TheTundraTerror said:
Well, whatever. It's not like I can't already find every single Hardblush comic with a simple Google search.

:^)

and i think this is pretty much the crux of the argument right here. it is well established that any notion of copyright on the Internet is irrelevant in the face of billions of instances of infringing materials, with hundreds of thousands of instances being shared every single day, and that the death of copyright, and therefore of the artist's imaginary right to control of their work, is just a few generations away.

when we live in an age where we can simply type in "watch [movie]" and be able to see that movie instantly no matter who's providing it, it's a golden age. the same for the works of artists who have decided to hide their work under a paywall and cut off their main source of exposure: their own work. you can find it anywhere.

i'm sure if the administration simply said "we don't want to get sued" and left it at that, it would be an understandable rule. but when we bring bum morality into the discussion, it just becomes a messy discussion.

fewrahuxo said:
and i think this is pretty much the crux of the argument right here. it is well established that any notion of copyright on the Internet is irrelevant in the face of billions of instances of infringing materials, with hundreds of thousands of instances being shared every single day, and that the death of copyright, and therefore of the artist's imaginary right to control of their work, is just a few generations away.

when we live in an age where we can simply type in "watch [movie]" and be able to see that movie instantly no matter who's providing it, it's a golden age. the same for the works of artists who have decided to hide their work under a paywall and cut off their main source of exposure: their own work. you can find it anywhere.

i'm sure if the administration simply said "we don't want to get sued" and left it at that, it would be an understandable rule. but when we bring bum morality into the discussion, it just becomes a messy discussion.

Something being really easy to do shouldn't be a justification for doing it or allowing it.

fewrahuxo said:
actually i've read your previous post and thought about it, but i felt it would just be a reiteration of things i've already said and would descend into me being a twat. my basic opinion is that in the age of the Internet where anything can be distributed for free and forever, a scenario which would be paradise in the material world, it strikes me as incredibly selfish for anybody to artificially restrict this paradise.

it seems the only arguments in favor of artist's rights - and therefore against user's rights - comes from either legality (we'll get sued) or morality (let's all be polite). i understand the first argument, but then it contradicts the site's entire existence of uploading copyrighted works. the second one is irrelevant because i don't know the artist personally and have no obligation to respect their wishes.

you can call this point of view delusional or entitled if you want, but the practicality is that there's no real reason to restrict the redistribution of artist's work beyond being polite. the artist's loss of profit cited seems to have been pulled out of nowhere by somebody, and even on the generous assumption that there is an actual loss, that seemed to have been solved by the two-year time delay.

Yes, your point of view is delusional and entitled. You have basically told me that you believe that artists should be giving you things for free (which they already do, to an extent) because its the Internet and the internet should be free. Other people deserve to make money as well, and its perfectly legal for them to do so on the internet.

If it were up to legality and morality with your mindset, you seem to think that you should be expecting a ferarri because it looks nice and you want it and you think it's not fair other people get it because they have more money. That's just not how the capitalist society we live in works. You have to pay for art just like you have to pay for cars. And in this case, you seem to think fucking over content creators by not paying for the work they're SELLING is an okay idea.

your "basic opinion is that in the age of the Internet where anything can be distributed for free and forever, a scenario which would be paradise in the material world" does actually exist in the material world you know. It's called stealing, and you go to jail for that shit.

I can see now that you don't have a real argument. You literally just think that fucking over artists and content creators is okay, and thus think that you're entitled to their work. I should tell you that now the problem isnt between you and e6, but between you and the artists who will not give you their shit for free.

I sincerely hope you don't have this outlook in real life, because it's not healthy.

fewrahuxo said:
when we live in an age where we can simply type in "watch [movie]" and be able to see that movie instantly no matter who's providing it, it's a golden age.

Unless you're the guy who paid millions of dollars to make it and didn't get that millions of dollars back in sales due to piracy.

fewrahuxo said:
the same for the works of artists who have decided to hide their work under a paywall and cut off their main source of exposure: their own work. you can find it anywhere.

That's what free samples are for. You don't need free access to literally everything an artist makes to see if they're worth paying.

fewrahuxo said:
i was aware of the sentence, but once again this is basic science and using this statement to assume a negative effect is to fall into the negative proof fallacy.

No that's not a negative proof fallacy. The sentence I quoted says there's no statistically significant findings to support either. The conclusions in 7.7 on the other hand do go into detail on the specific media types, and draws the conclusions that most effects are negative, if there are any. Exception being games, as mentioned before.

fewrahuxo said:
i'm sure if the administration simply said "we don't want to get sued" and left it at that, it would be an understandable rule. but when we bring bum morality into the discussion, it just becomes a messy discussion.

And back to the argument that things should be free because it's more convenient for you, at any cost.

Alright, here goes an argument going off of the statement "any pay content will be permanently DNP without exception"

The way that this is worded is actually pretty bad. "Pay Content" can refer to any piece of artwork that was paid for. If artwork gets put onto here and the person that paid for the artwork requests that it be taken down, does it get taken down? Is the reasoning behind it that they paid for the content and that since they paid for it, they have control over where it gets posted to besides the original website/medium? And if it doesn't get taken down because it was allowed to be shown on a specific site which means it's now free for anyone to distribute, why is this allowed?

If it falls under that the person that paid for the artwork has the authority to take a picture off of e621 because they don't want it on here, wouldn't that be "Paid Content"? And using the quote from above, since it's paid content, shouldn't it be considered PERMANENTLY DNP? And since the majority of artwork is paid for, wouldn't that make most of the content on here DNP? Unless the artist put it on here with asking the buyer (which is what normally happens) or the buyer puts it on here themselves (which is the second option), then the artwork is now against the site's policy. And because it's very hard to know what piece of art is or is not breaking the policy (unless it is clearly posted by the artist or EXPLICITLY ALLOWED wherever they're posting the art), then shouldn't most of the art on e621 be deleted under the precedent that you just set?

Or if content that is paid for but not blocked behind a paywall is not considered the same depth as commercial/paysite content, why is this not differentiated? You need to be more clear with a wide sweeping rule change like this to not affect more than what was originally intended.

I'm not arguing if I'm with or against this change- I'm only arguing that in its current wording, the rule change is inherently flawed and needs to be reworded or changed. And until that happens, the rule change should not be enforced, or it should be enforced EXACTLY as it is stated.

Pendraggon said:
Yes, your point of view is delusional and entitled. You have basically told me that you believe that artists should be giving you things for free (which they already do, to an extent) because its the Internet and the internet should be free. Other people deserve to make money as well, and its perfectly legal for them to do so on the internet.

from experience i have found that artists are already likely to make things for free regardless of whether or not i desire it. i don't particularly expect artists to give me anything for free, because, once again, i don't know them and they don't have any obligation to me either. if i was expecting custom work from them for free, that would be entitled, because the harm done is in monopolizing their time and skill for nothing. but the silent copying of their materials does no harm to them whatsoever.

if you don't believe that the Internet should be used for the mass distribution of materials, well, i invite you to tell me what it should be used for. although i get the feeling putting the entire fate of the Internet in the hands of one person, as opposed to the billions of people who have decided that the Internet is a pretty happening place to share things, is a bad move.

If it were up to legality and morality with your mindset, you seem to think that you should be expecting a ferarri because it looks nice and you want it and you think it's not fair other people get it because they have more money.

if that Ferrari was a complete 1:1 clone of somebody else's Ferrari, the original owner had no obligation to my use of that Ferrari, and I managed to obtain my own copy of this Ferrari without inconveniencing anybody else, then i would absolutely expect a Ferrari, because getting a Ferrari seems like an easy and convenient thing to get.

and so long as we're talking about things i'd like to copy, i would enjoy copying the essentials of life, such as food, clean water, clothing, and a good home. but i guess i'm not allowed to clone those because it would put all the bakers, tailors, and real estate agents out of business, and i'm absolutely allowed to die if it means preserving their business.

