Band photos from their heyday?

[Xekomi]

I’m not a lawyer, but I did stay at a holiday inn express last nite

Well, I guess Getty Images’ licensing FAQ page makes for more relevant reading than Gideons’ bible.

• Images aren’t big enough to be suitable for printing, meaning only the original copyright holder would be able to make use of the image for anything other than displaying on a screen.

This is irrelevant.

• We provide a completely free service, that anyone can use.

It’s monetised

The purpose of the site is to help fans get the best looking library possible, which in turn results in higher fan engagement where fans are uploading images, discussing images, voting on their favourite images which also acts as free promotion for the source of their fandom.

Same could be said of Napster.

• The images are generally transformative in nature.

• A lot of the images are made painstakingly by hand.

This doesn’t apply to artist portraits.

• Most of the images on the site are PR / Promotional images, that the networks / studios / labels want shared as widely as possible in order to help promote the show / movie / band.

Emphasis on most.

• • The exception to all this would be where the copyright holder is a photographer who makes a living licensing out the images, under this case, uploaders must get the permision from the photographer before uploading their images to the site.

The first picture in their “latest” music backgrounds category (what’d appear like a red carpet pic of Hayley Mills) looks like it was lifted by a Fanart.tv user from Getty, without credit to them or Walter McBride, who took it. I’d wager it isn’t licensed from either Getty nor McBride for RoonLabs to use.