Topic: Dont you just hate when an artist goes FUBAR and deletes everything?

Posted under Art Talk

I just checked throught my pages and for several accounts i only found a big [DELETED] message.

No art, no notes, nothing. It leaves me with an annoying itching feeling that i just cant remember who they were or their art exactly but i know for sure that i only add those who have the best (personal opinion) arts to my lists.

Its kind of sad, especially when its sudden without any notices or when you clearly see that the artist just entered a circle of anger what will most likely make them give up their whole page because someone over the internet critized the coloring/gender/size/story or whatever they created there.

EDIT: theres a clear misunderstanding here, im not talking about someone removing their work from e621 but like someone deleting their entire inkbunny/furaffinity/deviantart account because someone was rude in a comment.

Updated by user 7121

Usually there is a reason given as to why certain artist images were removed. Takedowns, not meeting minimum quality standards, DNP requests. That sort of thing. Is there a specific artist you had in mind?

Usually if there was something deleted, there is at least a link to the original source. Unless that source was purged. If that's the case then there is nothing you can do other than reverse searching an image and possibly find a site where the artist hosts their works.

Updated by anonymous

...I don't think you know what FUBAR means...

Updated by anonymous

I mean, the artist is the creator of said work and has entire control on how it's shared and seen. I understand being a bit disappointed, but art is a craft of labor from people so they have full right to just nuke it if they wish, regardless of outside opinion on the work.

Updated by anonymous

Why not move the server to a place where copyright has no legal meaning?

Updated by anonymous

felix_nermix said:
Why not move the server to a place where copyright has no legal meaning?

There are already enough reasons artist circles shun this site, and few of those are as valid as complaints about this would be.

Updated by anonymous

The artist can do whatever they wish with their art, including removing it from the internet.

It sucks, but this really just encourages me to keep files of the things I really like just in case the artist disappears from the face of the earth.

Updated by anonymous

IndigoHeat said:
The artist can do whatever they wish with their art, including removing it from the internet.

It sucks, but this really just encourages me to keep files of the things I really like just in case the artist disappears from the face of the earth.

Copyright can be an opression instrument: The artist publishes artwork that criticizes the ones in the power, the ones in the power do not like it, the ones in the power force the artist to send takedown request to every place hosting their artwork, the artist accepts or refuses, the artist is either killed or hides so well neither themself knows where is if they refuse.

Updated by anonymous

felix_nermix said:
Copyright can be an opression instrument: The artist publishes artwork that criticizes the ones in the power, the ones in the power do not like it, the ones in the power force the artist to send takedown request to every place hosting their artwork, the artist refuses and is either killed or hides so well neither themself knows where is.

That is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most nonsensical hypothetical scenario you could have picked as an example.
What is the supposed benefit of us not having to honor a takedown request in your proposed scenario? So that we keep the art and the artist is then hypothetically killed because the oppressive government doesn't get their wishes? Are some colored pixels worth more to you than the life of the person who made them?

Updated by anonymous

felix_nermix said:
Copyright can be an opression instrument: The artist publishes artwork that criticizes the ones in the power, the ones in the power do not like it, the ones in the power force the artist to send takedown request to every place hosting their artwork, the artist accepts or refuses, the artist is either killed or hides so well neither themself knows where is if they refuse.

Your statement is technically correct, but doesn't support your argument because it's out of context from what Indigo wrote. An artist taking down their art on FA because of personal reasons isn't an example of the government oppressing someone.

Updated by anonymous

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
I mean, the artist is the creator of said work and has entire control on how it's shared and seen. I understand being a bit disappointed, but art is a craft of labor from people so they have full right to just nuke it if they wish, regardless of outside opinion on the work.

IndigoHeat said:
The artist can do whatever they wish with their art, including removing it from the internet.

It sucks, but this really just encourages me to keep files of the things I really like just in case the artist disappears from the face of the earth.

