So reccing now equals stealing... Interesting concept.
Before my days of posting a lot in the popslash fandom, I was a professional lurker. I read everything by everyone but I never actually came out and interacted. This came because I had been spoiled by the good fandoms, where just saying hi was enough to meet someone who would give you recs, links and whatnot when you said you were a newbie (Buffy, sigh, the memories), and my very briefs attempts at entering the already stablished fandoms on the internet had been met with empty posts longing forever.
But I was left with an interesting habit of those days, and it's reading my friend's friendslists. One never knows what one can find there, and there's always something interesting to read that one might have missed keeping to their own flist. Today is one of those days.
Maybe I'm getting intolerant of idiots, maybe I'm willingly reading wrong. Or maybe the person posting this little gem is really batshit insane.
1) ...steal directly and butcher (I saw some girl on DAposting japanese fanarts that she had mangled by adding some lame colorbackground + twisted letters, and was acting as if she was "making art"with it or whatever... It pissed me off. O_o)
2)...or they steal and post saying where they stole it from, feigning tothemselves and to the people around that they're not really stealing,but "posting with credit", à la Robin Hood.
Ok. One of those things is not like the other, wouldn't you agree? Sure, Art thief, actual art thief, is one of those black marks in fandom. Be it like what happens from time to time in Y!Gallery where an idiot posts pages after pages of doujinshi art claiming he did it himself and asking money for comissions (And all instances of this particular brand of stupidity have always been stomped quickly and efficiently by the y!gallery mods, I must add), or the usual noob at DA who, as this person says, takes someone else's art and claims it as it's own. It's an even lamer way of plagarism, because some fic plagiarists at least take the time to do some copy paste of names for their LOLnew fic. Art thieves usually don't even take out the original signature of the original artist, if you can believe that.
However, the *second* point is where I have big, big issues with. 'Steal', 'saying where they stole it from'... doesn't it sounds a lot like a rec only taking the 'steal' away and changing it for Post and 'found it'? As in: Or they take the picture, upload it in their servers, post it saying where they find it originally with a link to the artist page so more people can squee at the pretty?
Not only I don't get where the Robin Hood comparison comes from (If anything, Fansubbers and Scanlators are the ones 'taking away from the rich (Japanese companies) to give to the poor (fans)' and I don't see her doing a big fuzz over scanlations), but I also wonder if she won't fall to death from that high horse she's perched in.
Now, this person is, if one judges for the links in her userinfo, japanese. So I was willing to give her the benefit of the language barrier. Bob knows I still make some interesting mistakes with english language and english is a lot closer to spanish than Japanese (Just now, in a fic, I messed up and put auctioned when I mean auditioned. So, language barrier), but as I kept reading her post, one thing was made clear to me: A) It was some mighty high horse, and B) Anime fandoms apparently are a lot less friendly than I remembered them being.
Because after that little gem up there, I found this one:
Anything posted without the written permission of the author is stolen, not "posted with credit"!! There is no such thing as "credit" when the author doesn't wants you to take their stuff.
Now, I am not sure of this, but I am a member of rec50. Where we post links to the story as well as paragraphs. And for instance, I do have a nice little disclaimer in my site that asks that none of my fics are redistributed in archives without my knowledge, but if someone at the comm, or at any other comm, posted a paragraph of *any* of my fics, as well as a link to my site, my name and a nice little 'yay, please, read me', I don't consider that stealing. Hell, I haven't met anyone in fandom who considered that stealing. And if I happened to wander to that fictional com or rec, and it was someone who isn't even in my flist, I would feel quite honored. Oh, why... I forgot ...
A lot of western people (mostly the art thieves...) think credit is everything, but that's NOT true. Especially not at the eyes of the japanese artists. But it's not because an artist is western/asian/fromanother planet or whatever that he or she will be happy to have their stuff stolen either.
Often, they pull out some friend of them whodrew two or three doodles in their life and who claims that "I'd behonored if someone stole my stuff" as "proof", as if that was any proofthat stealing is okay!
