User blog comment:LordHarrison/Copy/Pasting/@comment-3055683-20160221054544

LordHarrison,

Let me see if I can address your concerns. First of all, this wikio always received a fair share of criticism from the WH40K community for many years, and in fact, we were a laughing stock until our senior admin Montonius, took over this wiki and refounded it in 2010. Before our illustrious Senior Mod took over, this wiki was rampant with fan-made, non-canon material being posted upon it. This was both a source of extreme embarrassment and a point of contention with those of us, who made a conscious effort to remove this offensive tripe, and establish ourselves as a serious resource for the WH40K hobby.

Keep in mind the information that is cut and pasted directly from the source material is often done on many wikis, blogs and forums. The reason this occurs, is that once something is in the realm of the internet it falls under the laws of Fair Use. I'd also like to point out that our rival source for WH40K lore, the Lexicanum, has been doing the EXACT SAME THING since 1989! So which of the two websites have committed the most egregious of offenses?

Also, I'd like to point out that this wiki, like the Lexicanum, makes $0 in profit. In no shape or form are we claiming any rights to the intellectual property of Games Workshop, Forge World, Black Library or any other company associated with the WH40K universe. In fact, this is exactly why we put a legal disclaimer on every single official piece of artwork on this wiki. If you want to call out one website for using official copyrighted material, then you have to call ALL of them out. I've seen multiple websites, forums and blogs which use copyrighted material on a daily basis. Do you also take unction with them as well?

If what you say is illegal, than ALL of these websites would have to immediately remove any coprighted material. This was the case in the mid-1990's when the Games Workshop legal department got a little zealous, and went after every single website that even had one source of copyrighted material on it. I saw many of these websites get a 'cease or desist' order and were forced to closed down, even though they were all hardcore fan-made websites that just wanted to share their love of the hobby with fellow like-minded enthusiasts. Many of those websites had been around since the birth of the internet, but thanks to the legal witch-hunt, were forced to close their websites down or face legal action.

Thankfully, Games Workshop came to their senses, and lessened their grips on the reigns. As long as said work was given due credit, not illegally obtained, and fell under Fair Use laws, they would allow fan-made websites to post their copyrighted material. I would also like to point out, that the mast majority of this information has been purchased by myself, our senior mods and many other editors on this site. We don't obtain our source material illegally, nor do we claim ownership of said canon material.

I'm sorry you feel we have a 'rampant' problem with coyrighted material being used. If you disagree, you are always more than welcomed to disassociate with this wiki and visit another vast repository of 40K lore elsewhere on the world wide web. I'm sure there are plenty of them out there. Hopefully this answers the majority of your concerns.

Sincerely,

Algrim Whitefang, WH40K Wiki Senior Associate Administrator http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f262/SGM-Daly91/Warhammer%2040K/SWBadgesmall_zpsa703bc79.png (talk)