What fantasy land do you people live in? There's a reason the ancient adage (well, ancient in internet terms anyway) of "If you post it online, it's there forever" exists, which IndigoHeat here clearly demonstrates with "this really just encourages me to keep files of the things I really like just in case the artist disappears from the face of the earth". If it's posted anywhere, and there's interest in the thing being posted, someone will back it up. Which is what this supposed archive should be doing if it's calling itself an archive, but having a take down system at all spits in the face of this, and makes it so other people have to back this place up instead of this place being a proper archive of its own.
Anyone unironically believing they have any control of anything once its posted to the internet must genuinely be in such a high state of delusion they should be neurologically studied for how completely outside of reality they must mentally exist.

Updated by anonymous

In most cases they purge everything off e6, but nothing from any other site. Some purge their fa pages (and everything they find such as on e6) and just reupload in new account because they wished for a different name (fa has no name changer).

E621 is oddly controversial, people either love it or deeply hate it. And it's so different from inkbunny or FA, that some don't seem to know how things work here. Maybe if new beta site could get more features to artist accounts, make gallery feel more like FA, they would be less spooked about e6, but that's just a guess as idk why they do what they do. Takedowns and following comments on fa are always so wague, like "I don't like the site" or "I wished to have more control over it"

Updated by anonymous

I think people should have to actually read and learn about copyright laws before they go online and start spouting half-cocked malarkey about things they don't know.

@felix_nermix, your speculation is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read on this site, and this site is absolutely full of ridiculous things. Furthermore, your suggestion that the site should completely and utterly disrespect the artists that keep it alive is infuriating.

The longer I'm on this site (ten years now), the more I realize that e621's user base is full of people who qualify as adults only by age and certainly not by maturity, cognitive development, or the ability to participate in well informed, rational discussion. That may be one reason why some people get so fed up with it, as @BirdOfGrain observes.

(That's not to say everyone here is stupid, but damn there's an awful lot of it going around, and some days it really gets under my skin.)

Updated by anonymous

BirdOfGrain:
IMO the fact that people think it makes sense to put e621 in the same sentence as Inkbunny and FA is a substantial part of that problem.

For that reason, I'd prefer to make e621's interface as different from IB and FA as possible. There would probably still be some people who manage to believe that e621 is a gallery and that people uploading their art to e621 is plagiarism/art theft.. Maybe increased differentiation wouldn't, after all, be effective at decreasing the numbers of such people. But I'm pretty confident that making e621 resemble FA to a higher degree would be effective in increasing their numbers.

Updated by anonymous

Anonomn said:
What fantasy land do you people live in? There's a reason the ancient adage (well, ancient in internet terms anyway) of "If you post it online, it's there forever" exists, which IndigoHeat here clearly demonstrates with "this really just encourages me to keep files of the things I really like just in case the artist disappears from the face of the earth". If it's posted anywhere, and there's interest in the thing being posted, someone will back it up. Which is what this supposed archive should be doing if it's calling itself an archive, but having a take down system at all spits in the face of this, and makes it so other people have to back this place up instead of this place being a proper archive of its own.
Anyone unironically believing they have any control of anything once its posted to the internet must genuinely be in such a high state of delusion they should be neurologically studied for how completely outside of reality they must mentally exist.

There is a very big legal (and moral) difference between having a private copy and showing it to friends at your house, and distributing that same copy in public or to the public.

And like it or not, but we have no desire to break the law to appeal to some part of our user base.