That's just not how the capitalist society we live in works. You have to pay for art just like you have to pay for cars. And in this case, you seem to think fucking over content creators by not paying for the work they're SELLING is an okay idea.

funny enough i haven't ever had to pay for art since i found e621, given how this is an entirely free service. it seems like this free work that e621 is hosting has no price tag on it, nor any sort of artificial barriers that make me pay for work with money i don't have.

i invite you to name one content creator i have directly wronged as a result of my actions. actual wrongs, with actual evidence, not theoretical wrongs with anecdotal evidence.

your "basic opinion is that in the age of the Internet where anything can be distributed for free and forever, a scenario which would be paradise in the material world" does actually exist in the material world you know. It's called stealing, and you go to jail for that shit.

i'm not sure you quite understand what stealing is. if you have an apple and i take it, you lose the apple and i now possess it. wrong, isn't it? but if you have an apple and i somehow come into an exact genetic copy of that apple, we both have one apple and nobody goes hungry. the first example is stealing, but the second example is copying.

you can cry semantics all you want, but this is the literal dictionary definition between copying and
stealing.

I can see now that you don't have a real argument.

darn, i guess all those words i typed were for nothing.

I sincerely hope you don't have this outlook in real life, because it's not healthy.

i have been content with my life for the past several years, and have had no reason to change my lifestyle thus far. i advise you to avoid making assumptions about people you don't know.

fewrahuxo said:
and i think this is pretty much the crux of the argument right here. it is well established that any notion of copyright on the Internet is irrelevant in the face of billions of instances of infringing materials, with hundreds of thousands of instances being shared every single day, and that the death of copyright, and therefore of the artist's imaginary right to control of their work, is just a few generations away.

when we live in an age where we can simply type in "watch [movie]" and be able to see that movie instantly no matter who's providing it, it's a golden age. the same for the works of artists who have decided to hide their work under a paywall and cut off their main source of exposure: their own work. you can find it anywhere.

i'm sure if the administration simply said "we don't want to get sued" and left it at that, it would be an understandable rule. but when we bring bum morality into the discussion, it just becomes a messy discussion.

Keep in mind most of the websites people are going to use to get around copyright like that have some kind of loophole where nothing is permanently stored on their servers (torrent sites just provide listings for distributed file systems, for instance), so the question becomes whether they are the one in the wrong. In the case of e6, if you as a user upload something you don't legally have the right to upload, it should be rejected or taken down. If the website hosting the image then refuses to enforce that, they are in the wrong and, yes, could get sued for it. They don't have the excuse of not hosting anything, like if it was just some kind of list of files on a distributed ipfs share, and they're too big to just weasel their way out of things by vanishing for a while and plopping back up with another name. It's a legitimate concern for anyone involved with the site.

Fifteen said:
Keep in mind most of the websites people are going to use to get around copyright like that have some kind of loophole where nothing is permanently stored on their servers (torrent sites just provide listings for distributed file systems, for instance), so the question becomes whether they are the one in the wrong. In the case of e6, if you as a user upload something you don't legally have the right to upload, it should be rejected or taken down. If the website hosting the image then refuses to enforce that, they are in the wrong and, yes, could get sued for it. They don't have the excuse of not hosting anything, like if it was just some kind of list of files on a distributed ipfs share, and they're too big to just weasel their way out of things by vanishing for a while and plopping back up with another name. It's a legitimate concern for anyone involved with the site.

what's sad is that The Pirate Bay never actually hosted any copyrighted materials on their servers, yet the indexing of those materials were enough to have the site taken down. i suppose certain sequences of letters and numbers, as in magnet links, are enough to go to jail over. so maybe e621 does have some magic bullet that absolves them from responsibility, but it really would have to be magic.

Lv100Garchomp said:
Alright, here goes an argument going off of the statement "any pay content will be permanently DNP without exception"

The way that this is worded is actually pretty bad. "Pay Content" can refer to any piece of artwork that was paid for. If artwork gets put onto here and the person that paid for the artwork requests that it be taken down, does it get taken down? Is the reasoning behind it that they paid for the content and that since they paid for it, they have control over where it gets posted to besides the original website/medium? And if it doesn't get taken down because it was allowed to be shown on a specific site which means it's now free for anyone to distribute, why is this allowed?

If it falls under that the person that paid for the artwork have the authority to take a picture off of e621 because they don't want it on here, wouldn't that be "Paid Content"? And using the quote from above, since it's paid content, shouldn't it be considered PERMANENTLY DNP? And since the majority of artwork is paid for, wouldn't that make most of the content on here DNP? Unless the artist put it on here with asking the buyer (which is what normally happens) or the buyer puts it on here themselves (which is the second option), then the artwork is now against the site's policy. And because it's very hard to know what piece of art is or is not breaking the policy (unless it is clearly posted by the artist or EXPLICITLY ALLOWED wherever they're posting the art), then shouldn't most of the art on e621 be deleted under the precedent that you just set?

Or if content that is paid for but not blocked behind a paywall is not considered the same depth as commercial/paysite content, why is this not differentiated? You need to be more clear with a wide sweeping rule change like this to not affect more than what was originally intended.

I'm not arguing if I'm with or against this change- I'm only arguing that in its current wording, the rule change is inherently flawed and needs to be reworded or changed. And until that happens, the rule change should not be enforced, or it should be enforced EXACTLY as it is stated.

Well, the OP does say :

If we have accidentally deleted things that are freely available then please report those as well so we can restore them.

The keyword here is "freely available". It basically boils down to "If you can't source it so that anyone else can go see the source, don't upload it."

Fifteen said:
Well, the OP does say :
The keyword here is "freely available". It basically boils down to "If you can't source it so that anyone else can go see the source, don't upload it."

Except freely available doesn't automatically grant you the right to redistribute the work. Or at least it shouldn't. But the main argument I posted is against the words "Pay Content". If they mean COMMERCIAL/PAYSITE content from this statement, why is it not worded as such? Why not use the same wording that is already in the rules?

Lv100Garchomp said:
Alright, here goes an argument going off of the statement "any pay content will be permanently DNP without exception"

The way that this is worded is actually pretty bad. "Pay Content" can refer to any piece of artwork that was paid for. If artwork gets put onto here and the person that paid for the artwork requests that it be taken down, does it get taken down? Is the reasoning behind it that they paid for the content and that since they paid for it, they have control over where it gets posted to besides the original website/medium? And if it doesn't get taken down because it was allowed to be shown on a specific site which means it's now free for anyone to distribute, why is this allowed?

If it falls under that the person that paid for the artwork has the authority to take a picture off of e621 because they don't want it on here, wouldn't that be "Paid Content"? And using the quote from above, since it's paid content, shouldn't it be considered PERMANENTLY DNP? And since the majority of artwork is paid for, wouldn't that make most of the content on here DNP? Unless the artist put it on here with asking the buyer (which is what normally happens) or the buyer puts it on here themselves (which is the second option), then the artwork is now against the site's policy. And because it's very hard to know what piece of art is or is not breaking the policy (unless it is clearly posted by the artist or EXPLICITLY ALLOWED wherever they're posting the art), then shouldn't most of the art on e621 be deleted under the precedent that you just set?

Or if content that is paid for but not blocked behind a paywall is not considered the same depth as commercial/paysite content, why is this not differentiated? You need to be more clear with a wide sweeping rule change like this to not affect more than what was originally intended.

