Tag: Intellectual Property

Image set of my Creative Commons quick-start guide for convenience. (I’ll be honest: I limited the presentation to ten slides and provided the image set download specifically for Tumblr.)

Tumblr’s Community Guidelines say that people should reblog things to preserve credit. But what if you don’t mind others reposting it (to Tumblr or elsewhere), as long as you get credit? A CC license lets you grant permission for others to do that, legally.

There’s another side to this that I haven’t stressed enough. Not only to these licenses allow you to give actual permission for others to share your work, they also let them know of any restrictions you might want, especially giving credit. I think that some people who repost others’ work illegitimately have misconceptions about copyright, so they might pay closer attention if there’s something that says “permission is granted as long as credit is given [and possibly other conditions].”

A few issues have come up on this blog about sharing and reusing other people’s artwork, the major ones being reposting paid content and pornographic depictions of “avatar” OCs. Copyright is sometimes brought up against certain usages of art, especially those that an artist would probably be against.

Of course, practically no one wants to break the law, and there likely is a good case to make against these usages. But I think the copyright sort of argument is weaker than it seems. Besides ignoring limitations on copyright like fair use and fair dealing (which are for another time), it ignores the fact that there are lots of things that we do that many artists would accept and even support, but are technically still copyright infringement.

Examples:

• An artist posts art for free on a website (like deviantArt, FurAffinity, InkBunny, or Hentai Foundry [depending on the type of art]). Other people share the art on other sites where reposting art is common (like Tumblr, Twitter, e621, Derpibooru, and Paheal [again, depending on the kind of art]). The artist probably doesn’t mind and might even encourage it, provided that proper credit is given (and the artist isn’t running ads on a personal website or account).
• Someone makes fan art of an artist’s OCs. That artist later leaves positive remark on the fan’s work. The artist might even share it with other fans. It seems clear that the artist is okay with others depicting those OCs.

Even though an artist might be totally fine with these two situations, they’re still illegal in many cases. That’s because copyright says that creators must give explicit permission before anyone shares or uses their work in any way. Many artists don’t give clear permission, even though they probably would if someone asked.

In the paid-content issue, I mentioned Creative Commons (or “CC”) licenses. They make it clear: They’re an easy way for you to give everyone permission to share or use your work, given certain restrictions that you can choose. Doing this gets rid of any legal uncertainty behind reposting your work, which will make the copyright argument stronger.

Granted, some people make an informal statement of permission (“You can use my work as long as you give me credit,” for example), but I recommend CC licenses because using them is easier than spelling out all the conditions, and, more importantly, they’re written using legal language that has a better chance in court.

Sound good? I’ve made a quick-start guide to using CC licenses; check it out!

/t/post/76502131093/just-letting-you-know-on-the-off-chance-you-were

Forget reblogging. I’ll just respond like this, since so far all the respondents are followers. (Follow the link for the original post.)

First, let me clear something up: A request isn’t the only reason I’ll take down content. (And this doesn’t just apply to paid content.)

I’ll be honest: For quite some time I’ve been planning to do an in-depth review of the “Hoof Beat” clop collections from Club Stripes (paid content).

I know people will groan when I pull out the the old “fair use/dealing” argument, and I get it. A lot of these claims would probably fail in court. But it’s worth mentioning since it’s worth comparing this with other things I have done and may do in the future. (DISCLAIMER: I’m not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. A qualified professional should be consulted for serious issues.)

A while ago I remixed “Lustrum” by Mittsies (slightly NSFW). This is in fact paid content; Mittsies is selling it in an album and hasn’t released a free download. (EDIT: It’s still on YouTube, so I guess this doesn’t count as “paid.”) But I’d make the case that this is fair use under United States law because it’s transformative (significantly altered from the original), and because (in my opinion), it respects the commercial market for the original work. (I would think that those who are interested in my freely available remix will probably still buy Mittsies’ original if they were so inclined.)

Of course, posting paid content in its entirety does not really respect the commercial market, which is why I’ll probably remove “Royal Pains.” (And I’ll have to go through all my posts to remove any other paid content. -_-) Oddly enough, though, I might still continue with my reviews of the “Hoof Beat” series. I just won’t post the original. I would think that linking to a copy that someone else posted wouldn’t be acceptable either. But of course, they are still readily accessible, which would explain, of course, how I found it in the first place. This is sort of an “officially silent” stance, comparable to how Ambris announced an Inkbunny profile.

Although posting freely available content usually does respect the commercial market (if any), at times it may not. For example, if someone posts content that was originally made available as “pay-what-you-want,” it might decrease sales since some people might not even know that there is an opportunity to pay the artist. Even if content isn’t “pay-what-you-want,” posting it probably isn’t fair use, either. It’s not really transformative, and it incorporates the entire content of the original.

Finally, I’d encourage artists to explicitly grant permission to others to distribute their work if that’s what they want, in order to avoid the legal technicalities I’ve discussed. I personally recommend the Creative Commons licenses, which give you options how others can (legally) use the work.

Yes, I am aware of Poni Parade and a variety of other paid pornographic projects in this area.

Technically any artwork, whether originally released for free or not, is not “free” (that is, legal under copyright law) to post without explicit consent, unless the artist[s] posted it on Tumblr (in which case people are allowed to reblog it under Tumblr’s terms).

I know that some people post artwork available for free and respect the commercial opportunities of paid work, but I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do to deal with this (especially seeing that sites such as Equestria After Dark don’t really make a distinction).

Of course, if a creator actually requests that it be taken down (basically a cease and desist), then I will respect that request.

EDIT: Follow-up