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 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.