Artists and commissioners often request that people contact them to ask for permission to upload their work on third-party galleries. The idea behind this is entirely reasonable: they are the copyright- and intellectual property-holders of the material, and thus they want to be able to give informed consent before it's posted elsewhere - whether it be for personal or commercial reasons. However, a problem starts to arise when there's a failure of communication between these three parties.

In my experience corresponding with artists and commissioners, the reaction to a request was often distrusting or hostile. In one case, I've been called an 'art-stealing cunt' for asking, and I've been told to 'fuck off and die' in another. The most demoralizing incident was when I tried to contact a commissioner asking permission to post art of their character to e621, only to find the next morning that they filed a DMCA on all pre-existing and future art featuring them, without ever responding to my initial question.

How do you recommend trying to communicate in a way that doesn't lead to that kind of antagonism? I do still want to try asking for permission out of courtesy, but I've been demoralized due to the responses in the past. If other uploaders or even artists could weigh in on this, I'd be appreciative of any insight into improving the state of discussions.

Most peeps that I've encountered that don't want their stuff to be shared usually has "Do not share/repost/edit/etc" somewhere on their page. Those are the type of folks that you shouldn't bother asking and they'll give you an ill-mannered response if you do. I've never had an artist or commissioner degrade or insult me for asking to repost their stuff elsewhere. When asking, I don't know what you're sending them but avoid language that can seem confrontational.

For example:
"Hey, I'm gonna post your art on (insert website here). Is that cool?"

This question is already coming off as aggressive and possessive. It's like you're indirectly telling them that the answer should be "yes". You'd most like get a negative response from this.

(What I usually say) "Hello, with your permission, is it alright if I can post your art on (insert website here)? I'll make sure you are properly tagged and sourced back to your page."

This one is more friendly and reassuring. Most responses I get from this is either "As long as I'm credited and sourced, sure." or "Sorry, but I do not want my work posted there."

Also, if they decline, you have to respect their wishes and move on. Don't beg, plead, or try to convince them. Doing that can easily backfire and make them even more reluctant to share their stuff.

Great question.

I've also been met with distrust and skepticism after asking for upload permission. I'm not sure where it comes from. It's hard to tell if they have a legitimate problem with e621 or if they have a problem with what they think e621 is. Do they know that their work will be properly attributed? Do they know that their takedown requests will be respected?

It's tempting to just upload without asking. ("Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.") I don't know if that's the ethical thing to do, but, well...it's very practical. Probably the vast majority of the art here was uploaded without explicit permission, and yet, most artists are not dnp. Of course, that fact isn't entirely conclusive because the DNP list doesn't include artists who aren't aware of it – but it's still meaningful, I think. It suggests that artists are more amenable to their art being here when they see that it already is here.

But we're shooting in the dark. Ideally, we'd run a comprehensive survey to figure out what artists are really thinking. I could draft the survey itself, but I wouldn't know where to find good respondents.

I had a nice friendly letter something like:

Hi! I really love your artwork! I was wondering if I could repost it over on e621? I don't know if you're familiar with the website, but it's a high-quality non-human/furry oriented user-curated art gallery. It's very important to us that artists give proper credit, and every image has the artist's name and information, but the URL where the image came from. One of e621's biggest draws is that every image has tags on it to help users find the art that they're looking for--so that your art reaches the ideal audience.

Here's an example: (insert link to a GOOD, SAFE post that is well tagged with source, artist, character name etc). Feel free to click around--though I'll warn you that there's a lot of porn and whatnot.. (insert talk about ratings, and the safe-only site)

ANyway, I'd really like to repost your art there--I think it's gorgeous and would love to help give you more exposure. :) BUt if you're not comfortable with this, I totally understand! If you say no, I' won't upload anything! If you want to be sure that no one ever will upload your art, you can ask to be put on the do-not-post list. (insert link here) ... I can't do that for you, if that's what you want, though! The Admin are very focused on being as friendly as possible to artists--after all, without you guys, there's no art to enjoy! Some of the prior administration was not as ... kind in that respect and gave us a rather poor reputation in that respect--thankfully, we're much better these days!

Anyway! If you have any questions or want to know more, let me know!

I hope you're having a great day! Take care :)

and rarely got rejected-- I think the key is to be friendly, and EXTREMELY respectful. Let them know that THEY are totally in control of this situation--and that we respect the heck out of them and their desires. As well

but that's how I did it :) and this was several years ago when e6 still had a reputation for not caring about what artists wanted. I think?? that reputations mostly faded, but I dunno.

^^^ I agree with @SnowWolf.

