Thread:Sannse/@comment-4129195-20141020220201/@comment-20644-20141025161645

Thanks for the questions. Those can definitely be good for a blog. In the meantime, I can answer those questions for you, so at least you have the information:

Hm, the primary question is which license does need to be given to which image.

There's no clear answer for this question. It depends on whether any license is required. For example, if you are using a Creative Commons image, then it's likely there will be Attribution and/or ShareAlike requirements attached to it. You would therefore need to appropriately source the image to the author and to where you found it, and ensure that it's licensed under the same or similar license that the creator used.

If the image is copyrighted and you are claiming fair use, then you can use a fair use licensing template. That is not, however, required under fair use; there's a common misconception on Wikia that adding a fair use template is what makes an image fair use, or that the fair use template is required. It is not, though it can certainly be helpful so other people know that you are using the image under a fair use claim.

But in terms of what license needs to be given, it depends on the image and any requirements that image may have. Questions about any particular image are best directed to the copyright holder; Wikia can't actually tell you what license to use, if any, because that would be legal advice and we're not in a position to give legal advice.

Also, are there any severe punishments for giving wrong licenses or not give them at all?

Wikia will not proactively police image uploads to see if there are licenses. If a copyright holder feels that an image used on Wikia is violating their copyright, they can send us a copyright takedown notice and we will then remove the copyrighted work.

In addition, what should one do if someone else copies your image and brands it in a different license?

Depends on what you mean by "your." If you are the actual copyright holder, you can send a takedown notice to Wikia if you feel your copyright is being infringed upon. However, if it's simply an image that you uploaded but that you are not the copyright holder for, then you have no grounds to do anything about someone else using the image.

Lastly, what if a user uploads an image without license, yet the image has to have it (does it need to be deleted or...)?

Well, like I said, not every image has to have a license attached to it. But if your wikia has a local image policy that requires sourcing or licensing, then administrators are free to enforce those policies as they see fit. For example, Wookieepedia is a community that has an image policy that requires, among other things, a source and license on all image uploads. In most cases, those images are used under fair use from the Star Wars franchise, so a source and license isn't actually required under those fair use claims. But Wookieepedia feels it's important in order to be as encyclopedic as possible (the idea being that if text-based information needs a source, then images should be sourced too), so they require that and enforce that policy as they see fit.

I hope that answers your questions!