I'm very surprised that in all this discussion of reproducing stills (and this could apply to any kind) nobody has mentioned the magic words "Fair Use". Admittedly, they are not quite as magic as they used to be, and they are being challenged. But nevertheless they are a legal basis for reproducing a part of a audiovisual work for the purposes of non-commercial / academic study (and also for the purposes of satire -- bizarrely enough, the hitherto obscure Fair Use clause was successfully employed by the band 2 Live Crew to justify their sampling of a Roy Orbison track in 1994 on one of their songs). Fair Use is based on four factors (and I've copied and pasted this from http://www.publaw.com/parody.html but I'm sure there are more reputable sources): (1) purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercially motivated or instead is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) nature of the copyrighted work; (3) amount and substantiality of the portion used in the newly created work in relation to the copyrighted work; and (4) effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. So, providing that the "quotation" (and I agree with Mike Chopra-Grant's analogy with print quotation) is intended to promote knowledge, is not giving away some sort of trade secret, is not a substantial proportion of the work and does not diminish the value of the work that is "quoted", scholars should be safe. Personally, I think film producers who want to stop people reproducing stills are as anally retentive as those people who want to be asked permission before you link to their website (can someone please explain this one to me???). But that's not to say that these people don't exist. In addition, I should stress that I'm not saying this as a lawyer. I'm saying this as someone who regular nicks film stills from wherever I can find them and reprints them on the basis that I'm doing the film more good than harm by doing so. Nobody's taken me to court yet! (fingers crossed) As far as I'm concerned, the justified dissemination of academic knowledge about film and the (current) copyright rules are incompatible. But that's another story... Best regards Andrew James Horton Editor-in-Chief, Kinoeye, http://www.kinoeye.org Subscribe to Kinoeye's FREE E-MAIL UPDATE SERVICE by sending a blank e-mail to [log in to unmask] (you will need to reply to a confirmation letter) ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite