Forgotten Realms Wiki:Help-Copyright on images

The Forgotten Realms Wiki includes images to enhance the reader's understanding of the articles on which they are presented. There is a strong case for fair use for many of the images that are present on the wiki and provided that images are used sensibly and in an informative manner, there will be no cause to remove them.

Each image should use a copyright tag to make it clear how the image is appropriate for use on the wiki.

The information template
Each image should use Information in its description. This provides a standard way of presenting the information required to justify an image's use and credit its authors (as well as certain automatic categorisation). Documentation on the use of this template can be found on the template page itself.

Book covers
There is normally no issue with using book covers, provided they are not extremely high resolution. Despite the artwork on book covers being copyright, anyone can go to an online bookstore and find the book cover, and the cover itself acts as promotional material so it is not in the publisher's interests to prevent people from displaying the image. Use the Promotional template and explain that it is a book cover.

Maps
Maps scanned from the source material are not usually suitable for upload to the wiki because these are copyrighted images. If they are of high enough resolution to make out the details and labels on the map, they are of high enough resolution to fall outside "fair use" and if not, there is little point using an image of the map because it will not be possible to make anything out. The exception to this is possibly maps that are freely available on the Wizards site, although this should be determined on a per-image basis.

Excerpts from the FRCS map may be used to illustrate specific areas since these will qualify as "fair use". You can use the Excerpt from 3e map template on these images.

The copyright on fan-made maps lies with the creator, so seek permission from the map's creator before using any unofficial maps.

Screenshots
Screenshots from computer games used to illustrate the computer game itself are acceptable under "fair use" provided they are not high-resolution and there are not a huge amount of them for any individual article. You can use the Screenshot template for these images.

Photographs
These can be informative when writing articles about the Realms authors themselves. Photographs are copyright unless otherwise specified, so seek permission from the owner of the photograph (not necessarily the person in the photograph) before uploading these to the wiki, even if they are low-resolution.

Other artwork
If the artwork is presented as a free download on the Wizards site then it is likely the (low-resolution) artwork will come under "fair use" although artwork scanned from the source material is not likely to be allowed.