Updated by anonymous

By that line of reasoning it's technically illegal to draw and post fanart without the express permission of the IP holders in question, and you don't see anyone but the scummiest of companies going around shutting down preschool drawings of Pikachu or the like that were posted online.
This entire site sits in a dichotomy of the practicality of what it claims to exist as (to house art made by whoever, posted by 3rd party users, apparently for the purpose of archival) and the impossibility of trying to pander to artists whims while genuinely acting on the previous statement.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to being an archive is if someone is looking for something, whether they know it to exist or not, whether they can find it. Regardless of how the person(s) who made this hypothetical thing feel about it, because (in relation to things posted online) they lost the choice to say anything about it the second it was uploaded anywhere. If it was never posted or never existed to begin with, then no one can reasonably complain about it not being there, but having it be "archived" and subsequently removed, for any reason, then it defeats the purpose of an archive, no ifs ands or buts.
(Also to add to the "legality" thing, history would be far more filled with unresolved holes and artwork lost to the ages if people of the time period would have stuck to the letter of the current law by the people in charge of things in question, as LOTS of less than scrupulous historic details would have been scrubbed from places of archive in their day, not to mention the moralities of a given time period effecting the actions surrounding a particular piece of art if it depicted something less than ideal (or even if it's just not "in fashion"), all potentially by the hand of the original artist(s), legal figures, and the general public at large. Embarrassing anecdotes all the way up to things like mass homicide. Especially that last part actually.)
Plenty of other sites who do the same thing (so boorus, and to a significantly lesser extent imageboard archives) have this figured out, which I'm sure someone is going to decry "illegal" or "immoral", but the only thing that actually matters for an archive, is if a given thing in question can be found again. Not the whims of people lording over things they have no actual genuine control over, not the feelings of anyone related to it, the thing being actually archived.

Or you could stop claiming this is an archive and call it for what it is, a furry porn site aggregated by independent users from other sites that sometimes the origins of which go down, that doesn't discriminate safe-for-work content, but does curate works. That works too.

Updated by anonymous

Anonomn said:
By that line of reasoning it's technically illegal to draw and post fanart without the express permission of the IP holders in question, and you don't see anyone but the scummiest of companies going around shutting down preschool drawings of Pikachu or the like that were posted online.
This entire site sits in a dichotomy of the practicality of what it claims to exist as (to house art made by whoever, posted by 3rd party users, apparently for the purpose of archival) and the impossibility of trying to pander to artists whims while genuinely acting on the previous statement.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to being an archive is if someone is looking for something, whether they know it to exist or not, whether they can find it. Regardless of how the person(s) who made this hypothetical thing feel about it, because (in relation to things posted online) they lost the choice to say anything about it the second it was uploaded anywhere. If it was never posted or never existed to begin with, then no one can reasonably complain about it not being there, but having it be "archived" and subsequently removed, for any reason, then it defeats the purpose of an archive, no ifs ands or buts.
(Also to add to the "legality" thing, history would be far more filled with unresolved holes and artwork lost to the ages if people of the time period would have stuck to the letter of the current law by the people in charge of things in question, as LOTS of less than scrupulous historic details would have been scrubbed from places of archive in their day, not to mention the moralities of a given time period effecting the actions surrounding a particular piece of art if it depicted something less than ideal (or even if it's just not "in fashion"), all potentially by the hand of the original artist(s), legal figures, and the general public at large. Embarrassing anecdotes all the way up to things like mass homicide. Especially that last part actually.)
Plenty of other sites who do the same thing (so boorus, and to a significantly lesser extent imageboard archives) have this figured out, which I'm sure someone is going to decry "illegal" or "immoral", but the only thing that actually matters for an archive, is if a given thing in question can be found again. Not the whims of people lording over things they have no actual genuine control over, not the feelings of anyone related to it, the thing being actually archived.

Or you could stop claiming this is an archive and call it for what it is, a furry porn site aggregated by independent users from other sites that sometimes the origins of which go down, that doesn't discriminate safe-for-work content, but does curate works. That works too.

It's far from impossible to acquiesce to what artists want. Just listen to them and like, do what they ask? lol?

It's not at all an unreasonable request by artists to have the ability to take their art off a site, all legality aside, it shows good faith and promotes a positive relationship with people who make the work that generates your traffic. Stop acting like this is some huge imposition when it's been going on for years now. Also, not every 'archive' has to be all encompassing of everything.

