I'm really not very interested in the exact 
legality of any of it either. I think it's rude 
to take and reuse other's cel scans, end of line. 
I wouldn't do it to someone else and anyone 
interested in staying on my good side will not do 
it to me. Where my cel scans are concerned, I do 
not believe in imitation being flattery.

The problem is there are too many people out there
(everywhere, not just in cel collecting) who don't
feel any need to have courtesy for others. It's 
in the bitchy lady at the vet's who announces
"Excuse me, *I* was here first" when we treat a 
seriously ill patient before attending to her 
healthy pet's annual vaccines, and it's in the 
fancel maker who says "you're not going to hire a 
lawyer, so I'm going to do whatever I damn well 
please. blow me."   Frankly, I truly hope there's 
a special place in hell for this breed of jerk.

Legal or not, when images are stolen or when 
fancels are made from scans without the owner's 
permission, it wrecks the fun for everyone else. 
Scans are cluttered up with watermarks, some 
(like me) make their galleries harder to find by 
posting few links, and some galleries are taken 
down entirely. This is lousy both for the people 
who DON'T own the cels, but like to browse cel 
galleries, and equally lousy for the people who 
DO own the cels, since it's fun to show your cels 
to others. And, may I add, it's fun for reasons 
OTHER THAN to gloat: "I own this. You don't."

All said and done, from the way I see some people 
acting (both fancel makers and "image gallery" 
owners), I already don't want to show any of my 
sketches or original pose fancels in my gallery. 
More recently, I've been seriously considering 
making the whole of my cel gallery password 
protected and open only to a limited audience. 
Once more, it's the other participants in the 
hobby that will lose out, all because a relatively
few people can't see why they should care about 
anyone else but themselves and what THEY feel 
like doing.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac