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

[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.