Updated by anonymous

Anonomn said:
By that line of reasoning it's technically illegal to draw and post fanart without the express permission of the IP holders in question, and you don't see anyone but the scummiest of companies going around shutting down preschool drawings of Pikachu or the like that were posted online.

Two words: Fair Use.

Anonomn said:
This entire site sits in a dichotomy of the practicality of what it claims to exist as (to house art made by whoever, posted by 3rd party users, apparently for the purpose of archival) and the impossibility of trying to pander to artists whims while genuinely acting on the previous statement.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to being an archive is if someone is looking for something, whether they know it to exist or not, whether they can find it. Regardless of how the person(s) who made this hypothetical thing feel about it, because (in relation to things posted online) they lost the choice to say anything about it the second it was uploaded anywhere. If it was never posted or never existed to begin with, then no one can reasonably complain about it not being there, but having it be "archived" and subsequently removed, for any reason, then it defeats the purpose of an archive, no ifs ands or buts.
(Also to add to the "legality" thing, history would be far more filled with unresolved holes and artwork lost to the ages if people of the time period would have stuck to the letter of the current law by the people in charge of things in question, as LOTS of less than scrupulous historic details would have been scrubbed from places of archive in their day, not to mention the moralities of a given time period effecting the actions surrounding a particular piece of art if it depicted something less than ideal (or even if it's just not "in fashion"), all potentially by the hand of the original artist(s), legal figures, and the general public at large. Embarrassing anecdotes all the way up to things like mass homicide. Especially that last part actually.)

Yes, those people who protected these things in dark cellars where authorities couldn't find them are definitely in the same position as a widely indexed page that wishes to operate openly, to the public, and not a select few clients.

Anonomn said:
Plenty of other sites who do the same thing (so boorus, and to a significantly lesser extent imageboard archives) have this figured out, which I'm sure someone is going to decry "illegal" or "immoral", but the only thing that actually matters for an archive, is if a given thing in question can be found again. Not the whims of people lording over things they have no actual genuine control over, not the feelings of anyone related to it, the thing being actually archived.

Those same boorus operate out of some backwater with little to no financial support and the possibility of losing their hosting if the anonymous operator so much as misses a single payment.
If you want to pay for potential legal issues we might face be sure to give us a way to invoice you.

Anonomn said:
Or you could stop claiming this is an archive and call it for what it is, a furry porn site aggregated by independent users from other sites that sometimes the origins of which go down, that doesn't discriminate safe-for-work content, but does curate works. That works too.

So, a curated repository of sorts, an archive for furry art perhaps?

Literally in no part of any definition does it say that an archive must ignore the wishes of the people whose information / things is actually collected and indexed.
We simply chose to not bite the hands that feed us, you are free to chose otherwise for yourself.

Updated by anonymous

I suggest lobbying goverments to replace Copyright with Payright. Payright, unlike Copyright, means anyone has the right to copy and redistribute whatever they want in a fully unrestricted way for non commercial purposes and payright claims are only for commercial uses. Royalties are negotiable and if one or more parts disagree, they should call a valuator to determine the value of a work and value of the value of the use. Royalties shall not exceed 100% . No one shall forbid the use of a work, even if the name of the forbidder is "No One".

Updated by anonymous

felix_nermix said:
Royalties are negotiable and if one or more parts disagree, they should call a valuator to determine the value of a work and value of the value of the use.

William D. Munkelzahn, Esquire
Licensed Valuator of Anthropomorphic Pornography

Updated by anonymous

Do I hate it when a artist nukes all their work? No. I'd say it upsets me and I wish they wouldn't, but I respect their decision to do so as the sole owner of it is the artist. They are under no obligation to share what they make.

