have not received a warning or anything but I am wondering what the reasoning for this is. Unlike the copying full text over from a story this does not seem to me to come close to violating copyright laws. First off the image is not in fact copied, the [*img*] tag does not copy the image it loads the image directly from the WotC site itself. The WotC site will register this as a hit in their web stats. If WotC does not want the image used this way it is up to them to place it in a password protected folder. Next This also seems like the definition of fair use commentary and criticism. The whole page is not being copied, just the part that is being discussed (and even then it is not being copied but just [*img*] referenced to).

[Kid Charlemagne]

Its pretty much the same idea as posting WoTC articles in their entirety as described in this thread. A picture is an entire work, there's no way to post only part of it. While you may well be technically correct, we'd prefer that folks link to the original webpage rather than linking to the pic as a courtesy to those folks who are providing the content. In some cases - for example, OOTS - linking merely to the image avoids the webpage which may have seperate ad links, so while you do hit the webpage and it registers as such, you might not hit the ad, and so you deprive the content owner of revenue.

[Brown Jenkin]

But what about the fact that using an [*img*] tag does not copy the image at all. At no point does the image ever reside on ENWorlds server. The only difference is how my browser interprets what to do with the exact same hyperlink. If the server hosting the image ever removes it we will get the red x of broken image link.

For instance [*url*]http://www.enworld.org/images/anniversary/buttons//quote.gif[*/url*]
http://www.enworld.org/images/annive...ons//quote.gif

and

[*img*]http://www.enworld.org/images/anniversary/buttons//quote.gif[*/img*]


are both referencing the exact same url in the post and at no point does the ENWorld server actually have the image as part of the post on the server.

Does this also mean then that posting links to images as also bad? For example

[*url*]http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/art_preview/20080414_114717_dh290uw3_0.jpg[*/url*]
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ar...dh290uw3_0.jpg

Would equally deprive WotC of page context to the image and advertising as the following would.

[*img*]http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/art_preview/20080414_114717_dh290uw3_0.jpg[*/img*]

Edit: To clean up legibility and to ad that I read the linked thread above and consider this a separate issue. I have no problem with the don't repost whole articles bit and can understand the reason behind it. I just see the image issue as related but completely separate.

[Piratecat]

We've talked about it. I think using the IMG tags to bring in a picture is fine. We wouldn't want to show a whole lot of art, but no one ever does that anyways!

[Brown Jenkin]

Thanks for looking at the issue again.