Fair Use and Copyright

ukcatfan said:
During cast member orientation for a friend of mine, they went over how to answer guest's questions. On that was covered was the use of pictures taken on WDW property. They can pretty much be used for anything but selling them, unless you have written permission from the legal department. The people on here selling pics are probably too small time for Disney to care about or they do not know about them. Unless they have permission, but that is unlikely. It all has to be put in perspective. They are not going to spend huge amounts of money in legal fees, lawyer salaries, etc in order to stop someone that is making $1,000 a year selling Disney pics. Their dollars are much better spent on infringement from companies like Dreamworks, Fox, etc.

The use of pictures on websites that make a profit indirectly from having Disney images is on a case by case basis(i.e. they make money from ads on their site that happens to have images of Disney). Basically they know that these sites are free advertising and therefore let it slide, but if someone opens a for profit site bashing them and it has images from somewhere on their property, the site owners will be sent a cease-and-desist letter. If they do not take it down they will take legal action. They of coarse reserve the right to change their minds in the future on the fan sites.
Thanks for that info. That's pretty much what I suspected the official stance was. It's nice to hear their side of the matter.

I'm sure that if they wanted to be totally draconian, they could take down countless Disney-related web sites, prosecute unauthorized uses of characters (everything from Disney-themes "smilies" to... well, this thread gives a few examples :rolleyes1 ), but like most copyright owners, they pick and choose their battles to avoid a backlash from legitimate fans and supporters.
 












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