756 Messages
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29.6K Points
Crazy idea: Archiving credit screenshots in the database?
Since I've been observing discussions on this public board, I've noticed that it has often been necessary to post images of screen credits for verification.
For various reasons, and even long after a title's screen credits were thought to have been completely and correctly recorded, questions or claims may arise such that the screen credits might possibly need to be obtained again and re-examined.
Crazy idea:
For use as future reference material, and for convenient, immediate, and efficient access whenever screen credits need to be re-examined, would it be useful for IMDb to establish a capability to archive first-release screen credits images in the database?
The idea may be ridiculously impractical, silly, and too problematic to even consider. ...
(I suppose one problem may be the fact that most film and television images, even including the credit displays, are presumably copyrighted, right? Credit images are often posted here on this public board when necessary for verification purposes. Given the necessity of verification, are any copyright-related "gray area" issues avoided? [I'm not a lawyer or legal expert.] ... Would permanently archiving such images, into the database itself, as reference material for future re-verification, be impossibly difficult to clear from any legality questions? I don't know.)
For various reasons, and even long after a title's screen credits were thought to have been completely and correctly recorded, questions or claims may arise such that the screen credits might possibly need to be obtained again and re-examined.
Crazy idea:
For use as future reference material, and for convenient, immediate, and efficient access whenever screen credits need to be re-examined, would it be useful for IMDb to establish a capability to archive first-release screen credits images in the database?
The idea may be ridiculously impractical, silly, and too problematic to even consider. ...
(I suppose one problem may be the fact that most film and television images, even including the credit displays, are presumably copyrighted, right? Credit images are often posted here on this public board when necessary for verification purposes. Given the necessity of verification, are any copyright-related "gray area" issues avoided? [I'm not a lawyer or legal expert.] ... Would permanently archiving such images, into the database itself, as reference material for future re-verification, be impossibly difficult to clear from any legality questions? I don't know.)
gromit82
Champion
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7.4K Messages
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275K Points
8 years ago
Perhaps the IMDb could simply maintain this archive of credits images for its own reference, without posting the images online, and that might reduce the likelihood of copyright problems. After all, it would only be necessary to look at the images when there is some dispute about a credit. Otherwise, most of the images themselves will not be of interest to most users.
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nobody_7029854
756 Messages
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29.6K Points
8 years ago
I do understand that this board is not staffed by lawyers or legal experts, and it is not an appropriate place for questions or answers about matters of law.
So, notwithstanding what I wrote in the last paragraph of my post, I'm really not here to ask anyone on this board to respond to the "questions" that I asked. Those "questions" were really meant just to express my supposition that my suggested idea could be problematic. I'm not looking for the "answers" here.
At this point, I request that this discussion be informally "closed" (with no further replies, if that's OK with everyone here).
I anticipate that IMDb will review my idea internally and, if they may wish to pursue it any further, they can consult their own expert resources regarding whatever issues and problems could be involved.
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