Board Thread:Wiki Discussions/@comment-25075055-20140410195636/@comment-34115-20140512193855

Ten Tailed Fox wrote: But isn't using the scans from the scanalations to display images of said chapters (in the various technique pages, for example) just as illegal?

That's what I never got about all of this stuff. Links = illegal. Using images from scanlations = a-ok as long as they're properly tagged. TheUltimate3 wrote: Very much so. In fact, I do know before we turned a blind eye to images so long as the text was edited out and even then, they were only used until a raw came up.

Then, using a recent memory as an example, the image that is currently used for Madara's Ten-Tails jinchuriki form, I remember someone uploaded a RAW of that image, but it kept being reverted because it "wasn't as clean" as the scan. So yeah, major inconsistency.

Our use of images from the Naruto manga falls under fair use. We clip specific panels or at most a single page (if necessary), attribute its origin and ownership, and we use it for the purpose of documenting the material the image originates from. If it were brought to court it and evaluated under the 4 factors of the fair use law it would likely rule in favor of us.

Hosted scanalation sites are different. They use entire chapters whole, distributing a work for free which originally would have had to be paid for, and then typically use ads to make a profit off that. One could try and argue that the translation into another language changes the market, but they would still have an extremely difficult time trying to convince the courts that it was fair use, especially given the Viz license and the affect on the ability to license the work is considered in the 4 factors.

Ideally simply linking to something would be completely legal, as you are not hosting it, it is openly available on the web, and there is no copying involved from your end. And there are a number of court cases that lean in favor of that. However the law is still a little murky and disputed, especially when knowingly linking to infringing content in a way that could be construed as inducing people to follow the link and violate copyright.

Though in general scanalation hosting sites are assholes. Most of them don't even do the translations themselves: They take a scanalation that is distributed over a peer to peer network that has no hosting costs or profiteers, then they host it with ads only being responsible for the costs of running a website. In essence now taking from two parties – the original source and the people that did the work of translation – and making a profit off their work.