Why

[Breezeye]

Why did you remove pictures that were used for RPs?
Yes, I know they are not ours, but where we found them is on a place where pictures are shared. We did not take credit for them. I find it unfair that you have done so.

[Coalchaser]

Unless the person who took the pictures tells you it's okay to use them, it's art theft. What place are you talking about? If it's a website like photobucket, then that's not okay, but if you mean you got permission from the person who owns the pictures, that's different. Link?

[Tess]

This is an issue that not all of the staff are in agreement over because I haven't really settled on rules for it, however according to CS image posting rules you shouldn't be posting images that don't belong to you.

It's probably something that needs to be worked on for the non-art boards, because I believe that it would be okay to use free stock images, photos, or images owned by large corporations that wouldn't care or notice not-for-profit fan use in a forum (e.g. anime screenshots, or pokemon images) - as long as you're crediting the source properly. What we never want to see is people RPing with characters stolen from other personal artists.

But there is no official special-conditions in that board so you should assume that the forum-wide image posting rules will apply in there too. The confusion is created by the fact that everyone else within a RP has posted images, so you assume it's okay and copy them. A lot of the time it goes unnoticed, and moderators haven't been given the official go-ahead to apply any special rules in there.

We need to do quite a lot of work on the RP area, so it's probably something which needs more feedback from you guys.

[Fizzlebee]

I saw another topic in here saying that they saw tons of stolen art. That seems to be the biggest RP issue. I see some, but I'm never sure. How can you tell if it's stolen or not?

[Breezeye]

I just found it a little unfair. I know the trouble with art-theft but I don't see the problem in role-plays. It is just a simple picture that is used to represent a character, a ref. If it would be easier would could just not use pictures at all and use descriptions. It is just frustrating when some of use take a lot of time in finding pictures to use as a ref then it not being able to be seen because of possible art-theft.

[Tess]

It's not okay to use someone else's personal artwork or characters though, even if you're giving credit. I wouldn't want my character Avian to be used in someone else's RP.

there's already thousands of CS pet images you can use, and hundreds of editable oekakis that you can design your own characters on (humans and animals)

[Breezeye]

I never said anything about personal artists works. But art like from animes or cartoons (Screen shots.) But also, what about photos? Lie real animal photos.

[Tess]

As I've already said, that's something which might need to be looked at, but the current rules state no which is why they have been removed.

[Breezeye]

What if we use a lineart from here, and the lineart owner says we can use the lineart, can we use that?

[Coalchaser]

Yes, that's fine if you've gotten permission or if the lineart creator says it's okay in their rules.