As for "why not move the servers where copyright doesn't exist", three reasons:
1. We are not dicks. We want to preserve art, but also respect artist's wishes.
2. Legal technicality. Even if we host the servers else where, we are still owned and operated by a U.S. based company, therefore, we are subject to U.S. federal law regardless where the servers are hosted.
3. Site speed and server security. We'd likely have less legal protections in place which prevent untrustworthy server hosts from taking a peak at user data.

Updated by anonymous

...Well, this thread has become one hell of a rabbit hole since I last peeked into it...

Updated by anonymous

@Jacob Hold my seed
@Felix Interesting ideas you got there. You know, there was once a place that followed kind of what you are suggesting. In that place, copyright was officially defined, but overall was very free about it. Official copyright times were short, and on many smaller projects it was essentially non-existent. Royalties were limited (which is nice, as popular work can get you obscenely rich for no real reason) and there was an organization that would seek to determine the value of those works.
And they had excellent plans on how to spread these freedom-loving ideas throughout the world.
Too bad it is gone, ripped to shreds.
But we can bring her back GLORY TO THE SOVIET UNIOOOON URAAAAAAAAA

Updated by anonymous

Edited the post because theres a clear misunderstanding here.

I did not wanted to talk about legality issues, sharing artwork or copyright at all.

I just wanted to talk about how some artists go into full rage and decide to delete their own website, their inkbunny/furaffinity/sofurry/whatever main account, close down their patreon and soo on.

Updated by anonymous

tester29 said:
Edited the post because theres a clear misunderstanding here.

I did not wanted to talk about legality issues, sharing artwork or copyright at all.

I just wanted to talk about how some artists go into full rage and decide to delete their own website, their inkbunny/furaffinity/sofurry/whatever main account, close down their patreon and soo on.

That is why i suggested replacing Copyright with Payright.

felix nermix said:
I suggest lobbying goverments to replace Copyright with Payright. Payright, unlike Copyright, means anyone has the right to copy and redistribute whatever they want in a fully unrestricted way for non commercial purposes and payright claims are only for commercial uses. Royalties are negotiable and if one or more parts disagree, they should call a valuator to determine the value of a work and value of the value of the use. Royalties shall not exceed 100% . No one shall forbid the use of a work, even if the name of the forbidder is "No One".

Do you support?

Updated by anonymous

Jacob said:
...Well, this thread has become one hell of a rabbit hole since I last peeked into it...

A rabbit hole filled with two or three uninformed opinion flingers who can't evidently be bothered to spend ten minutes reading anything that's actually based in copyright law.

For heaven's sake, take a class. Read a book. Get off 4chan.

Updated by anonymous

I understand the OP is probably not interested in art thief entitlement, but everybody else is basically illustrating the exact reason "one rude comment" can provoke an artist to nuke their page.

Treat artists better and they won't do this. It's that simple.

You're spending so much more effort arguing why you should be allowed to steal art than it would take to get artists to keep willingly sharing it with you.

felix_nermix said:
That is why i suggested replacing Copyright with Payright.

Fair use / fair dealing already covers a wide range of acceptable copyright exceptions. Look them up sometime - and not on Youtube, where people think that posting a fair use notice means their use is automatically fair.

Updated by anonymous

Anonomn said:
What fantasy land do you people live in? There's a reason the ancient adage (well, ancient in internet terms anyway) of "If you post it online, it's there forever" exists, which IndigoHeat here clearly demonstrates with "this really just encourages me to keep files of the things I really like just in case the artist disappears from the face of the earth". If it's posted anywhere, and there's interest in the thing being posted, someone will back it up. Which is what this supposed archive should be doing if it's calling itself an archive, but having a take down system at all spits in the face of this, and makes it so other people have to back this place up instead of this place being a proper archive of its own.
Anyone unironically believing they have any control of anything once its posted to the internet must genuinely be in such a high state of delusion they should be neurologically studied for how completely outside of reality they must mentally exist.

And odds are, if they take it down everywhere, they won't want it on e621 or any other site for that matter. This is why I back it up.

