The documentary is a two-part tv mini series; as such, it is fine to stay in both sections. Read more here https://www.themoviedb.org/documentation/editing/television

Understood. Are you able to add the information from the movie version over to the tv version faster than I am able to manually? Because that would be tedious.

Also, while you are here.. : )

I have some questions regarding editing and copyright permissions, should I ask in the forum or use the contact us link? I don't want to use the api but I have some questions about editing on tmdb myself and adding info from other sources.

You can ask here and we'll see if we can answer!

Understood. Are you able to add the information from the movie version over to the tv version faster than I am able to manually? Because that would be tedious.

All manual I'm afraid.

Recently I copied a film description from a publishers website to Wikipedia but it was promptly removed citing copyright infringement. Which got me thinking about what is actually permitted. As a layman I hadn't thought about it much but now I would like to contribute to TMDB and Wikipedia much more.

Am I allowed to use an image from IMDB? Am I allowed to copy text from Wikipedia? Can I use an image from Wikipedia? How about TVDB and similar databases? Where do I get the thumbnails or posters from if not another website, unless I scan them myself? Am I allowed to copy the summary from the back of a cover?

I will assume that copying text from other websites is infringement. I did read about paraphrasing and plagiarism and using thumbnails instead of high resolution images, but wikipedia is still an open question to me, particularly regarding the citations which are often included in a paragraph. I'm all for free information and open source culture but I feel that certain ethics should be maintained. I really recommend writing up an FAQ on the subject with a list of what is legally permitted. And I would appreciate some feedback.

Edit: How about backdrops? Am I permitted to take a screenshot myself. I understand they must be a specified resolution in order to post on TMDB.

I'll try to answer as best I could. I'm just a moderator, but I'll give it a shot. In general, it depends where you are. German laws are very strict, while most other countries have fair-use standards that should apply to a lot of the content you are asking about. Still, if unsure don't add it.

Am I allowed to copy text from Wikipedia?

Yes, but they also want you to provide a citation that you are using them as a source. Check any popular person profile and you will see how it is done. For movie overviews Wikipedia is not recommended due to the high frequency of spoilers in their plot summaries. For Wikipedia images you are also supposed to provide a citation, but since that isn't possible I tend to stay away from those.

Movie companies usually provide overviews and taglines. These can be found on official homepages, or perhaps Facebook pages. They want those overviews to be used and we use them, sometimes slightly rewritten (improved). So far I have never heard of a movie company asking us to not use their official promotional material and that includes backdrops and posters. What you should be careful about is using content with watermarks (not allowed here) or overviews from movie sites that claim copyright. There have been a few cases where we have had to delete text that was copied that way. I was actually guilty of doing that some years back and then this year the site owner contacted TMDb and the overviews had to be either deleted or changed.

So if you want to be really safe, take an overview and rewrite it with your own words. That way you should not get into trouble no matter where you live.

Am I allowed to use an image from IMDB?

Again, this depends. Sometimes that image will only be available on IMDb, at other times it's available in many different places. Sometimes there will be a Copyright notice, sometimes not. Don't add anything you think could get you in trouble, but also take a look around and see what is already available and (so far) has not gotten anyone into trouble.

We have our general image rules here: https://www.themoviedb.org/documentation/editing/images

Thanks for answering what you could. You brought up a brilliant point about promotional posters, I think I may have read something related to that before and the point about using official descriptions would maybe legitimize the use of summaries from back covers, although sometimes they may be from separate publishers which could be infringement just like my original reference.

Here is the publisher that I originally referred to http://www.ambrosevideo.com it seems that some documentaries which Ambrose has rights to publish are included in TMDB, heres one example https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/34851-the-ascent-of-man which seems to have a description paraphrased from their description http://www.ambrosevideo.com/screening-room/9-AOM The TMDB post doesn't have a contributor, so I'm curious where that is from? I suppose from one of the original databases like OMDB? But where are the backdrops and poster from? It almost feels like a deeply philosophical question but where the hell did they originally come from? haha!

I'm not concerned about getting into trouble myself. The worst that could happen is a takedown request which I suppose would end up being a problem for you guys to deal with. I just want to be ethical and to understand fair use which I understand is sometimes a grey area.

I would really recommend chasing up some of these questions, I would also like some answers myself before continuing to contribute because other than grabbing images from elsewhere and copying descriptions from movie covers and official websites I don't see how I can contribute.

Some websites that write about copyright and plagiarism list written examples http://www.plagiarism.org/citing-sources/how-to-paraphrase/, http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/copyright-fair-use-and-how-it-works-for-online-images/ I would really recommend forwarding this conversation to the admins and recommend an improved FAQ and I would genuinely appreciate some feedback at some point if anyone can answer my questions.

Thanks for your time and get back to me if you can.