I'm not arguing if I'm with or against this change- I'm only arguing that in its current wording, the rule change is inherently flawed and needs to be reworded or changed. And until that happens, the rule change should not be enforced, or it should be enforced EXACTLY as it is stated.

We've used the wording "paid content" for years to denote any form of pay-to-view content.
But I'll see if I can come up with a wording that would help squash ambiguity.

fewrahuxo said:
what's sad is that The Pirate Bay never actually hosted any copyrighted materials on their servers, yet the indexing of those materials were enough to have the site taken down. i suppose certain sequences of letters and numbers, as in magnet links, are enough to go to jail over. so maybe e621 does have some magic bullet that absolves them from responsibility, but it really would have to be magic.

But e621 doesn't just keep an index or host magnet links, it hosts the actual content on their servers for anyone to see. There's no magic bullet here, and if they want to avoid legal trouble, they need to play far with everyone.

Also, you can't compare information with physical goods when talking about piracy, since information can be copied indefinitely, while physical goods can only be at one place at any given time. Copying information you're not supposed to is a completely different kind of "crime", since nobody loses access to it from you copying it. You don't "directly wrong anyone as a result of your actions", but that your actions can still have an impact on the creator if restricting access to that information was the entire point to begin with.

fewrahuxo said:

i invite you to name one content creator i have directly wronged as a result of my actions. actual wrongs, with actual evidence, not theoretical wrongs with anecdotal evidence.

e621 is free to access, not free to run. That the admins do not pass that cost on to you is a boon, because according to you arguments here, you would never pay for it. No matter how much pleasure it brings you.

And no, you haven't personally wronged any content creator. But the argument can be made that the website itself indeed HAS. And in order to prevent or lessen the chance that any CC will make that argument in the future, the site has implemented a new policy.

It's really easy for you to make the argument you're making. I'm assuming you don't create any kind of product or content on which your well-being depends. If you DID, you'd be on the other side of this argument in a heartbeat.

Lv100Garchomp said:
Except freely available doesn't automatically grant you the right to redistribute the work. Or at least it shouldn't.

You're right, but I was only referring to the rule change itself. Once you've got that bit sorted out, then you can start worrying about DNP, site guidelines and all that. It's just my own take on the new rule.

But the main argument I posted is against the words "Pay Content". If they mean COMMERCIAL/PAYSITE content from this statement, why is it not worded as such? Why not use the same wording that is already in the rules?

NotMeNotYou answered that one while I was typing, apparently.

Fifteen said:
You don't "directly wrong anyone as a result of your actions", but that your actions can still have an impact on the creator if restricting access to that information was the entire point to begin with.

if i harm a butterfly now, does it change the future a thousand years from now? have i harmed future men with my unthoughtful actions?

it seems very silly to say that any harm whatsoever is being done to artists when all the "harm" is so nascent as to be nonexistent.

i think the creator is harming me by restricting access to information to certain brands of people. a bit of a silly argument, yes, but i find it sillier how so many posters - who aren't not artists - are in favor of the artist's rights while giving up their own. like i touched upon, all the artist's rights are imaginary and are codified into law. without the law, they wouldn't have any whatsoever.

nobody gains anything from 2 year old patreon paywall art, if the artist has improved at all and is still active, nobody would be looking for that 2 year old content, so it would just get lost and forgotten unless the artist manually makes it free.

removing all paid content that was previously on the site is just a slap in the face and it didn't need to happen

Of course this doesn't really mean anything as there's still plenty of free content, but it just comes off as insulting since, as mentioned earlier, 2 year old art is just the icing on top of the cake for a patreon, and not the main attraction, nor the thing that pays the bills

*Edit: I'm mostly insult by the already available content being removed because people would of already saved and seen it - all this does is a)being able to easily find a source for already saved stuff and b) new people from seeing it. I guarantee there are now 100+ images I enjoyed that have effectively disappeared off the face of the earth since it is impossible to go through every patreon and donate to see it again

Fifteen said:
You're right, but I was only referring to the rule change itself. Once you've got that bit sorted out, then you can start worrying about DNP, site guidelines and all that. It's just my own take on the new rule.

NotMeNotYou answered that one while I was typing, apparently.

Yeah, I saw the response. All I was really arguing for is more clarity on the rule. I understand the meaning behind the rule change and the past use of 'paid content', but clearing ambiguity on something as wide sweeping as this is something you should strive for. And since that's what they're hopefully going for now, then my argument is concluded.

FurryMcFuzzball said:
nobody gains anything from 2 year old patreon paywall art, if the artist has improved at all and is still active, nobody would be looking for that 2 year old content, so it would just get lost and forgotten unless the artist manually makes it free.

removing all paid content that was previously on the site is just a slap in the face and it didn't need to happen

Of course this doesn't really mean anything as there's still plenty of free content, but it just comes off as insulting since, as mentioned earlier, 2 year old art is just the icing on top of the cake for a patreon, and not the main attraction, nor the thing that pays the bills

Yes, unless of course the artist wants to make it an issue and does not want his/her paid content available, no matter how old.
Even if you're in the right, a lawsuit costs money. Is it really hard to understand the wisdom behind heading off that possibility?
If e621 gets sued, are YOU going to help with the legal bill?

Acolyte said:
It's really easy for you to make the argument you're making. I'm assuming you don't create any kind of product or content on which your well-being depends. If you DID, you'd be on the other side of this argument in a heartbeat.

as a matter of fact, my well-being does rely on the things i create. mum's the word, obviously, but i'm the author of a popular financial blog that makes its money through referral links, a small e-book, and just a few banner advertisements. having done no advertising at all, i'm happy that so many people have shared my work on Facebook and Twitter, because i'd be dead in the water without them. i mean, i hate social networks with a passion, but it's a necessary evil.

of course i still do a few side hustles from time to time, like designing websites and freelancing for magazines, but my low-income lifestyle has been supplemented thanks to the generosity of many free services like what e621 does provide.

if one's asking me why i don't enforce my copyright with an iron fist... well, what would i have to gain? suing my fans for having the gall to enjoy the work i create? permanently damaging my relationship with dozens of people because i was too selfish to allow them the right to enjoy the work i put out in public? hell, the readme for my book even says to share it as much as they can. i'm sort of disappointed i don't find my stuff on torrent sites, but i'm not enough of a shill to upload it myself.

fewrahuxo said:
if i harm a butterfly now, does it change the future a thousand years from now? have i harmed future men with my unthoughtful actions?

it seems very silly to say that any harm whatsoever is being done to artists when all the "harm" is so nascent as to be nonexistent.

i think the creator is harming me by restricting access to information to certain brands of people. a bit of a silly argument, yes, but i find it sillier how so many posters - who aren't not artists - are in favor of the artist's rights while giving up their own. like i touched upon, all the artist's rights are imaginary and are codified into law. without the law, they wouldn't have any whatsoever.

Ok, let me put it another way. I'm going to tell you a secret.

If I'm telling you that secret, I'm doing so because I expect you not to go out and reveal it to everyone. That's what I mean by information restriction. If I send you something I made via email and tell you not to distribute it, that's the same thing. If I start a Patreon and I ask my patrons to not put my art on other websites, because Patreon is how I put food on the table instead of being a cashier at McBurgers, that's still the same concept.

