Reccing vs Reposting; fandom etiquette musings

[altocello]

I was going to do some drawing tonight, but ended up doing this instead. This needs saying.

OK, so I just thought I'd post a note after all the kerfuffle on tumblr today regarding a totally amazing piece of art that was posted at the merlin_art_fest. The gorgeous piece of art in question can be found here at the art fest, where you should leave it love in the form of a comment if you appreciate it at all. Personally, I think you'd have to not have a pulse to not appreciate it, but that's me, lol.

And I want to say that this is me just getting this off my chest. No fingers being pointed other than the parties directly involved in this particular case.

ANYWAY. The point being, some knucklehead on tumblr decided to not read the rather POINTED and CLEAR statement just below the art, in which it was stated that the art was NOT TO BE REPOSTED ANYWHERE without the artist's express permission. Given that the art fest is currently anonymous, there is NO WAY to get the artist's permission. But this person posted the art to their tumblr anyway. Not a LINK to the post with the art, but the actual image itself.

Now, being amazing, it attracted a lot of positive attention. Which is lovely, except that none of that attention was given to the ARTIST. It was all being given to the knucklehead, who had nothing to do with actually creating the art. I don't care if the artist doesn't have a tumblr. I don't care if you have the attention span and patience of a gnat. You ask the artist if it's okay, FIRST.

My confusion and frustration has to do with why it seems to not be clear that re-posting someone's art without permission is not cool. The analogy I've seen a lot from various friends today has been that you wouldn't repost a fic in it's entirety, that would be blatant plagarism, so why is it somehow perceived as OK to do it with art? That, somehow, posting to a platform that the artist doesn't have an account for is doing them a FAVOR somehow. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't post your fic to AO3 for you, please don't post my art to tumblr for me.

My feelings on this are that it would have been fine to flail about how lovely the art was and to post a LINK to the original post, where others could also leave happy comments in a place where the artist can receive due credit. Essentially, a rec post.

I have had several of my pieces re-posted to tumblr (and one to facebook, oddly), most without my knowledge. In every case so far, the person reposting has always credited me and provided a link back to my original post where they found the art. That makes it marginally better. But I would have been much happier if they had just ASKED ME FIRST. Instead of me hearing about it from a friend, or me finding it by doing a vanity google. Which I do, from time to time, just to see if anyone has lifted any of my stuff recently. Which is pretty sad, really.

I mean, I know it's the internet, and that once it's online, it's not really just mine anymore.

Except that, really, it IS. I deserve credit for making it, and I deserve to see if it makes people happy, and I deserve to read the comments, because that's the ONLY payment I will ever receive for any of it.

Comments

[thilia.livejournal.com]

People just ignore statements like that. I've had my art reposted on Tumblr multiple times (from my own Tumblr - which seems kind of ridiculous, doesn't it? Just click 'reblog'!) and they even cropped out the signature and watermark (making the picture small and blurry in the process), so... yeah. If someone wants to repost, they will repost, whether there's a statement or not.

I reported the first person who did it, and it was taken care of in less than a day (you go, Tumblr support!). After that, I never really bothered to let them know anymore cause as soon as the post gets a few reblogs on Tumblr, there isn't really much you can do cause it's out there, whether they delete the "original" post from the reposter's blog or not.

These days, I make sure to always make my watermark/signature hard to crop out (in the center of the pic, rather than the corners), so that even if it does get reposted, people can find the original source.

For fests... I like phoenixacid's idea :) Or - crazy thought, let the fest post the art on Tumblr. Of course even then, should the artist want to post her own art on Tumblr afterwards, most people will already have reblogged it from the fest's Tumblr and she won't get many notes anyway.

There's no ideal solution, but putting the DO NOT STEAL note ON the artwork, rather than below it would probably help a lot already :)

[clawdine]

Hey! If you report to Tumblr, Support takes down the original including all reblogs. So it's not a lost hope. But I do understand that it gets tiring. :)

[thilia.livejournal.com]

Oh really? Huh, I didn't know that. Good to know! :)

[altocello.livejournal.com]

I like huey's idea of the watermark for the work while it's anonymous, as it makes it possible to track it to a source. And yeah, some people have NO shame.