Your letter must be respectful and include your intentions on posting here. Just asking for permission without any reason would be a little bit disrespectful. State your intent and they would consider it, mine is to promote the artworks of artists I'm following and give them more exposure.

It's also best to first check the person's profile wall and journals for hints as to their impressions on reposts. Search for keywords like "do not", "repost/posting" or "permission/consent", otherwise you might get yelled at for not reading their wall or journals.

If you send a lot of permission letters to people, create a whitelist/blacklist of people who allow and disallow posting on the site, so you won't end up asking the same questions over and over again. FA's priority labels are useful in this case, low(green) for people who have given you full permissions, mid(blue) for people who are neutral/only allowed certain posts, and high(red) for people who don't want anything to be posted.

Never be demoralized by someone's negative response to your notes, just blacklist(as in avoid asking from them, not blocking) and move on. I have personally sent over 20 pages of notes on FA and only received a couple of negative notes. Also just to be on the safe side, other than the artist and commissioner, ask the character owners as well. You don't want to end up offending someone who wasn't informed on the repost.

One more thing to note is that if you decide to ask for permission AFTER you have posted something of theirs, there's a high chance they'll take offense to it. Some will just ignore you while some will just straight up takedown everything and DNP themselves.

https://pics.me.me/i-asked-god-for-a-bike-but-i-know-god-13581964.png

In general, I only ask for permission from the artist.
However, I do check the commissioners profile if the artist links them in the description field of their submission. Most commissioners who don't want their art spread usually has something written about it on their profile.

I've never had any negative experiences when asking for permission to repost something to e621. I ask artists, commissioners and character owners.

Most reponses from artists are "Yes, you may repost my art, as long as you give credit".
Many people thank me for asking, some say that I'm the first to ever ask.

Very few people say no.
Some people don't respond, but that doesn't happen often.

edit:
Maybe it makes a difference that I only ask for permission to repost individual pics.
I never ask for permission to repost all art by an artist, or all pics of a character.

I've asked for permission from artists with a "Do not repost" statement on their works, and they're usually pretty friendly about it. The way I phrase the question changes in these cases, however. "Did this apply to archives such as e621 as well?"

Maxpizzle said:
It's hard to tell if they have a legitimate problem with e621 or if they have a problem with what they think e621 is. Do they know that their work will be properly attributed? Do they know that their takedown requests will be respected?

This is more obvious when saying "I've noticed some of your works here," but some artists definitely are confused on the matter. In one case I approached an artist about their works being here, and at first they were angry, but once I supplied the link to both their works and the takedown, they said "nevermind, I've been credited so it's all good."

It's tempting to just upload without asking. ("Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.") I don't know if that's the ethical thing to do, but, well...it's very practical. Probably the vast majority of the art here was uploaded without explicit permission, and yet, most artists are not dnp. Of course, that fact isn't entirely conclusive because the DNP list doesn't include artists who aren't aware of it – but it's still meaningful, I think. It suggests that artists are more amenable to their art being here when they see that it already is here.

Of course, there are times where an artist still goes for the takedown. Had one who was worried about any punishment to the uploaders of their work, but of course the only punishment that occurs from a new DNP is the lowered upload limit.

SnowWolf said:
I had a nice friendly letter something like:

I find that a lot of the artist I ask permission from tend to prefer short messages over long ones, but mentioning e621 versus e926 is a good idea. For SFW artists, I'll mention "Beware the version with a different number--It's the same site but shows some adult-rated content"

TheGreatWolfgang said:
^^^ I agree with @SnowWolf.

Your letter must be respectful and include your intentions on posting here. Just asking for permission without any reason would be a little bit disrespectful. State your intent and they would consider it, mine is to promote the artworks of artists I'm following and give them more exposure.

It's also best to first check the person's profile wall and journals for hints as to their impressions on reposts. Search for keywords like "do not", "repost/posting" or "permission/consent", otherwise you might get yelled at for not reading their wall or journals.

If you send a lot of permission letters to people, create a whitelist/blacklist of people who allow and disallow posting on the site, so you won't end up asking the same questions over and over again. FA's priority labels are useful in this case, low(green) for people who have given you full permissions, mid(blue) for people who are neutral/only allowed certain posts, and high(red) for people who don't want anything to be posted.

Never be demoralized by someone's negative response to your notes, just blacklist(as in avoid asking from them, not blocking) and move on. I have personally sent over 20 pages of notes on FA and only received a couple of negative notes. Also just to be on the safe side, other than the artist and commissioner, ask the character owners as well. You don't want to end up offending someone who wasn't informed on the repost.

One more thing to note is that if you decide to ask for permission AFTER you have posted something of theirs, there's a high chance they'll take offense to it. Some will just ignore you while some will just straight up takedown everything and DNP themselves.