By giving everyone who paid for their content access to said content, artists trust that those people won't share it in turn. Sure, they can't sue you if you if you share it with your buddies on discord, but putting it up on a platform that undermines their buisness model is extremely significant and effectively removes all forms of restriction to that information. That's what harms the artists.

fewrahuxo said:
as a matter of fact, my well-being does rely on the things i create. mum's the word, obviously, but i'm the author of a popular financial blog that makes its money through referral links, a small e-book, and just a few banner advertisements. having done no advertising at all, i'm happy that so many people have shared my work on Facebook and Twitter, because i'd be dead in the water without them. i mean, i hate social networks with a passion, but it's a necessary evil.

of course i still do a few side hustles from time to time, like designing websites and freelancing for magazines, but my low-income lifestyle has been supplemented thanks to the generosity of many free services like what e621 does provide.

if one's asking me why i don't enforce my copyright with an iron fist... well, what would i have to gain? suing my fans for having the gall to enjoy the work i create? permanently damaging my relationship with dozens of people because i was too selfish to allow them the right to enjoy the work i put out in public? hell, the readme for my book even says to share it as much as they can. i'm sort of disappointed i don't find my stuff on torrent sites, but i'm not enough of a shill to upload it myself.

I'm in online marketing. The creation of content for a blog is dissimilar to what we're discussing here.
In your case, its' VITAL for you for your content to spread, unpaid, as far and wide as possible.
But lets say that someone takes your blog post, reposts it as their own with no credit or backlink to you. Let's say they repeatedly do that with most of your site content.
They also take your ebook and do the same. No credit, no links.
With everything you post, they hijack.
This would be fine by you? Online community and internet and sharing and all?

• Artists have the right to set a price to their work.
• Customers have a right to decide that price is too high for them and to not buy.
• The artist has the right to accept the fact of low/no income if their price is high enough to keep customers from buying.
• But, customers do NOT have the right to take the work for free because they think the asking price is too high.

At the arguments that "it'll all get shared around anyway", that doesn't make it any more right to do so.

How does it hurt the artist to have it available for free in such a well-known repository?
- Because e621 has such a massive user base, that is a lot of people that can get that art without artist getting a penny. Even people that would be willing to pay for it could download it potentially without ever knowing there was a pay option at the artist's page. Even many people that would pay will see a "well I can get it for free or I can pay for it" option and decide "I'll get this one free and save my money for one I can't get for free."

"But having it posted here is how I found them to buy from them in the first place!"
- I can't think of a single artist that does paid work that doesn't also have freely posted examples of their work also posted. Post, share, download, and enjoy *that* art. Use *that* art as example to decide if you wish to commission them or buy their commercial bundles/pieces.

"What about artists that quit the fandom/delete all their art from other sites/die?"
- What about it? They still have the right not to share their art if they don't want. They have the right to wipe their collections and not provide them anymore. The fact they died doesn't let someone else have right to decide what their decision should have been after the fact (unless the rights to the works are specifically passed on to another individual/organization).

---

I'm not going to bother with further replies on this thread as most of the people arguing against the change are using logic even my 11-year-old nephew has learned is faulty. I'm not going to get into a Kindergarten shouting match of "Uh-huh!/Unn-uh!"

A false sense of entitlement doesn't actually entitle you to anything. Mostly it just makes you an asshole.

It boils down in the end to: This is the rule now. Don't like it, feel free to move on. But bitching about it isn't going to change it.

Furrin_Gok said:
If you want to still show off artists, ask them if they're willing to make exceptions--For example, a Conditional DNP for "Two years after publishing." If an artist is okay with it, they'll let the site staff know.

An extension of this, would it be acceptable to upload paid content after a certain period of time if we obtain written permission from the artist?

Ok I Hope I'm not repeating a question someone else has already asked but honestly TLDR all the posts.
So what happened to the artwork that was reposted at a higher resolution once it was over 2 years old? Was it deleted? If so was the original lower quality post that was made publicly available from the start restored? or is it just gone altogether?

Dythul said:
Ok I Hope I'm not repeating a question someone else has already asked but honestly TLDR all the posts.
So what happened to the artwork that was reposted at a higher resolution once it was over 2 years old? Was it deleted? If so was the original lower quality post that was made publicly available from the start restored? or is it just gone altogether?

Only if it was paywall content. If so, then no matter how old, it was deleted.

JAKXXX3 said:
An extension of this, would it be acceptable to upload paid content after a certain period of time if we obtain written permission from the artist?

Well, if I were the site owner, I wouldn't. If the artist sues me, how do I present said proof of permission to post?

Dythul said:
Ok I Hope I'm not repeating a question someone else has already asked but honestly TLDR all the posts.
So what happened to the artwork that was reposted at a higher resolution once it was over 2 years old? Was it deleted? If so was the original lower quality post that was made publicly available from the start restored? or is it just gone altogether?

AFAIK whenever a deletion occurs that involves an inferior/superior version, regardless of deletion reason, a “hidden” (visible if you are on the deleted post) parent ID is put on said post. This transfers all of the favorites to the parented post.

Which means that in theory, the mass deletion would have caused all the inferior posts being undeleted fav’d, by simply flipping the IDs around and deleting the once-superior post. But I wasn’t on for the deletions, so I wouldn’t know. Notme most likely did fix up the posts, though.

Acolyte said:
Only if it was paywall content. If so, then no matter how old, it was deleted.

well ya, but what about the lower resolution image that IS publicly available from the artest that would have been deleted once the higher res "paywalled" image was posted. was the lower res image restored or not? because if I never see the low res image how am I going to know the image exists at all? If I don't know the image exists I can't throw my money at the artest.
(edit: well can't/won't)
(edit2: to what exan said)
well I hope the posts where restored :) )

Dythul said:
well ya, but what about the lower resolution image that IS publicly available from the artest that would have been deleted once the higher res "paywalled" image was posted. was the lower res image restored or not? because if I never see the low res image how am I going to know the image exists at all? If I don't know the image exists I can't throw my money at the artest.
(edit: well can't/won't)

I would think that any artwork that the artist made publicly available is fair game. As to whether or not that would be restored here, not sure.
However, since the admins would have to rely on the community to sort out whether or not a low-res image that's linked to paid content was made public or it wasn't, I would err on the side of caution and not allow it. But that's just me.

Dythul said:
well I hope the posts where restored :) )

They were.

The search indicates that Notme did reverse any deletions involving previously inferior posts.

Dythul said:
well ya, but what about the lower resolution image that IS publicly available from the artest that would have been deleted once the higher res "paywalled" image was posted. was the lower res image restored or not? because if I never see the low res image how am I going to know the image exists at all? If I don't know the image exists I can't throw my money at the artest.
(edit: well can't/won't)
(edit2: to what exan said)
well I hope the posts where restored :) )

I've restored them as I found them, but chances are there may be a couple I missed. As always we can restore them so if something is found just let us know and we'll fix it.

fewrahuxo said:
and i think this is pretty much the crux of the argument right here. it is well established that any notion of copyright on the Internet is irrelevant in the face of billions of instances of infringing materials, with hundreds of thousands of instances being shared every single day, and that the death of copyright, and therefore of the artist's imaginary right to control of their work, is just a few generations away.

when we live in an age where we can simply type in "watch [movie]" and be able to see that movie instantly no matter who's providing it, it's a golden age. the same for the works of artists who have decided to hide their work under a paywall and cut off their main source of exposure: their own work. you can find it anywhere.

i'm sure if the administration simply said "we don't want to get sued" and left it at that, it would be an understandable rule. but when we bring bum morality into the discussion, it just becomes a messy discussion.

