I turned on avatars today.

[Crazyhorse]

@Roderick_Femm

Is there likely to be any issue about copyrighted material as an avatar? Would SDMB wait for a lawyer to contact, or try to be proactive about it?

This question has come up since the early days of avatars on the SDMB. (At that time accomplished by use of a 3rd party script.)

With hundreds of millions of online avatars in use around the world, even now six years later I still can’t find one example of a lawsuit or even a cease and desist letter regarding a copyright claim about someone’s online avatar.

As said in that old thread:

@Crazyhorse

This is a good read on the subject of fair use of online images in general. Obviously the question of message board avatars is so trivial neither the law nor most discussions about it deal with them specifically. It is comparable to a child wearing a Halloween mask they made by printing an image from the internet and cutting eye holes in it.