I made the mistake once, and as soon as I realized I never got permission, I pointed them straight to the takedown page and said it's fine if they do that. They wound up being okay with the repost, but that's probably a rare scenario.

All this of course leads to "what if they already have art posted?" ... Then I say something like "I found some of your art on e621 and really liked it! I'd love to post more... etc... show off the fact that it's already benefitting them--bonus points if you took some time to go fave a bunch of stuff from their gallery before hand.

Furrin_Gok said:
I find that a lot of the artist I ask permission from tend to prefer short messages over long ones

I try to tailor it to each individual--someone who never posts much may not want a long post, but I prefer to present all the information at once. :) That way the "nevermind, I"m credited properly" situation is less likely to happen-- less time for them, less time for you. And less stress for them too! a lot of artists deal with art theft at some point in their career, or uncredited reposting, or people selling their designs and it's awful. So I try to offer as much comfort as possible, before hand.

That said, if they don't speak good english, simpler and shorter is better than something with complicated sentences.

SnowWolf said:
I prefer to present all the information at once. :)

If I may present my 2 cents on this:
If it were me I'd be really uncomfortable with the long detailed letter that you posted before. The entire tone of being overly detailed and trying really hard to appear helpful can end up having the opposite effect, as if you were trying to con me in some way.
Also as an artist that gets contacted with some sort of frequency, when a new note pops up in my inbox sent from someone I've never heard of, I'd much rather if it was short and straight to the point

mabit said:
If I may present my 2 cents on this:
If it were me I'd be really uncomfortable with the long detailed letter that you posted before. The entire tone of being overly detailed and trying really hard to appear helpful can end up having the opposite effect, as if you were trying to con me in some way.
Also as an artist that gets contacted with some sort of frequency, when a new note pops up in my inbox sent from someone I've never heard of, I'd much rather if it was short and straight to the point

Well, thanks for the feedback on that :) I do appreciate that--That said, it's generally been well received in the past... and I'd rather provide the information than have someone say "no" for .. some unknown reason, then I have to reply and say something like "well I understand! could you tell me why?" and them waste both of our times going back and forth as I attempt to explain that, yes, they'll be credited, no, it's right on the page, etc etc.

...Because then, I'm trying change the artist's mind, and make them explain themselves and trying to convince them that they're wrong and that just seems really unfriendly to me.

Being a rather soft spoken female in the south, nothing makes me happier than a man trying to convince me that my opinion is wrong and that I don't actually know what I want. So, I generally try to avoid putting people in a situation that I know would make me supremely uncomfortable, were the tables turned. :)

Besides, being upbeat and friendly's part of my personality, and my accounts on these places are not only several years old, but have several uploads as well. :) So I don't quite look like 'random joe' if someone has a loot at my profile. :)

But thanks for the feedback! :D I"ll certainly keep in in mind next time I write out a note~

SnowWolf said:
Well, thanks for the feedback on that :) I do appreciate that--That said, it's generally been well received in the past... and I'd rather provide the information than have someone say "no" for .. some unknown reason, then I have to reply and say something like "well I understand! could you tell me why?" and them waste both of our times going back and forth as I attempt to explain that, yes, they'll be credited, no, it's right on the page, etc etc.

...Because then, I'm trying change the artist's mind, and make them explain themselves and trying to convince them that they're wrong and that just seems really unfriendly to me.

Being a rather soft spoken female in the south, nothing makes me happier than a man trying to convince me that my opinion is wrong and that I don't actually know what I want. So, I generally try to avoid putting people in a situation that I know would make me supremely uncomfortable, were the tables turned. :)

Besides, being upbeat and friendly's part of my personality, and my accounts on these places are not only several years old, but have several uploads as well. :) So I don't quite look like 'random joe' if someone has a loot at my profile. :)

But thanks for the feedback! :D I"ll certainly keep in in mind next time I write out a note~

"Well, alright. If anything of yours pops up, you can find it via https://e621.net/post/index/1/artist (don't worry, we're good about finding artists and ensuring they are credited), you can submit a takedown through https://e621.net/takedown. If you feel like it's happening too often, you can even use that same form to request 'Do not Post' status, where our admins will remove it without further interaction required on your part."

This informs them about takedown, DNP, and crediting without coming across as corrective.

What verb do you use to describe what happens to the art? Is it reposted? Uploaded? Shared? Mirrored? Archived?

Maxpizzle said:
What verb do you use to describe what happens to the art? Is it reposted? Uploaded? Shared? Mirrored? Archived?

Reposted/reuploaded.