I'd argue that despite the idea of permanence on the Internet being substantiated, it isn't infallible. File hosts shut down, servers go offline, decade-old webpages just don't load properly sometimes, and I don't even want to get into what's going on with Flash. It depresses me.
Going back to Notmenotyou's argument about the original purpose of the 2-year rule, art CDs were specifically cited as a medium in which there was a real risk of a work being lost for good, because their distribution was so limited.
The problem with removing the rule is that, I feel, this risk is still relevant and encompasses other forms of physical media as well. The vast majority of doujinshi published never get released in a digital form, and in many cases the window for purchasing them is restricted to one convention or event. (As an aside, the term doujin can refer to any sort of self- or similarly independently-published work, which often does include art CDs. For example, Dr. Comet would be considered a doujin artist since he distributes so much of his work through CDs) Some are digitally distributed, but Comiket only gets bigger every year, in both summer and winter.
A lot of doujins never get shared online, even illegally, since it's so difficult to even obtain a copy to pirate in the first place, and the sorts of sites that they get uploaded to don't have much permanence either. I used kemonono.net a lot when it was still up, and losing it still stings since a lot of work posted there never got uploaded anywhere else. When dealing with works for which the original source can't be reliably accessed, it's favorable to have them backed up on as many sites as possible, because only a handful of people who view them will think to share them, and as time goes on, a work might get truly forgotten, lost in the maelstrom of internal server errors and domain squatters.

fewrahuxo said:
i'll reply to a few posts in this thread, but i just want to point out that 8chan is throwing a hissy fit right now. i'm guessing one of you guys did this?

We don't need to. E621 is a cornerstone of the furry art community now, pretty much everyone uses it for at least something. Any time a rule or policy gets changed, you can bet that plenty of eyes will be on the admins.

7 pages of whining, and management being reasonable. Talk about your first-world problems.

This decision may be a bit unfortunate, in that there may be a little less free content available to us, yet if an artist wishes to expand their fanbase, they will likely release limited, or previously embargoed (paywall) content. This has been happening with artists for some time now, and has led to me now pledging to (currently) three artists on Patreon; I love the fact that I have access to superior HD versions of art posted here, and new content from my artists I enjoy.

Fifteen said:
a (good) rule of thumb: don't post what you can't source.

Some may not like the decision, yet consider this: you are not entitled to unlimited free artwork; if an artist wishes to put content behind a paywall, it is their property, and their right.

E6 admins are trying to do the right thing, and I am impressed by the level-headedness presented here by Nimmy.

well this has helped killed any and all desire I may have had for supporting an artist that has things behind a paywall.

do you understand that administration team? you have direct proof that this move has actually harmed any support an artist would receive from me as if i do support an artist i enjoy the fact that people who can not will also receive the same content as I years later.

if this rule can't be removed I'd like to ask the admins to have an easy to access list of artist who carry a timed DNP agreement for paywalled content.

Well, this was a fun 140-minute read, all for me to figure out that of 16k favorites, only one post got deleted... Oh well, I'm jumping in with my thoughts anyways.

NotMeNotYou said:
Your opinion boils down to that the artists should be happy that their content is being pirated because it means it's good. If it is good, why is it not good enough to pay for it?

If it's good and I truly like it, I'll buy it. I've seen more than my fair share of movies online a few weeks after their release that I ended up purchasing a digital edition of. If I don't like something I perceived I would have liked (title covers, names, judging a book by its cover etc) then I didn't lose anything aside from a few hours worth of time and the creators of the movie lost out on a movie ticket.

Acolyte said:
2500 pieces of art is a fraction of the content. If removing it mitigates problems down the line, then heave-ho.

AnotherDay said:
Hey, on that note, why not just make it so ONLY artists can upload their own stuff, huh? Let's go and delete all the stuff not uploaded directly by the artists. I mean, it's only fair, right? How much of this stuff hasn't been uploaded with permission or even without the artists knowing about it? Probably a good 80% of what's left, no doubt so it seems like a good idea to me! /kappa

This is actually a step that I fear could be taken one day. If an artist says on their post not to share or re-upload it anywhere else without permission, and they find something here that they weren't supposed to....

To be completely honest, I would actually endorse this type of policy. If we're all about artists rights like we claim to be, then lets not just do a little bit of good, let's do A WHOLE FRICKING LOT of good and make this a rule. We could have another rank of people alongside janitors / privileged people that we could call "Alarm Bells" that would go out and inform artists that their artwork was reposted on e621.net and either let the artist file a takedown personally or do it for them with proof.

I'm curious as to how this might drive traffic.

treos said:
money first, above absolutely ALL else, even happiness and entertainment. they'd rather you suffer and be bored for your entire life if you can't pay for it.

Money above all else... that almost sounds like... capitalism!! Run for your lives guys, the world is ending, I mean it this time!!!1

fewrahuxo said:
the only way such a situation like this can occur is if e621 has no idea what it's doing and has no plan for the future, just doing things and seeing what happens for no real reason. it would be nice to have a roadmap or a mission statement, or really anything at all so these decisions don't come as a complete surprise to so many people.

I couldn't help but read this and think of what happened to that one site that Varka used to host and then just completely scrapped after hearing a word of something unsavory. Was that unsavory stuff even proven true by the way?

I'll just point back to my fear that I had mentioned in that second/third quote duo from earlier.

NotMeNotYou said:
Whose money is more important? Yours or the artists? Should we help the artists to earn an income doing what they like doing, or should we help you save money by facilitating piracy?

I'd rather support the producer so they can keep producing, than the consumer who can simply consume something different.

In situations like this, I think of the group of people getting the short end of the stick, in this case, the 'lesser' fortunate users that can't afford such paywalls. In the end, though, it's all really simple in how it boils down between artists and their fans which I think I saw along some lines earlier in this topic. Supporting an artist is all well and good, but I'm looking out for number one in this relationship, me. If I'm stuck between funding an artist who probably doesn't even know me, who I'll never meet, and who will undoubtedly never know my (user)name, they're going to take a quick back seat once more important things start coming up.

If I'm supporting the artist and not looking out for my own needs, I'll eventually die or be unable to access a means to support that artist. Without me, there is no money, and without the money, there is no artist.

Also, I'd like to hit upon the whole "starving artist" thing while I'm at it. To keep it short, there is no such thing. If you're an artist that makes a living sitting on your rear with a pad and pencil and your stomach grumbles because your stuff is too cheap for you to make your day-to-day living, or its just too expensive and not enough are buying it, you might want to reconsider your priorities and get an actual job and, you know, get up at least. You're already a person talented in art, stop making fifty buck commissions at eight hours apiece and get a graphic designers job. Instead of suffering minimum wage, go out and be a productive member of society and make twenty-three an hour instead of being a bump on a log.
https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/27-1024.00

fewrahuxo said:
and I think this is pretty much the crux of the argument right here. it is well established that any notion of copyright on the Internet is irrelevant in the face of billions of instances of infringing materials, with hundreds of thousands of instances being shared every single day, and that the death of copyright, and therefore of the artist's imaginary right to control of their work, is just a few generations away.

when we live in an age where we can simply type in "watch [movie]" and be able to see that movie instantly no matter who's providing it, it's a golden age. the same for the works of artists who have decided to hide their work under a paywall and cut off their main source of exposure: their own work. you can find it anywhere.

Here's a commercial from a few years back. If artists could learn anything from this, it's that once you post something online, you relinquish any and all control over it. It matters not the legal jargon you put in front of it, there's always someone unscrupulous who will make off with it without a reason to care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOUu1fldBbI

Only one post in my favorites was deleted, yup. Oh, and just know that while we might have our issues, I avoid FurAffinity like the Black Plague. Seeing some of the things I've seen on here (a certain scaily pair that I use to admire, no longer) hasn't helped things.

NotMeNotYou said:
We've used the wording "paid content" for years to denote any form of pay-to-view content.
But I'll see if I can come up with a wording that would help squash ambiguity.