Just because it's in a specific folder on my external hard drive or PC doesn't necessarily mean it's back on the internet. I don't re-post things that an artist has requested removal for out of respect for them. But this doesn't mean I won't save it for future use.

Updated by anonymous

FibS said:
I understand the OP is probably not interested in art thief entitlement, but everybody else is basically illustrating the exact reason "one rude comment" can provoke an artist to nuke their page.

Treat artists better and they won't do this. It's that simple.

You're spending so much more effort arguing why you should be allowed to steal art than it would take to get artists to keep willingly sharing it with you.

Fair use / fair dealing already covers a wide range of acceptable copyright exceptions. Look them up sometime - and not on Youtube, where people think that posting a fair use notice means their use is automatically fair.

All of this.

And I would not support this idea of "Payright", anyhow - as a copyright policy, this is tantamount to stripping creators of all legal protections, especially in today's internet-connected world.

Literally every creator in the world, from Rian Johnson and Keanu Reeves to the kid who just created their first FurAffinity account, would basically be 100%, completely dependent on crowd funding and wealthy/elite patronage to support their work. That may be well enough for Keanu, possibly the only living human being truly worthy to lift Thor's Hammer, but asking that every creator in the world also be their own community manager and uphold an unimpeachable standard of conduct as defined by "whatever their fans define it to be" is going to be a barrier that many will be unable to overcome.

It wouldn't be "the death of artistic creation", there would certainly be a few stand-out talents who would manage. But it would probably stop media advancement altogether, and ultimately turn back the clock quite substantially in terms of creator quality and quantity, because so few would be capable of doing it for a living. Being an artist is hard enough with all the copyright protections they enjoy, taking so much of it away just seems like an act of malice.

Updated by anonymous

I'm more angry against artists that purge their "hardcore" content (cub, incest, ect...) so that they can cash in that sweet Patreon money.

I mean, there are other possibilities, like moving that stuff on an other account instead of deleting it. I know a few artists who have done that and it worked for them.

Updated by anonymous

ikdind said:
All of this.

And I would not support this idea of "Payright", anyhow - as a copyright policy, this is tantamount to stripping creators of all legal protections, especially in today's internet-connected world.

Literally every creator in the world, from Rian Johnson and Keanu Reeves to the kid who just created their first FurAffinity account, would basically be 100%, completely dependent on crowd funding and wealthy/elite patronage to support their work. That may be well enough for Keanu, possibly the only living human being truly worthy to lift Thor's Hammer, but asking that every creator in the world also be their own community manager and uphold an unimpeachable standard of conduct as defined by "whatever their fans define it to be" is going to be a barrier that many will be unable to overcome.

It wouldn't be "the death of artistic creation", there would certainly be a few stand-out talents who would manage. But it would probably stop media advancement altogether, and ultimately turn back the clock quite substantially in terms of creator quality and quantity, because so few would be capable of doing it for a living. Being an artist is hard enough with all the copyright protections they enjoy, taking so much of it away just seems like an act of malice.

As i said, any commercial use pays the author unless the author rejects those royalties. I know how difficult it could be to create art, really, i am still learning.
Copyright was originally intended to be an instrument of oppression and did not benefit the authors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Conception

Updated by anonymous

felix_nermix said:
I know how difficult it could be to create art, really, i am still learning.

You really, really don't. You've clearly never spent 6 months of your life working on a single product for 50-60 hours/week, a product with a $75 million dollar production budget and another $75 million in marketing.

You've definitely never spent years of your life outside of a regular job, writing a book and then getting it published.

You've never invested thousands of dollars in personal equipment, honing your skills for years, in order to capture a once-in-a-lifetime photograph. I just hope you've never been that person who walks into a photography studio and, after all the lights, props, and background are setup and the subject is staged, pulls out their cellphone and asks if they can take a picture.

