ISFDB:Image linking permissions

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The ISFDB displays images of cover art for publications, and images of authors. In both cases, the ISFDB stores a URL of an image hosted on anther site, and displays that image (hot-linking) during page generation.

Contents

Local hosting

As of 15 May 2008, uploading of images via the ISFDB-wiki's upload file facility was enabled, and a number of cover and other images have been uploaded since that date.

The policy on how and when to store images on the ISFDB is still being debated. See Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki for one guide. The tagging described in that page does not have full consensus support among ISFDB editors. The URLs of images hosted on the iSFDB wiki can be used in publication records just as any other image URLs.

The remainder of this page applies to images hosted elsewhere than on the ISFDB site.

The need for permission

Since such images are hosted by another site, that site will get a hit, and a request to serve the entire image each time that an ISFDB user views a page with an image URL being displayed. If the ISFDB uses many images from a given site, and those images are on relatively popular ISFDB pages, this might result in a significant amount of bandwidth for the host site. Since the images are displayed as part of an ISFDB page, no other content from the host site, and no advertisements it may include, are displayed. Some host sites are unwilling to permit this. In particular, Wikipedia, and other sites run by Wikipedia's parent, the WikiMedia Foundation, have a strong policy against such use of images hosted on their sites. They consider it "bandwidth theft" and will block all links from sites detected in such linking, according to their announced policies.

List of sites granting permission

  • The following sites have granted permission (explicitly, or implicitly by virtue of their own terms of use) to the ISFDB to link to images that they host.
    • Visco which covers only magazines and not books. The ISFDB has explicit permission to use Visco's images and has logic to add a credit to Visco.
    • Amazon - ISFDB has implicit permission to use Amazon's images as an Amazon associate. A good-quality medium-sized image available usually even for those books that generally only display a tiny thumbnail marred by "Search Inside!TM" is images.amazon.com/images/P/0123456789.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg : i.e. the 10-digit ISBN without dashes. Check that the image is actually the correct one for your edition though: and beware if it's a publication still in print, as it seems Amazon use this for the CURRENT edition and may change it without warning. A more stable alternative seems to be to search for the ISBN on another Amazon site and find one without the "Search Inside" problems: e.g. Amazon.UK may have "Search Inside" whereas Amazon.com do not, or vice versa. Use the "See Larger Image" before choosing the picture.
      • Sometimes you will see an Amazon image that's framed by a large white border such as ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cXim2%2BwSL._AA240_.jpg. The "._AA240_" tells Amazon what size image (as a square) you want displayed. Amazon's logic seems to be that they will scale an image down to the size you want, but will not scale up. Instead it wraps the image in a white border. When you see a postage stamp size image on Amazon the best course seems to be to use the original (unscaled) image which you can get to by removing the "._SS500_" or "._AA240_" size indicator, for example, ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cXim2%2BwSL.jpg , and let ISFDB scale it.
      • Sometimes a good-quality large image can be found from thumbnails and medium-size images marred by the "LOOK INSIDE!" (on small thumbnail) or "Click to LOOK INSIDE!" (on medium thumbnail) arrows. As with the scaling above, Amazon seems to encode scaling and adornment in a period-delimited section just before the trailing ".jpg" or ".gif". The URL for the large underlying image can be derived by removing everything starting with the penultimate period up to the final period. For example:
ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5142ES9VS1L._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA115_.jpg (small thumb)
ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5142ES9VS1L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg (medium thumb)
ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5142ES9VS1L.jpg (unscaled, unmarred underlying image)
    • Fantastic Fiction - ISFDB has explicit permission to use Fantastic Fiction's images, but please first check to see if the image is available on Amazon and use that as Fantastic Fiction's bandwidth is limited.
    • Phil Stephensen-Payne's "Galactic Central" - ISFDB has explicit permission to use images hosted by "Galactic Central".
    • Fantascienza.com - ISFDB has explicit permission to use images hosted by Fantascienza.com. To find the URL of a publication, select 'titolo' (title) in the search box on the home page and type the title (in Italian or English), then follow the links. The format is: www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/cov/DD/DDddd.jpg, where "DD" are the first two characters of the five characters code DDddd in square bracket.
    • icshi We are now permitted to link directly to the covers: if you do so, please at least credit 'Icshi" in the notes, and an occasional hyperlink or two back to the site would be appreciated.
    • vanvogt Japanese site, but English text with lots of pretty covers and artist info. Yutaka, the sitemaster says "You may link my pictures to anywhere you like, but I'll be glad if you would let me know where you use them" - so drop him an email if you need to use one of them on the ISFDB.
    • Magnus' van Vogt site Icelandic site with good selection of covers Magnus is very generous too: "Hi. Feel free to link however you want, I have free bandwidth where I'm hosting the images."
    • Bookscans ("Graphically illustrating the evolution of vintage American paperbacks - 1939 through 1969") "The ISFDB hereby has permission to link to any page or picture on the BookScans web site."
    • Ace image library "I give you permission to use whatever images that you need from the ACE IMAGE LIBRARY for the ISFDB and appreciate the credit notation for this usage. I should note that a couple of the AIL images (primarily for original cover art or prelliminary drawings as well as a couple of the inserts or daybills for the Man From U.N.C.L.E movies) have been permitted to the AIL from other sources. These are noted on the appropriate AIL page and if you use these you may wish to credit them as "Original art / movie art for ........ . Permission for use given to AIL."
    • Mondourania Italian language site. Has images of covers from many Italian SF publications. Automatically credited based on ImageURL domain.
    • The Trash Collector Small images, but wide variety. Scott Stine, owner, says "Feel free to link to the pictures on my website. [...] Thanks for writing and asking permission, and good luck on your worthy endeavor."
    • Collectors Showcase This is a great source for images of pulps, digests and early hardcover editions, and not just French publications.