Good luck with that. It's sometimes amazing even to hardcore cynics how desperately some people will look for some loophole to abuse for their personal benefit, even if they have to manufacture ambiguity out of whole cloth.

Seems an extremely inconvenient rule when it comes to stuff like old Doujinshi that has long gone out of print, but whatever there's other places to be a freeloader (not always by choice, Canada is a bitch to get anything lewd into). Digital sale stuff I can understand for sure, especially when still available. People keep mentioning Patreon... By all means if you want it go to the Artists page and pay up.

On that note I see a pool deleted, which has a source that appears to be from an Arist's preview: Pool 4686

I'm going to guess this started with the dlsite takedown that happened recently, but I could be totally off base.

That's okay, I didn't like finally reaching an upload limit of 100 anyway... I'm okay with that being almost halved. It's not like fanlated Japanese comics were my main export of uploads T_T

But I do agree that the 2 years was arbitrary to begin with, and believe it's only a good thing we're finally respecting the control artists have over their own works. Though wouldn't applying things like the lifespan rule be difficult, to track down whether an artist is actually alive? And things like the 70+ year rule misguided for international works (i.e. falling out of the very American Copyright Term Extension Act)? Pragmatics aside, this is a step in the right direction. Very futile with many other outside sites (for those that are upset of lost content, just google them lol), but still an appreciated act of good ethics.

RIP takaki kyou's Trouble and Monochrome series, and RIP kinoshita-jiroh's Mekko Rarekko series. Would've never found you and had my heart shattered a million times if it wasn't for the efforts of fan translators and uploaders to image boards like e621. Even though I already have you saved locally, you will still be missed here.

I fully concede that you, as a website, must obey the law. That is why I will not judge you for the decision you made. I WILL judge you for the ideas and justifications other than Jonney Law breathing down your neck that you have presented thus far, as I believe it is important to discuss these things for our community and the platform of the internet to mature.

NotMeNotYou said:
I have a counterargument: Why do you feel you're entitled to free stuff, and why do you feel you get to decide that some people should not be compensated for work they make and are able to distribute digitally?

If you want some form of proof: Check out how many people actually donate to mod creators on Nexusmods. The answer is basically nobody donates anything, ever. People consume without giving back. There are also other numbers from various developers that tracked how many people paid for their programs, and how many pirated them without ever paying. The numbers are against you in every case.

The situation with nexusmods is different in several ways:

1. Specifically with the 2 year rule, paid content by definition has already been paid for. Especially with Patreon, any art the subscribers get to see has already received adequate compensation or the artist wouldn't have drawn it in the first place seeing as Patreon works on a monthly basis (i.e. Patrons on Patreon pay to see content created AFTER they have subscribed, not to see the content that existed BEFORE.) The 2 year rule gave artist 24 months of subscriptions to make money off of any 1 art piece or comic. Modders, on the other hand, never got to charge even 1 person for their work, much less 2 years of it, before it was put out to the community. Why? Because you can't ask for donations to a piece of software people haven't tried yet, and to ask for payment upfront would assume a standard rate to base price drops or increases in (i.e. they wouldn't be mods at that point, they'd be 3rd party DLC.)

2. Artist set up patreons to earn money to help them pay bills and survive the time necessary to make art pieces. The 'industry' or community expects artist to charge for work in some regard, even if only by the person who commissioned it, thus artist going into the 'field' have a healthy expectation to be compensated for their work. Modders, on the other hand, go into making a mod knowing full well it's going to be free for others to use. The precedent of the community or 'scene' has never been for profit and although the donation situation is very sad, anyone going into modding thinking they could make money is delusional at worst, dreaming big at best. Where as anyone going into furry art thinking they could make a living or at least help make a living has solid ground to base such thought on, as there are many examples of successful artist. While smaller than most people think, the chances of you making even a modest living off of furry art are magnitudes higher than attempting the same with modding.

3. While I argue that modding is art in its own right, mods depend on software they have no legal relationship to. You don't need a VHS copy of Digimon to find and jerk off to Renamon porn. If you're using a mod, you already paid an admission price to use it, even if the modder sees none of that, unfortunately. Charging for work done on another product sold for profit is in most cases illegal. Art on the other hand doesn't depend on anything other than the artist's inspiration, even if that inspiration is a pre-existing IP. Asking art 'consumers' to pay for access is asking them to pay once, where as asking a gamer to pay for a mod is asking them to pay twice to play the same video game a different way. Psychologically, that's MUCH harder to overcome. (e.g. charging once to gain access to a piece of furry smut, then charging a smaller fee to see an edit someone did of the same piece.)

4. Historical precedent favors the selling of art, where as all 3 attempts in the video game industry thus far to charge for mods has failed; 2 of those attempts never even got started where as the third attempt confirmed everyone's fears and even those defending it initially IMMEDIATELY turned as soon as the particulars were revealed. If you are going to compare 2 things, make sure that there was a point in time where the 2 could even be remotely similar in potential. Comparing the tragedy of people not donating to mods to an over exaggerated plight of furry artist, smut or no, isn't even comparing apples to oranges, it's comparing apples to automated orange peelers. Ultimately it's insulting to the modders who get literally nothing to be used as a platform so furry artist who make money can get on their soap box a bit easier.

5. Finally, there is evidence to support the plight of modders. There is no evidence, so far, to support the accusation that the 2 year rule was hurting artist in ANY way. So far the justification (other than the legal one) has merely assumed that the artist were suffering because of it. if all the other data, anecdotes aside, is anything to go on, piracy indeed helps more than it hinders when there is an eventual time limit on its exclusiveness. So far, all film producers, game publishers, musicians, and writers have depended on the fallacy that piracy always has and always will lead to lost sales, when there is no such evidence even by detractors to support such a claim. It's assumed, not unjustly though, when reading the definition of piracy. There is a hint of logic to that at first, but beyond that assumption, there's nothing to back it up.

fewrahuxo said:
what's stunning about your decision is you haven't produced any evidence that uploading paid work to e621 directly correlates to a loss of income for the artists who produced the work.

Yeah uh, this decision will mean a drastic decrease in the viewership of certain artists, as well as a good increase of actual piracy and less traffic going to e621 and more to other sites

bad decision I say

I'll definitely go subscribe to some patreons and buy a few Bad Dragon dildos now. Thanks guys

This entire thread and rule is cancer to the maximum

Seig heil everyone!

An excellent initiative to further the development of IPFS. The age of centralized internet is coming to a close, peer to peer websites are at hand. Hoist the uBlock and reel in the favorites, laddies, we've got a new booru to be buildin'. The long arm copyright laws is about to reach its limit, because where we're going, there will be no admins. There will be no "intellectual property". There will only be our site, our peers, and our freedom. Anchors away!

Colonel_Kernel said:
An excellent initiative to further the development of IPFS. The age of centralized internet is coming to a close, peer to peer websites are at hand. Hoist the uBlock and reel in the favorites, laddies, we've got a new booru to be buildin'. The long arm copyright laws is about to reach its limit, because where we're going, there will be no admins. There will be no "intellectual property". There will only be us, our peers, our porn, and our freedom. Anchors away!

Remember the 0.2%!

Almost nobody in that thread vouched for IPFS. Maybe Freenet is a better option?

sure would be nice if i were rich. then i wouldn't have to worry about any of this OR deal with people going after me for trying to see things JUST because i don't have enough money.

sure sucks to live in a world where one of the single biggest controlling factors is how much money you have. :/

if you have enough money then you can get or do just about anything but if you don't then you're pretty much nothing and trying to get or do ANYTHING without said money makes you a criminal and entitled.

yep, such a great world... sorry for existing and being too poor to afford things.

i just wish people would stop trying to sound all high and mighty because they have the money to throw around when talking down to those who don't. as if having more money than others somehow makes you better than them. more well off maybe but certainly not better than them.

treos said:
sure would be nice if i were rich. then i wouldn't have to worry about any of this

You have to worry about not seeing a small selection of long-forgotten (2 year old) posts anymore?