I mean, right? You're arguing that everyone, everywhere, in every creative endevour, should be happy to compete with free, and should instead support their creative urges solely through self-promotion and merchandising. Now there's a literal 80's corporate dystopia for you, one where every major media production has to be developed with the cynicism of toy manufacturing.

I don't buy it.

Updated by anonymous

ikdind said:
You really, really don't. You've clearly never spent 6 months of your life working on a single product for 50-60 hours/week, a product with a $75 million dollar production budget and another $75 million in marketing.

I plan to do so. One word: Crowdfunding.

Updated by anonymous

felix_nermix said:
As i said, any commercial use pays the author unless the author rejects those royalties. I know how difficult it could be to create art, really, i am still learning.
Copyright was originally intended to be an instrument of oppression and did not benefit the authors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Conception

Among all the countries and cultures on earth, a single nation's initial intent for copyright has no bearing whatsoever on its current, legal meaning.

felix_nermix said:
I plan to do so. One word: Crowdfunding.

I agree with @ikdind on this one. You're not showing any respect at all for creators. You're acting like you know how everything needs to be done, and everyone just needs to agree with your perfect understanding of how these things work. I'm not sure you realize how off-putting it comes across.

Updated by anonymous

So we're to have no rights to our work but can be given money for it if the audience feels like it or a patron can be suckered into giving away money? At least copyright acknowledges and protects my rights to my creative endeavors. Payrights sound like they automatically take the fruits of our labors away from us, all because some members of the audience want to control the distribution of someone else's property. Talk about the ultimate art theft.

Updated by anonymous

CCoyote said:
I'm not sure you realize how off-putting it comes across.

Sorry for my behaviour. I will do things in my way and let everyone else do it in theirs.

Updated by anonymous

Clawstripe said:
So we're to have no rights to our work but can be given money for it if the audience feels like it or a patron can be suckered into giving away money? At least copyright acknowledges and protects my rights to my creative endeavors. Payrights sound like they automatically take the fruits of our labors away from us, all because some members of the audience want to control the distribution of someone else's property. Talk about the ultimate art theft.

Most of the fan art hosted here would be illegal if there where stricter copyright laws. Disney can already send a mass takedown request on all the artwork featuring their characters.
If there were not people like me, there will not be things like Creative Commons, the GNU Project, the Wikimedia Foundation or even the Internet.

Updated by anonymous

What I hate is how the more talented an artist is, the more unstable they seem to be;

Artist: creates a breathtaking work of art.
Me: Holy crap, that's amazing!
Artist: No its not, its garbage! I don't deserve to call myself an artist! I should just give up artwork forever!

I'm not joking, I literally saw that happen from an artist I liked.

Updated by anonymous

It's really unfortunate when an artist deletes everything off of a certain website, but they do have their reasons.

felix_nermix said:
Most of the fan art hosted here would be illegal if there where stricter copyright laws. Disney can already send a mass takedown request on all the artwork featuring their characters.
If there were not people like me, there will not be things like Creative Commons, the GNU Project, the Wikimedia Foundation or even the Internet.

I do understand that copyright comes up when it's related to fanart, especially related to companies such as Nintendo and Disney; What I don't quite understand how copyright is an issue when the deletion comes from the artist not wanting to use whatever website they left by their own volition though.

Updated by anonymous

Thirtyeight said:
What I hate is how the more talented an artist is, the more unstable they seem to be;

Artist: creates a breathtaking work of art.
Me: Holy crap, that's amazing!
Artist: No its not, its garbage! I don't deserve to call myself an artist! I should just give up artwork forever!

I'm not joking, I literally saw that happen from an artist I liked.

An artist is often their own worst critic.

Updated by anonymous

Thirtyeight said:
What I hate is how the more talented an artist is, the more unstable they seem to be;

Artist: creates a breathtaking work of art.
Me: Holy crap, that's amazing!
Artist: No its not, its garbage! I don't deserve to call myself an artist! I should just give up artwork forever!

