Image Comics Database:Image Policy

The DC Database Project uses software that provides the ability for registered users to upload images from their computers to our database for use in our articles. This freedom of use does lend itself to an 'honour-system' whereby users are expected to upload appropriate images suitable for all ages and relevant to DC comics.

Because there are so many images being uploaded each day, it can be very hard to track where these images come from and if they should be allowed. If you have found an image that is offensive or violates our copyright policy, please notify an administrator.

Images created by DC contracted artists are used with permission (see above copyright policy page) and are perfectly legal for public display on our non-profit fan-site.

From time to time, images which contain characters copyrighted by DC, but produced by fans are uploaded to our database. These images are subject to different laws and should be treated differently. In these cases, the original artist should be contacted and we should obtain clear consent to use their work.

Hotlinking (aka leeching) is the placing of a linked object, most often an image, from one site in a web page belonging to a second site. It can be used for such activities as linking images from personal home page storage into the online diary of the person controlling the personal home page.

This is controversial for us because if hotlinked images are added to our database when someone loads our page, it loads the image from the originating website, incurring bandwidth theft. This term refers to the unauthorized use of someone else's bandwidth. Inline linking to an image stored on another site increases the bandwidth use of that site, even though their site is not being viewed in its intended form. Since bandwidth is a commodity, unauthorized use can increase the financial costs of the website hosting the image, hence the term bandwidth theft.

We kindly ask that rather than hotlinking to images hosted on other sites, you rather upload the image, with permission, to our database so that our pages use only our own bandwidth.

Similarly, we ask that webmasters that wish to use our images do not hotlink, but rather transfer our images to their own site, so as to use their own bandwidth.