What are the rules about loading images as part of queries?

Question

This arises from confirming-if-my-great-great-uncle-received-his-medal-in-ww1-before-he-died where the original poster, being unsure of the rules, blurred parts of the images included in his query.

Firstly there is a basic fact - the Medal Index Card, blurred to the extent that it was, provided almost no useful information to allow the question to be answered. TomH was able to answer the question very sensibly but it may be that the soldier's name was sufficiently unique to allow him to answer the query. (Alternatively, the Medal Roll reproduced further down the page possibly provided enough information when allied with TomH's own subscription to Ancestry).

My question is whether The National Archives' rules require such blurring of a Medal Index Card or other image of material from TNA; whether they forbid any reproduction of such material at all; or whether it is permitted to reproduce such an image for the purposes of answering a query.

Ancestry's own Terms & Conditions are not the point here. Or are they?

My own feeling was that the images were permitted under the Open Government Licence, specifically that you are free to

copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information

where the Information is defined by

copyright and database right material expressly made available under this licence (the 'Information')

Notice that the use of the term Information here refers to the usage under that definition and that therefore Information includes both information in the normal sense of the word - which cannot be copyrighted - sigh - and the images.

I know that there are those of you who believe that authority needs to be obtained on an image-by-image basis. Any explanation about where I'm going wrong would be welcome but two things need to be brought up if images are to be (effectively) forbidden.

1. The world is full of queries on genealogical boards where a (part-)document is reproduced - I know of no action to close down the Great War Forum (say) because of the number of Medal Index Cards reproduced in queries;
2. If images are (effectively) forbidden, it makes answering queries on document contents (effectively) impossible.

Answer 1

Relevant:

Should we comply with the Terms of Service/Policy Statements of all sites from which our users quote?

How to address possible copyright issues in Thomas Turin question

Familysearch terms of use (2018) and "ownership" of information?

Point the 1st: It is not our job (as moderators or users) to police the copyright/terms of service of the providers of source documents.

Point the 2nd: Posters here have agreed to the SE Terms of Service, which includes giving SE an irrevocable licence to publish material you contribute, including images. However, if they've breached somebody else's ToS or copyright they can't grant that licence. They might sail under the radar or the company who own the rights in whatever was published might find out and issue a DMCA to SE, who would then take the material down and might also remove the offending account. (see https://stackoverflow.com/legal/acceptable-use-policy)

Point the 3rd: All providers of sources have different ToS, so posters will have to investigate for themselves whether they're allowed to publish what they want to publish -- there's no way we can offer definitive guidance in all cases, and especially in complex cases where (for example) Government Organisation A has licenced images of its material to Commercial Organisation B, whose terms of service for the image may override the terms of Government Organisation A...

Final point: We have in the past suggested publishing either a cropped part of an image (only enough to make the question make sense) or a substantially blurred image as the most sensible/lowest risk route forward (ideally with a link to the original image that it was derived from, thus attributing the material clearly.)