Question re: Avatars

Nom - my thoughts are that by using a guitar company's logo as an avatar you are sharing your love for that particular brand.  I don't think there's anything wrong with it.  "unauthorized advertising" comes into play when you are linking to other sites for the purpose of advertising them (get more hits, gain google page ranking, direct to a "buy now" site, or a commercial site that is more of an online storefront than has information).  You won't be using a link, just a photo.  As for "copyright materials" - I believe that most companies (at least guitar companies) are proud to have folks sharing the love for their brand and would not feel infringed upon if someone was using their logo as an avatar. 

I'd wait for a couple more replies from other mods just to be sure ... but my thoughts are that it will not be a problem.  I think it's really great that you checked in first tho Nom, to make sure you weren't bending any rules by doing so!    Once you get a couple more go aheads, remember that the avatar has to be a picture that's shrunk down in size considerably (60X60 pixels I believe).  If you need any help with that... drop me an email! 

Thanks to both of you for the replies.

Obviously I didn't think it would violate any of the rules either, otherwise I wouldn't have even posed the question.  But I've learned (sometimes tha hard way) that my interpretations of rules don't always match those of others.

MKM - I fully understand and agree with your definition of "unathorized advertising".  However there are no doubt "some" who would say that by posting a company's logo, that I am "technically" advertising for that company.

People like that have way too much time on their hands and should probably pick their battles a bit better, but some people have superiority complexes.  They aren't happy unless thay can feed their egos by denying others a small bit of freedom just because they can.

As far as the copyrighted materials thing, I understand the primary intent is for song lyrics and such, but a company's logo IS copyrighted.  Again, there are "some" who (I thought) would take exception.  If so, then they would also have to question Guitarpix's avatar.  Charlie Brown is copyrighted. 

Anyway, I'm glad to see that at least the two of you are OK with it.

Thanks again.
-Nomikal