Question: artist‘s right of control over their work vs fanwork preservation efforts

[mekare]

Hey everyone, I‘d appreciate any input into this. I came across a post this week where someone reposted artworks on DW with credit to the artist but clearly without the artist‘s permission. These were about 9-14 years old and originally posted on LJ. I sent them a private message with my thoughts which stated that I‘d be angry if my stuff turned up somewhere else.

We continued to have a civil discussion which now boils down to the two points in the subject line:

- the artist has kept the LJ but hasn‘t posted anything for a long time
- there is no information on the LJ about repost or archive preferences

- the poster wanted to save the art from disappearing (since community posts where the art originally turned up don‘t have it anymore, though it is still available via the images archive of the LJ)
- the poster has taken a lot of effort in contacting the artist but been unsuccessful

What do you think - does the desire to preserve fanworks for future generations of fans trump the artist‘s right to have complete control over where their stuff is posted? Especially in a case like this where the artist doesn‘t seem to be active in fandom anymore and can‘t be asked directly about their preferences?

Comments

[amberdreams]

I think in this instance it's wrong to repost - by all means download and save for your own personal archive if you fear the artist might delete their journal, but reposting them completely without permission feels wrong to me.

[goss]

I 100% agree.

Download as much as you want for your own personal enjoyment, but public distribution/re-posting without permission? Absolutely not okay.

Although the loss of something you love might be understandably painful, in my opinion respecting an artist's ownership of their creation should override a person's own selfish need to hold on to/archive/share things they didn't create.

[yhlee]

This, 100%.

[mekare]

That was my intial reaction too.

[olivermoss]

This is timely as Tinypic just shut down and took a lot of illustrations for fic on Ao3 with it.

I am in a few fandoms where art didn't make it to current platforms, and this is something I wind up talking about a lot.

I'll likely make a longer comment later, but for now I will point out that archiving doesn't necessarily mean public reposting. This is crucial to some kinds of preservation, like film. Some films will start coming out of copyright in the next few years, but only the original versions. Restored versions have a new copyright. They will only come out of copyright if people managed to hold onto originals. This is a different situation, but it shows an important approach.

Personally, I am for preserving fanworks. I don't allow repostings in communities I run because they are communities, not archives. And also we've had reposts without due diligence.

It's possible to archive for historical and other purposes without like reposting all the stuff to a fyeah tumblr.

[edit] Also, if the artist didn't post publicly in the first place, only in a locked community, that is something to be extremely careful of when it comes to any sharing or access.

[mekare]

Well, the artist never posted these pieces to their journal, but the comm where they were posted was public.

I agree that reposting is not archiving and that there really needs to be a better solution if that is the goal.

[olivermoss]

Ah, okay. I was speaking both generally and also about some situations I've been involved in.

I am a big proponent of archiving, but it needs to be done carefully and not for personal social capital. In the end, people are more important than the fanworks they produce.

[ratcreature]

I don't think it's okay. As audience I'm always sad to see things vanish, but just because I'd like easy access to something doesn't mean a creator has to provide it forever. I mean, obviously anyone can save themselves a copy as long as it's still online, but if one day it isn't, I don't see that as really different from other ephemeral art that gets less accessible as time goes on. Like, if I really wanted to see a 1970s tv special I heard of, more likely than not I couldn't find access to that either.

And reposting is different from merely archiving the original works in their context too. Even a project like archive.org doesn't promote what it indexed on some new platform. For example I allow robots to crawl and index on my personal site so some of my fanart has snapshots on archive.org, but I don't allow reposting anywhere, including projects like Fanlore.

[olivermoss]

I've actually prompted archive.org to take snapshots of my personal photography website, but I would be very upset if people reposted my work to reddit or something. I divide up my work my usage rights, some I do allow to fandom community property, other work, nope. They are a very good example of archiving doesn't meant reposting.

[ratcreature]

I think to some degree "fanwork preservation" just gets invoked because it kind of sounds better than wanting to repost some art you really like in your current hangout, so it's less of a hassle to point others to the cool thing. There's rarely even any actual archiving strategy beyond "I don't want my favorites to vanish" -- like these kinds of reposters don't treat the no-name fan who made that one somewhat inept contribution in the some exchange whose free webspace expired the same as say a BNF with lots of cool stuff who flounced.

[olivermoss]

Exactly. Archiving gets used as an excuse. Reposting is a good way to build up one's own social engagement.

[minoanmiss]

I agree with everyone else who's posted here, not least because I know several people who took their fanworks down for strongly felt reasons and who would be very upset and even endangered to have those works put back up.

[goss]

and even endangered to have those works put back up

EXACTLY.

Some people don't think about the reasons why someone might no longer want their work out there, and the consequences that could follow if they somehow get outed.

[olivermoss]

A large fan project I was in is now offline because one of the people on the project went pro. That old project could cost that fan her job. There are other dangers, but that is one I am keenly aware of for various reasons.

[ratcreature]

Also it doesn't even have to be about anything dangerous. Plenty of creators prefer their more recent work to be more prominent, but if they for example earlier did something in a big fandom that was really popular it often keeps overshadowing later works in search results and such, even if they have moved on from that point creatively. For many letting natural link rot take its course is a compromise between actively deleting old works they don't like as much anymore, and keeping all old things as available as the new and possibly overshadowing those.

[dylan_mx]

I think it's alright.

They did try to contact them and if the artist got back they would be able to ask to take it down. Alternatively they don't care about it anymore, at least not enough to check things like that.

My idea is that you are not hurting the artist in this case: while repost of an active artist take views away from them and some apparel website steal to make their own profit, in this case you're not stealing attention from the artist nor damaging them economically.

What are the chances that it could damage their job, now, if the reposter wasn't able to contact/connect the old account with a new one?

I see it both from the point of view of the artist and the other fans. I wouldn't mind if my stuff (for instance the nsfw stuff that got deleted in the tumblr ban) got posted somewhere else because more people can enjoy it and as a fan I'd love to see old artwork being shared again and find new life.

I post art online just to share it, so it's clearly a different perspective than most.

And anyway how do we know if half the artist we got in museums were ok with us putting their stuff in there? Or books/diaries/letters that were published posthumous?
Either the author thinks about it before and leaves notes for the future (and hope they get followed) or you leave it up to who comes across it.