Real artists, people who draw often, peoplewho put their love and time into pics HATE having their stuff stolen orre-used without permission.
Now, this woman is on some confusion. I remember the japanese fanartist getting quite pissed because their works were being used to make icons, and templates and whatnots without credit, link or anything that would point to the original author. Now, THAT? Is stealing (although I'm a bit fuzzy on the iconage stuff. I do give permission to use my chibis for icons, but usually to the person I made the chibi for. That's a bit different as they're gifts. The ones that were not made for someone in particular could be considered fair game, as long as credit is given). And the way she words this, and the rest of her rant, makes sound the japanese fans as some group of elitist people who don't want any contact at all with western fandom. Maybe that's true, I don't know as I don't know any japanese fen, but to tar everyone with the same brush? Also, all art thieves are western? News to me. I am not in the japanse fandom, but I'm pretty sure 4-chan (Considered by many as *the* art thief community as credit is seldomly given) is an offshot of 2-chan, a japanse community with the exact same purpose: to distribute art, credit be damned. I might be wrong about that, and I might look a bit more into it just as not to spread missinformation.
So much hypocrisy. They lie, saying they like that art or those artists, but it's nothing but lies. If they liked them, they wouldn't violate their trust, by stealing what the artists so kindly shared with the world.
Funny story? I saw this exact same words being used by a guy who was against fanart. The very *Same* words, in the exact order. "If you liked (Kurumada/Takeuchi/Whedon)'s word, you wouldn't violate their trust by stealing what they shared with us for your cheap thrills". And as this person ranting is a fanartist, I wonder what would she said about that.
What I find even more funny, is that she doesn't mention any *names*. I know my fandoms, I know that when someone finds a thief or a plagiarist in any of the western fandoms, it's feathers and tar time. Cassandra Claire's name has been dragged through the mud so many times that I find it hard to believe we still have mud for that. I know the story, and I am not even in her fandom! There was the always crowed Crystal_wank and it's offshots, where a woman tried to pass off Photoshot manips as real hand made drawings. There's hardly a week going by without someone at fanficrants posting a stolen fic with a link to the original, and reports at fanfic.net are the butter and bread of some coms. And here comes this girl, all self righteous, ranting against a quite old tradition of fandom (hell!, yaoi_daily posts full doujinshi, both raw and scanlated. What would she think of it?) and doesn't even mention the names of the 'two DA girls who were tracing japanese fanart'. So, of course, by reading through the answers at her post and a couple more friends'sfriends pages, I find out that everyone understood what I got from her post recs=thief. And while there are a couple of 'yay' answers, I get from those answers that they're yaying the 'Art thief = plagiarism = wrong' and ignoring the 'Linking art = art thief' part of her rant, because she keeps explaining it again, and again and again! Worst case of tl:dr ever.
When someone takes her to task, she adds a pretty gem: "I didn't mean that I think they should hotlink. ^^;/ That would be horrible.
What irks me isn't them recommending the site, or even uploading the pics when recommending. What irks me is that they never ask the artist before uploading said pics for rec.
They could go and make an entry/topic/post without images, saying "Oh, I saw this site, I really love it, I think you should check it out...". That would be an honest rec, no need to ask permission or anything, but then, they wouldn't have pics in their page, and for some reason, people seem to feel a nutter need to have them. ^^;"
Obviously, this woman doesn't know a thing about 'fair use', or the implicit permission to reproduce a small part of a work of art for reviewing purposes. Or the fact that an image is a lot more helpful than a 'yay I saw cool art'.
I don't know if I am going to post on her journal, since I know it's wanky. Hell, I'm half tempted to post this in I_wank after my long post. What I'm going to do is being true to myself. I criticize her for not giving names (And unjustly tarring every single mod of every single art daily com on lj, including two very dear friends of mine), so I won't do the same. Her name is sagakure, and she's to be credited for all the italized nonsense in this post.