Sites known to refuse permission

The following sites are known to have policies against the kind of image linking the ISFDB does. These sites should not be used in the image URL fields, although a URL that is not a link could be placed in a notes field.

  • Wikipedia "Check the licenses of the images to figure out how to use them. In no case attempt to serve them directly from our upload server: that's commonly called 'bandwidth theft', and your site will just be denied access to our upload server as a consequence" (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights/Archive_5)
  • Wikimedia Commons "Directly embedding files from Wikimedia Commons on the fly into an external site ('Deep linking') is considered bandwidth theft and external servers doing so will be permanently blocked after Wikimedia server admins recognize it.... You are always welcome to download files you are interested in for reuse as long as you follow the license conditions provided alongside the files." (from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:First_steps/Reuse)


Sample request for permission

This is designed to be sent by email or as a physical letter. It is merely a suggested letter, volunteers are free to modify it in particular cases, or to use a completely different letter. But any communication requesting this permission ought to be careful to explain clearly just what permission we are asking for.


Subject: Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) Image Linking Permission Request - <name of site>
Hi -
My name is <name of requester> and I am a volunteer with the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base (ISFDB) which is located at http://www.isfdb.org. The ISFDB is a bibliographic database of works of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and related works of speculative fiction -- that is, it displays information about the titles, authors, and publications of such works. When we display information about a particular publication (an edition or printing of a particular work) we prefer to display an image of the cover of the work, so that the public can see exactly which edition is being described. We do this by including a URL of a publicly posted image in the database. When the publication page is displayed, the page logic uses the image found at that URL as an image source for the page display, which results in a call to the host server (this is sometimes called hot-linking). Also, the displayed image can be clicked to access the image on the original site directly. One good example of this in action is http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?THLRDFTHRN1972 for an edition of The Lord of the Rings, where the image is hosted by Amazon. We also link to images of authors in the same way. However, we only use URLs from sites that have agreed to permit us to do so.
Your site <name of site>, located at <base URL>, has images that would enhance the ISFDB, and there have been requests to use your images. We would greatly appreciate it if you would permit us to link to those images. The ISFDB is a completely non-profit, volunteer-run organization. We think that it provides a valuable public service, and helps promote speculative fiction in general. Please let us know if we may display images (hot-link) from your site on our pages by linking to your site. We will also happily provide a credit link back to your site whenever we display your cover art images. Please copy your response to isfdb.moderators@gmail.com so that the ISFDB as an organization can preserve a record of it.
Thank you
<signature of volunteer>

Sample request for permission - French

This is roughly the same letter as above but translated to French. Most of the work was via Bablefish and the result was tuned up to fix issues such as that "site" was 'fished into "place" rather than "site" as in web site.

If the person you are requesting permission from does not seem to be a computer techie you can remove the latter half of the first paragraph starting with "Nous faisons ceci en incluant..."

Subject: Image spéculative de la base de données de fiction d'Internet (ISFDB) liant la demande de permission – <name of site>
Bonjour Madame/Monsieur,
Je m’appelle <name of requester> et je suis un volontaire avec la base de données spéculative de fiction d'Internet (ISFDB) qui est située chez http://www.isfdb.org. L'ISFDB est une base de données bibliographique des travaux de la science-fiction, de l'imagination, de l'horreur, et des travaux connexes de la fiction spéculative -- c'est-à-dire, il montre des informations sur les titres, les auteurs, et les publications de tels travaux. Quand nous montrons des informations sur une publication particulière (une édition ou une impression d'un travail particulier) nous préférons montrer une image de la couverture du travail, de sorte que le public puisse voir exactement que l'édition est décrit. Nous faisons ceci en incluant un URL d'une image publiquement signalée dans la base de données. Quand la page de publication est montrée, la logique de page emploie l'image trouvée à cet URL comme source d'image pour l'affichage de page, qui a comme conséquence un appel au serveur principal (ceci s'appelle parfois chaud-enchaînement). En outre, l'image montrée peut être cliquée sur pour accéder à l'image sur le site original directement. Un bon exemple de ceci dans l'action est http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?THLRDFTHRN1972 pour une édition du seigneur des anneaux, où l'image est accueillie par Amazone. Nous lions également aux images des auteurs de la même manière. Cependant, nous employons seulement des URL des sites qui ont acceptent de nous permettre de faire ainsi.
Votre site de <name of site>, situé à <base URL>, a les images qui augmenteraient l'ISFDB, et il y a eu des demandes d'employer vos images. Nous l'apprécierions considérablement si vous nous permettriez de lier à ces images. L'ISFDB est complètement un sans but lucratif, l'organisation volontaire. Nous pensons qu'il fournit un service public valable, et il promeut la fiction spéculative en général. S’il vous plaît, dites-nous si nous pourrions montrer les images de votre site par l’enchaînement à note site. Nous fournirons également heureusement un lien de crédit à votre site toutes les fois que nous monterions vos images d'art de couverture. Copieriez votre réponse à isfdb.moderators@gmail.com de sorte que l'ISFDB puisse préserver une article de votre réponse.
Merci,
<signature of requester>

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