More content is being uploaded here every day than a reasonable person should be reasonably looking at.

treos said:
yep, such a great world... sorry for existing and being too poor to afford things.

#bootstraps #MAGA

treos said:
yep, such a great world... sorry for existing and being too poor to afford things.

If you're diet doesn't consist mainly of baked beans and instant noodles, you're not too poor to afford things.

treos said:
sure would be nice if i were rich. then i wouldn't have to worry about any of this OR deal with people going after me for trying to see things JUST because i don't have enough money.

sure sucks to live in a world where one of the single biggest controlling factors is how much money you have. :/

if you have enough money then you can get or do just about anything but if you don't then you're pretty much nothing and trying to get or do ANYTHING without said money makes you a criminal and entitled.

yep, such a great world... sorry for existing and being too poor to afford things.

i just wish people would stop trying to sound all high and mighty because they have the money to throw around when talking down to those who don't. as if having more money than others somehow makes you better than them. more well off maybe but certainly not better than them.

You can go and pirate nintendo games, even if nintendo fansite doesn't host the games for you.

Funny thing with money is that people as mass choose how much something is worth. If games did cost whole months salary, nobody would be buying them - if artist asked for ridiculous summs of money just to see their artwork, nobody would be giving them any money hence why many patreon tiers start from $1/month. I have minimum wage job, but I'm still able to buy all the entertainment I'm consuming and give tips on patreon monthly. Of course I cannot compare that to everyones life situations, when I was studying I did pirate content pretty regularly, but again, please refer to first sentence. Just because you yourself justify illegal actions yourself, doesn't mean that store owners need to see it any other way than you taking money out of their pocket.

Lance_Armstrong said:
#bootstraps #MAGA

...#gamergate #selfie?

It's really nice to know that the mods are thinking about artists who are trying to make a living, or even just a decent income, from their art.

It's too bad for the people that are going to die from Exclusive Furry Porn Deficit though.

Welp, that's it for me, then. Paying for art made by people for fun is just silly.

So many of them pretend that they're going to make a career of drawing pictures. Sorry to crush dreams, but they don't have any rights once it goes online. Nobody gets prosecuted for art theft online, and if they do, it's only for "real art", painted by real artists, on canvas.

Stop trying to White Knight whiny teens who think they have rights online because they have awful social lives in real life, and are trying to make up for it online. You're embarrassing yourself.

I'm done with this site, off to U-18. Bye.

The thing most people against this rule don't seem to grasp is that while you may have your personal reasons to pirate art, e621 is not obligated to facilitate that.

"The law is easy to break therefore it shouldn't exist." Billions of shoplifting events occur, might as well tell stores to get over it

Raenlin said:
Welp, that's it for me, then. Paying for art made by people for fun is just silly.

So many of them pretend that they're going to make a career of drawing pictures. Sorry to crush dreams, but they don't have any rights once it goes online. Nobody gets prosecuted for art theft online, and if they do, it's only for "real art", painted by real artists, on canvas.

Stop trying to White Knight whiny teens who think they have rights online because they have awful social lives in real life, and are trying to make up for it online. You're embarrassing yourself.

I'm done with this site, off to U-18. Bye.

Good riddance. I cannot imagine what kind of upbringing produces someone so disrespectful and entitled. God forbid anyone give a shit about artists who create works they like. Those namby-pamby creative types don't deserve a fucking cent if ya ask me! They should have a real job like mopping floors instead of giving us things that we like. Why should artists expect money? Based on my arbitrary definition of what constitutes a "fake job that people should only do for fun," creative types should accept that they are an inferior class to burger flippers and taxi drivers and have nowhere to go unless they do something else.

To build on what I said earlier, if you have your reasons and justifications to pirate art, that's on you. But don't expect this site to do it for you. That's a lot of entitlement.

now that the administration has been blasted by all sides on multiple websites, how long until this rule change will be reverted?

DelurC said:
I don't. It lowers the range of influence for the artist.

Buddy getting "exposure" doesn't mean shit for dick. I mean, just look at how poorly the games journalism industry handles not paying writers.

A unique comparison but one that holds ground. The artist in question will release some free content for sites like this and link up his patreon for the paid stuff, and if they don't do that they'll learn that's the market and do it that way eventually.

In the meantime we shouldn't cut into someone's profit for "exposure" reasons because well..Given an inch and someone will run fucking miles.

him57 said:
I fully concede that you, as a website, must obey the law. That is why I will not judge you for the decision you made. I WILL judge you for the ideas and justifications other than Jonney Law breathing down your neck that you have presented thus far, as I believe it is important to discuss these things for our community and the platform of the internet to mature.

The decision was mainly aimed at helping artists, it does close a couple can of worms on our side, but those were already dealt with before anyway. This is the equivalent of just putting them from the corner of a cupboard someplace else so they're less in the way.

him57 said:
The situation with nexusmods is different in several ways:

Of course mods have differences. Find a similarly well reported issue that is better comparable and we will be able to compare to that instead. Until then mods based on other people's IPs aren't that different to fan art drawn and sold off of other people's IPs.

him57 said:
5. Finally, there is evidence to support the plight of modders. There is no evidence, so far, to support the accusation that the 2 year rule was hurting artist in ANY way. So far the justification (other than the legal one) has merely assumed that the artist were suffering because of it. if all the other data, anecdotes aside, is anything to go on, piracy indeed helps more than it hinders when there is an eventual time limit on its exclusiveness. So far, all film producers, game publishers, musicians, and writers have depended on the fallacy that piracy always has and always will lead to lost sales, when there is no such evidence even by detractors to support such a claim. It's assumed, not unjustly though, when reading the definition of piracy. There is a hint of logic to that at first, but beyond that assumption, there's nothing to back it up.

Except what artists have reported, except what the study with the amazing margin of error found for every media type that isn't gaming, except what the logic says of listening to all those people in this thread of being unwilling to pay even a penny to anyone.

But the thing that is far more important is very simple question. Who gets to decide how or if an artist is allowed to make money off of their work?
If artists want to play with piracy and hand out free goodies (as most of them are already doing, mind you) then that is their decision. It is not up to us to decide this for them.

fewrahuxo said:
now that the administration has been blasted by all sides on multiple websites, how long until this rule change will be reverted?

If you think this drizzle is anywhere close to blasting I have very bad news for you. This rule will stay.

NotMeNotYou said:
If you think this drizzle is anywhere close to blasting I have very bad news for you. This rule will stay.

Said the tyrant to the peasants.

Not that my opinion matters.

But I can't say I agree with this change.

Ban me, give me a negative record for speaking my opinion but Artists as of late have become greedy to the point that their art isn't worth looking at anymore.

An example:

The last time I used FA, I followed Aaron. For a long time I liked his art, despite it usually being hyper.
But the last time I bothered going to his FA, it was nothing but YCH Auctions, and Patreon Teasers. (Some of which I had seen only recently because of the old rules)

Call me ungrateful but when you hide behind pay walls for art that you crank out every day and then also have Auctions for simple art going as high as $260 for a single character slot (Not including Amy other characters) I don't think that you are a struggling artisg who's pay wall content being released 2 years layer is hurting you.

Hell, I forgot a lot of things artist made until I see them uploaded here, because in 2 years I moved on.That art has already been played for by someone and probably still is being payyed for by patrons already.