Also, and FYI? All my chibis can be reposted for rec purposes with my permission *or* the permission of the person I made the chibi for. Credit would be nice, link here would be even better. I won't be calling the internet police on you ;)
But I was left with an interesting habit of those days, and it's reading my friend's friendslists. One never knows what one can find there, and there's always something interesting to read that one might have missed keeping to their own flist. Today is one of those days.
Maybe I'm getting intolerant of idiots, maybe I'm willingly reading wrong. Or maybe the person posting this little gem is really batshit insane.
1) ...steal directly and butcher (I saw some girl on DAposting japanese fanarts that she had mangled by adding some lame colorbackground + twisted letters, and was acting as if she was "making art"with it or whatever... It pissed me off. O_o)
2)...or they steal and post saying where they stole it from, feigning tothemselves and to the people around that they're not really stealing,but "posting with credit", à la Robin Hood.
Ok. One of those things is not like the other, wouldn't you agree? Sure, Art thief, actual art thief, is one of those black marks in fandom. Be it like what happens from time to time in Y!Gallery where an idiot posts pages after pages of doujinshi art claiming he did it himself and asking money for comissions (And all instances of this particular brand of stupidity have always been stomped quickly and efficiently by the y!gallery mods, I must add), or the usual noob at DA who, as this person says, takes someone else's art and claims it as it's own. It's an even lamer way of plagarism, because some fic plagiarists at least take the time to do some copy paste of names for their LOLnew fic. Art thieves usually don't even take out the original signature of the original artist, if you can believe that.
However, the *second* point is where I have big, big issues with. 'Steal', 'saying where they stole it from'... doesn't it sounds a lot like a rec only taking the 'steal' away and changing it for Post and 'found it'? As in: Or they take the picture, upload it in their servers, post it saying where they find it originally with a link to the artist page so more people can squee at the pretty?
Not only I don't get where the Robin Hood comparison comes from (If anything, Fansubbers and Scanlators are the ones 'taking away from the rich (Japanese companies) to give to the poor (fans)' and I don't see her doing a big fuzz over scanlations), but I also wonder if she won't fall to death from that high horse she's perched in.
Now, this person is, if one judges for the links in her userinfo, japanese. So I was willing to give her the benefit of the language barrier. Bob knows I still make some interesting mistakes with english language and english is a lot closer to spanish than Japanese (Just now, in a fic, I messed up and put auctioned when I mean auditioned. So, language barrier), but as I kept reading her post, one thing was made clear to me: A) It was some mighty high horse, and B) Anime fandoms apparently are a lot less friendly than I remembered them being.
Because after that little gem up there, I found this one:
Anything posted without the written permission of the author is stolen, not "posted with credit"!! There is no such thing as "credit" when the author doesn't wants you to take their stuff.
Now, I am not sure of this, but I am a member of rec50. Where we post links to the story as well as paragraphs. And for instance, I do have a nice little disclaimer in my site that asks that none of my fics are redistributed in archives without my knowledge, but if someone at the comm, or at any other comm, posted a paragraph of *any* of my fics, as well as a link to my site, my name and a nice little 'yay, please, read me', I don't consider that stealing. Hell, I haven't met anyone in fandom who considered that stealing. And if I happened to wander to that fictional com or rec, and it was someone who isn't even in my flist, I would feel quite honored. Oh, why... I forgot ...
A lot of western people (mostly the art thieves...) think credit is everything, but that's NOT true. Especially not at the eyes of the japanese artists. But it's not because an artist is western/asian/fromanother planet or whatever that he or she will be happy to have their stuff stolen either.
Often, they pull out some friend of them whodrew two or three doodles in their life and who claims that "I'd behonored if someone stole my stuff" as "proof", as if that was any proofthat stealing is okay!
Real artists, people who draw often, peoplewho put their love and time into pics HATE having their stuff stolen orre-used without permission.
