Fair use includes, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. For criticism/comment: You're presenting a review or critique of something, and you can use small bits of it to illustrate your points. However, there are limits on how much you can use and which parts. For news reporting: Similiar to above. Teaching/scholarship/research: Mostly limited to academic settings. It's very, very difficult to show that it's fair use outside of a classroom/school/university setting. Parody has limits, as well, in that you have to be doing a parody of the actual thing, meaning, the Star Trek parody example given above would be fine because it's joking about Star Trek using Star Trek characters and settings. You can't use Star Trek character and settings to do a parody of something else, though (that's been decided by U.S. courts, anyway). I sincerely doubt that anyone has gotten a Cease and Desist letter for any fan art in the gallery at Renderosity, which is why Renderosity has said they're not necessarily going to "police" such things. However, if they were to get such a letter, I'm sure they'd remove the material very quickly, and they should. bonni

"When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch." - Bette Davis