I know that artists want to make money, and I do appreciate art I get, but I'm not paying over $60-$70 for a detailed piece of art, I mean, artist who don't even draw super realistically charge this much.
Part of this is the people buying this stuff for these prices.
But of course artists out there will take advantage of lonely horny people to get their money, so its both side's fault.

Some people made good points about this not being A real archive site.
If an artist just has to say "I don't want my art here" and its taken down, its not an archive site, its just a more organized FurAffinity website.

I mean Jasonafex himself has come onto this site, attacking people, and thinking he's a porn god when all he really does is add cheap effect to am already existing image drawn by someone else (Usually Kabier)

Does he get banned? No. And anyone who talks against him does (i probably will)
In fact Jasonafex constantly attacks this site on FA, telling his fan base that this site is terrible because most people want to be on the good side of a "Popufur".

Most artist don't even use this site enough to know the purpose of it.

I once had an artist attack me for uploading their art here, saying that I was stealing and telling people on FA that I was an art thief, despite me giving the source and tagging their name.

luckily people realized that this wasn't true and convinced them that I wasn't stealing art.

Now I just hope that I didn't type this in vain because I sat here for like 15 minutes on my phone.

And for those of you who remember me, I'm not dead.

him57 said:
5. Finally, there is evidence to support the plight of modders. There is no evidence, so far, to support the accusation that the 2 year rule was hurting artist in ANY way. So far the justification (other than the legal one) has merely assumed that the artist were suffering because of it. if all the other data, anecdotes aside, is anything to go on, piracy indeed helps more than it hinders when there is an eventual time limit on its exclusiveness. So far, all film producers, game publishers, musicians, and writers have depended on the fallacy that piracy always has and always will lead to lost sales, when there is no such evidence even by detractors to support such a claim. It's assumed, not unjustly though, when reading the definition of piracy. There is a hint of logic to that at first, but beyond that assumption, there's nothing to back it up.

iirc there's actually some good things we have now thanks to piracy but no one cares about that when discussing the topic.

still wish people would stop with that stupid "entitlement" argument though. i've never once made any claim to being entitled to anything yet the name calling and accusations of such never end. all because when anyone hears the word piracy, the first words to pop into their mind seem to be criminal and bad. followed by attacking and shaming anyone who does the act of piracy while completely ignoring any and all potential good that could come from piracy.

Mario69 said:
You can go and pirate nintendo games, even if nintendo fansite doesn't host the games for you.

doing that is more a matter of spiting them (with just a touch of protest) than anything at this point. them and every other publisher and/or dev that continues to push increasingly anti-consumer practices but that's more a topic for the video games thread so we can continue that over there if you want.

I should also mention that artists taking stuff down for seemingly no reason is the bane of my existence.

I used to have some really nice animation gifs that used to be here, but most of the art made by said person is gone because they requested a take down.
And I have never been able to get said GIFS ever again

NotMeNotYou said:
If you think this drizzle is anywhere close to blasting I have very bad news for you. This rule will stay.

yeah, who cares about the users who make your job possible?

Lance_Armstrong said:
#MAGA

Under that assumption are we also going to implement 'one rule up, two rules down'?

_{No, please no.}

fewrahuxo said:
yeah, who cares about the users who make your job possible?

Who cares about the artists that make it possible for you to be a user?

Scakk said:
I mean Jasonafex himself has come onto this site, attacking people, and thinking he's a porn god when all he really does is add cheap effect to am already existing image drawn by someone else (Usually Kabier)

Does he get banned? No. And anyone who talks against him does (i probably will)
In fact Jasonafex constantly attacks this site on FA, telling his fan base that this site is terrible because most people want to be on the good side of a "Popufur".

Jasonafex is one record away from being permanently banned, just throwing that out there.

fewrahuxo said:
yeah, who cares about the users who make your job possible?

Not NMNY. He doesn't care about anything except throwing around his e-peen and essentially yelling "My word is final" whenever confronted with -anything.-

Of course, that seems to be the administration as a whole, as of late. They disagree with you and you're stupid and they'll just treat you like you're stupid and/or be super sarcastic.

Truly, what does it matter that the administration discusses changes? I mean, it should say a lot that they ALL knew we'd be vehemently against this and thus made the decision in secret and THEN did it all at once without an announcement before hand.

I mean, if you're so sure that everyone's going to be against your choice maybe, JUST MAYBE, your choice isn't the right one?

Of course the administartion of this site would NEVER even consider that, would they? No. Their "discussion" is just one huge echo chamber. Likely going like this, NMNY and/or the owner says something, everyone bounces up and down and agrees, then the rule changes and no one cares what the actual users think.

Yeah, this is a real poor excuse for an archive site these days and I thought the FurAffinity administration was biased and closed off in its decisions. You make their team look like admin team of the freakin' decade in terms of giving communication on implementing big wide-arcing changes that affect the entire user base.

NotMeNotYou said:
Who cares about the artists that make it possible for you to be a user?

Jasonafex is one record away from being permanently banned, just throwing that out there.

When that happens, it won't surprise me of he gets everything taken down. Since he hates this place so much.

Damn the least that could have been done is at least give a few days' warning before deleting a lot of art from the site, this is an art hoarder's site, isn't it? People should have time to save stuff.

In the meantime I'll download everything else on here just in case it gets deleted tomorrow for some reason or another, ouch.

This might be already buried somewhere in the middle of the thread but, a question of clarification of how this works in practice: It's *copyright holders* may take down *their own* work regardless of time? Meaning, users won't be speculatively taking down work just because, say, hi-def versions were on a patreon years ago, yes? Simply being paid content at some point isn't enough to delete things (as the content may have been released later), but the copyright holder needs some claim or "Do Not Redistribute" or the like?

Well, this is some mighty fine non-drama that everyone is throwing themselves into.

Peachdrips said:
Damn the least that could have been done is at least give a few days' warning before deleting a lot of art from the site, this is an art hoarder's site, isn't it? People should have time to save stuff.

In the meantime I'll download everything else on here just in case it gets deleted tomorrow for some reason or another, ouch.

That was the entire bloody point. It was meant to be removed without mass-downloading.

AnotherDay said:
Not NMNY. He doesn't care about anything except throwing around his e-peen and essentially yelling "My word is final" whenever confronted with -anything.-

Of course, that seems to be the administration as a whole, as of late. They disagree with you and you're stupid and they'll just treat you like you're stupid and/or be super sarcastic.

Truly, what does it matter that the administration discusses changes? I mean, it should say a lot that they ALL knew we'd be vehemently against this and thus made the decision in secret and THEN did it all at once without an announcement before hand.

I mean, if you're so sure that everyone's going to be against your choice maybe, JUST MAYBE, your choice isn't the right one?

Of course the administartion of this site would NEVER even consider that, would they? No. Their "discussion" is just one huge echo chamber. Likely going like this, NMNY and/or the owner says something, everyone bounces up and down and agrees, then the rule changes and no one cares what the actual users think.

Yeah, this is a real poor excuse for an archive site these days and I thought the FurAffinity administration was biased and closed off in its decisions. You make their team look like admin team of the freakin' decade in terms of giving communication on implementing big wide-arcing changes that affect the entire user base.

You're gonna childishly insult Nmmy while whining about artists daring to have any interests of their own? Yeah, Nmmy is such a dick-swinger for outrageously giving a shit about the artists that make this site worth anything.

Oh, nice bandwagon fallacy. If nine out of ten customers try to steal candy from a store, does that mean that security would be wrong for kicking out one of those shoplifters? Get real.

This site was almost universally hated by artists before and the only reason artists have a problem with it now is because of you selfish, entitled whiners.

Does this mean if an artist that has paid content dies we can never post their work here?