An idea, fighting fire with fire.

[ratfink]

Lets clear something up before this keeps spiraling downward.  Lets clear a few things up.
1. If you have copyrighted work on your site you may be approached with a C&D regardless of anything I do.  If you want to use someone else's copyrighted work then that is the risk you take and there is not one thing I can do or not do to change that fact.

2. IF someone finds their work on your sim site you will will be send a C&D letter or (in the US) a DMCA take down notice.  If you comply and take the work down and you weren't selling the work in the first place the likelihood of getting sued is half past nil.  Total cost is nothing.

Best of luck.

[HawkGirl]

For anyone that would like a licensing agreement with a whole list of artist to use their artwork you can go here:

http://www.creativeimagelicensing.com/artists.shtml

It is not expensive at all and they have some great artist there like Olivia, Rood, Nestler, etc...etc. You can tube their images, use them in paintings for your Sims, etc...with two requirements. Many of them on this list have already tubed the images for you if that's all you want and you can get those even cheaper. You can not resell from any of these artists and You must post your licensing agreement number with anything you post so they know it's from you I suppose, and you don't get one of those nasty C& D orders. There is also Dover, you can use up to 6 of their images from any work of art with one exception. You can't resell it in it's original format. Like you can't make copies of the book and sell them. There are many ways to do it legally. Many of these designers would allow you to use their images as well if you ask and explain to them what your doing. I think that is the biggest problem we have in the Sims community...no one is communicating with anyone. It's just a free for all, I'll do what I want and I don't give a damn who agrees or disagrees with me. I don't have to listen to you, but I want you to listen to me.

[deathtotsr]

I largely got it. And I found it a very interesting and informative debate until HawkGirl's last reply which, I'm sorry to say, just seemed rather sulky and... well, not so interesting. That one was counter-productive, in my opinion.

HawkGirl, if I didn't lose you as a reader of my post yet, I think that ratfink was only alluding to "thumbnails", as you call them, that were being sold on by paysite owners in some way. I do think that the copyright holders would have something against that. We've seen paysites having to pull down copyrighted materials before, because it was being sold, in whatever way. Free stuff on any site they usually could care less about.

Ratfink - I wish you the best of luck with your pet project. I wouldn't know art from Adam, so unfortunately I can't be of any help. I'd love to read your reports if you do succeed in getting them to pull some stuff down, though

I wish that were true that free sites they could care less about. I remember a Sims 1 site got closed because they used a lot of Marvel Comics images - on clothing and objects etc...

Then the owners of Hello Kitty also went after a sims 1 artist too and not only did she have to remove all of the Hello Kitty content from her site but also change her alias she was using as well. She had a free site too.

So yeah they do go after anyone infringing thier copyrights - even on free sites.

[keirra]