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

[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.