The Fanart Debate: To Be (Credited) or Not To Be
Posted by TP in 'Net Neutrality, Anime, OP/EDGoogle Reader and Anime Nano helped me a lot: I was reading an interesting column by an anime blogger who had posted up his post, crying out to all bloggers to stop using fanarts without explicit permission from the author.
The list of anime blog posts related to the post are staggering, the least to say.
Image credited to bj0rN. Follow his drawings at {link:http://www.drawr.net/bj0rn}http://www.drawr.net/bj0rN{/link}
The fan-art accreditation debate came about about 3 years back. I believed piro of Megatokyo has also mentioned this in his post (sadly I sucked at Google-fu, and am unable to replicate the said link). This came about when the Online Fanarts Protection was set up in 2006, reactive to the proliferation of image boards such as 4chan and Danbooru. Evidently the fan artists did not even consider that basing their drawings off copyrighted content are also in itself a copyright violation. (Exceptions go to original works made by fan artists who based their characters solely on their own, without having to vector-trace existing illustrations from someone else’s.)
I’m no artist of sorts, and usually in photography, most photographers will already have a watermark of sorts to state their copyright over their photographs. Usually speaking, a non-watermarked photograph screams “Rip me, for I am Free to (be blatantly) Post Everywhere (without the photographer’s permission)!” But in all serious matter of discussion, let’s not beat around the bush.
I will be the first to proclaim that this is utter nonsense. (Actually, omo beat me to that, as I type in this post.)
Now I may anger a lot of people, by saying that this OFP discussion – as the online fanarts protection acronym goes – is the same as debating whether an atheist should have sex with any stranger: There is no moral imperative for bloggers to cite the artists that made the artwork, and there is no law (well, actually even debating about copyright is a funny business) that encapsulates the whole matter. It’s not ID4 yet.
Incidentally I don't even know who to credit this image from: clearly it's from a poster, yet I don't see the usual movie credits we usually see in a movie poster. Somebody made the good effort to "clean up" this image for use as a wallpaper. Hence the ludicrity of the debate.
All in all, it’s up to the individual blogger to decide whether to cite the artist who did the drawings (as I did with the first image) or to leave it as it is. As omo clearly pointed out:
Anime blogging, ultimately, is not serious business.
(Most of the links being posted up are very much tl;dr. It’s up to readers to read them for their convenience. I posted this up because it’s an interesting topic, but on the flipside, I may have to edit this post again or post up another, to facilitate discussions.)
Tags: image boards, online fanarts protection
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Hmm, but if there’s a great image with a signature or something, wouldn’t hurt to credit, no? Otherwise if it takes too long…forget it.
Actually, photographers have been doing it for some time now, and I don’t see why this hasn’t been applied to artworks. But don’t get me wrong: there are some artists that did not sign their artworks for valid reasons. But in the most respectable aspect, if it takes too much to advertise yourself, prepare to be assimilated (to any image boards).
I’m raising this post more as a lulz rather than a serious discussion. I may/may not go into deeper talk about it, but that’s provided the e-dorama goes way overboard.
Crediting fanart is important, but if it’s difficult to find the credit, just have the community to help you…
I know this now since there was one person who stole 5 posts I made on my blog and claim it theirs. Although my blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0, he had no permission to copy it nor he put any attribution to any of my hard work. This led me to send DMCA takedown notices until he completely removed my work from his site.
The moral of the story is you need to try to attribute someone’s work by adding the artist name and page or try your best to. After all, you don’t want someone walking off with any type of work and claim it theirs.
I feel for you, Chikorita157. I have no right in debating against others stealing my works (because according to Google Stats, my blog is the “tail end” of the blogging popularity, as apart from the rest of the anime blogging community), but indeed if others have taken the time and effort to cite the source of my works (take gordon for example – even though it’s only one photograph) I’ll try to reciprocate in kind. (Then again, I don’t take anyone else’s photographs yet.)
Well, others have suggested that one should build a page specific to listing down the requirements of citations and sources of images and photographs, as well as blog content. Let’s just see what are the consensus of the anime blogosphere.
Apparently, I am not most photographers since I can’t be bothered to watermark my work. (I am not worthy)
As long as one doesn’t steal images and credit it as their own, all is well. I wouldn’t mind if any artist asked me to withdraw their artwork from my site. And yeah, the whole imageboard thing murkies the origin.
I find the whole mess… messier with WAH’s interjection (and Hinano’s very “enthusiastic” reply). I refer to geekscream’s post on the matter: succint and precise.
Succinct, my pretty arse. That post broke the 1.5k wordcount mark. >_O Had a serious case of tl;dr last night, I did.
Of all the blogs I’ve read – or bothered to read – yours happened to be the most sensible take I’ve ever read. Colorful and difficult vocabulary notwithstanding, I couldn’t have said the same thing myself. That said, most blog posts related to this subject matter are tl;dr anyway. I’m gonna add you to my Google Reader feed list.
Hah, thank you. I’ve been rather surprised at the positive responses so far.
[...] my previous stand still prevails: it’s up to the individual blogger to do so. The only reason why I am putting [...]