Now, this woman is on some confusion. I remember the japanese fanartist getting quite pissed because their works were being used to make icons, and templates and whatnots without credit, link or anything that would point to the original author. Now, THAT? Is stealing (although I'm a bit fuzzy on the iconage stuff. I do give permission to use my chibis for icons, but usually to the person I made the chibi for. That's a bit different as they're gifts. The ones that were not made for someone in particular could be considered fair game, as long as credit is given). And the way she words this, and the rest of her rant, makes sound the japanese fans as some group of elitist people who don't want any contact at all with western fandom. Maybe that's true, I don't know as I don't know any japanese fen, but to tar everyone with the same brush? Also, all art thieves are western? News to me. I am not in the japanse fandom, but I'm pretty sure 4-chan (Considered by many as *the* art thief community as credit is seldomly given) is an offshot of 2-chan, a japanse community with the exact same purpose: to distribute art, credit be damned. I might be wrong about that, and I might look a bit more into it just as not to spread missinformation.
So much hypocrisy. They lie, saying they like that art or those artists, but it's nothing but lies. If they liked them, they wouldn't violate their trust, by stealing what the artists so kindly shared with the world.
Funny story? I saw this exact same words being used by a guy who was against fanart. The very *Same* words, in the exact order. "If you liked (Kurumada/Takeuchi/Whedon)'s word, you wouldn't violate their trust by stealing what they shared with us for your cheap thrills". And as this person ranting is a fanartist, I wonder what would she said about that.
What I find even more funny, is that she doesn't mention any *names*. I know my fandoms, I know that when someone finds a thief or a plagiarist in any of the western fandoms, it's feathers and tar time. Cassandra Claire's name has been dragged through the mud so many times that I find it hard to believe we still have mud for that. I know the story, and I am not even in her fandom! There was the always crowed Crystal_wank and it's offshots, where a woman tried to pass off Photoshot manips as real hand made drawings. There's hardly a week going by without someone at fanficrants posting a stolen fic with a link to the original, and reports at fanfic.net are the butter and bread of some coms. And here comes this girl, all self righteous, ranting against a quite old tradition of fandom (hell!, yaoi_daily posts full doujinshi, both raw and scanlated. What would she think of it?) and doesn't even mention the names of the 'two DA girls who were tracing japanese fanart'. So, of course, by reading through the answers at her post and a couple more friends'sfriends pages, I find out that everyone understood what I got from her post recs=thief. And while there are a couple of 'yay' answers, I get from those answers that they're yaying the 'Art thief = plagiarism = wrong' and ignoring the 'Linking art = art thief' part of her rant, because she keeps explaining it again, and again and again! Worst case of tl:dr ever.
When someone takes her to task, she adds a pretty gem: "I didn't mean that I think they should hotlink. ^^;/ That would be horrible.
What irks me isn't them recommending the site, or even uploading the pics when recommending. What irks me is that they never ask the artist before uploading said pics for rec.
They could go and make an entry/topic/post without images, saying "Oh, I saw this site, I really love it, I think you should check it out...". That would be an honest rec, no need to ask permission or anything, but then, they wouldn't have pics in their page, and for some reason, people seem to feel a nutter need to have them. ^^;"
Obviously, this woman doesn't know a thing about 'fair use', or the implicit permission to reproduce a small part of a work of art for reviewing purposes. Or the fact that an image is a lot more helpful than a 'yay I saw cool art'.
I don't know if I am going to post on her journal, since I know it's wanky. Hell, I'm half tempted to post this in I_wank after my long post. What I'm going to do is being true to myself. I criticize her for not giving names (And unjustly tarring every single mod of every single art daily com on lj, including two very dear friends of mine), so I won't do the same. Her name is sagakure, and she's to be credited for all the italized nonsense in this post.
Also, and FYI? All my chibis can be reposted for rec purposes with my permission *or* the permission of the person I made the chibi for. Credit would be nice, link here would be even better. I won't be calling the internet police on you ;)