Is it legal to screencap a TV show and post them online?

Question

For the sake of the question, let's say I wanted to open a Lost fansite. But I would need images for the layout, character bios, etc. Would it be legal to screencap my DVDs/images I streamed through my laptop's TV tuner and use them for this purpose?

I live in Canada, which I believe has some kind of Fair Use (Fair Dealing?) policy. I would make it obvious the site has nothing to do with the show and would not be making a profit whatsoever.

And, again, by 'screencaps' I wouldn't post many images, I'd simply 'Prt Sc' and use a little Photoshop to implement it into the layout, etc. Not much use aside from that.

Answer 1

I think it would be OK as long as you are not making a profit or slandering any of the actors or characters.

If you were to write erotic stories about the characters and call it "the LOST stories..." with tales of enticement about Sawyer finding a jar of Dharma-mayonnaise and using it to lube Hugo's *** I think you will receive legal threats pretty quickly.

If you just want to write the usual fan stuff, I can not really see how they could or even would want to stop you. If you are just a fan making a site using some pictures captured and used under fair use.

Beware however that captured TV pictures does not look good for a PC screen. There are the 601 levels (PAL, they use PAL in Canada right???) to fix (if your program doesn't do it automatically) and the resolution is smaller, so it will only look good substantially smaller than it is seen on TV screen.

Good luck!