I'm not joking, I literally saw that happen from an artist I liked.

Kinda comes with the job. Those who cant self criticize well are essentially permanently stuck at 5-year-old level. Those who are overly harsh on themselves will work harder on their projects and get better fast, and often trash what most would consider to be a great job.
Not just furry artists either, scientists are often described as mistrustful, borderline paranoid and irritable. But when it comes to various logical pitfalls, counterintuitive stuff, in a field like physics, they very much have to be like that to be good at the job.

Updated by anonymous

BirdOfGrain said:
Kinda comes with the job. Those who cant self criticize well are essentially permanently stuck at 5-year-old level. Those who are overly harsh on themselves will work harder on their projects and get better fast, and often trash what most would consider to be a great job.
Not just furry artists either, scientists are often described as mistrustful, borderline paranoid and irritable. But when it comes to various logical pitfalls, counterintuitive stuff, in a field like physics, they very much have to be like that to be good at the job.

I can agree to an extent, but in my example the artist repeatedly bashed the people trying to encourage them, and ultimately removed all their art from the internet, just because they were convinced they were the worst, most pathetic person to ever put pencil to paper. I'm honestly worried they might have taken their own life.

Updated by anonymous

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
I mean, the artist is the creator of said work and has entire control on how it's shared and seen. I understand being a bit disappointed, but art is a craft of labor from people so they have full right to just nuke it if they wish, regardless of outside opinion on the work.

That may be the case but it's kind of a dick move.

Updated by anonymous

PheagleAdler said:
That may be the case but it's kind of a dick move.

How is it a dick move when they decide to remove something that belongs only to them in the first place? They don't take any of your things down.

Updated by anonymous

Thirtyeight said:
I can agree to an extent, but in my example the artist repeatedly bashed the people trying to encourage them, and ultimately removed all their art from the internet, just because they were convinced they were the worst, most pathetic person to ever put pencil to paper. I'm honestly worried they might have taken their own life.

Thirtyeight said:
I can agree to an extent, but in my example the artist repeatedly bashed the people trying to encourage them, and ultimately removed all their art from the internet, just because they were convinced they were the worst, most pathetic person to ever put pencil to paper. I'm honestly worried they might have taken their own life.

There is a difference between genuine self-criticism and a "pathology". Add to that the fact that furries (if you weere reffering to a durey artist) often have their own specific quirks and it's no wonder that things like that should happen.

And @felix, once machine learning and drawing progresses up to a decent degree, tou will have all the free art/smut you will ever want, with the added benefit of decimating the art community ^^

Updated by anonymous

Haljkljavahlibrz said:
...once machine learning and drawing progresses up to a decent degree, tou will have all the free art/smut you will ever want, with the added benefit of decimating the art community ^^

I think completely AI generated works will kill art. However, i also think AI is not all that bad, for example, you could use AI as a tool to draw whatever you imagine and it is just a tool, a help, whatever you call it. Things turn dark when the artwork is generated by an AI with little or no intervention from a living being.

Updated by anonymous

felix_nermix said:
I think completely AI generated works will kill art. However, i also think AI is not all that bad, for example, you could use AI as a tool to draw whatever you imagine and it is just a tool, a help, whatever you call it. Things turn dark when the artwork is generated by an AI with little or no intervention from a living being.

It will be a shift and only bad from certain perspectives. 3D artists will benefit the most since they could use AI tools to create entire virtual VR worlds, add lots of details, or make it a lot less work to animate. They can use the tools to expand their creative vision and eventually create Hollywood level productions at home.

It will still take some time before 2D artists are threatened. Furries are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for commissions. They aren't going to settle for some uncanny software output. But the quality will become good enough and the quantity will be overwhelming. You could generate literally millions of pictures of your fursona in any pose or art style, using text descriptions, reference images, or a randomizer.

You can already see where this is going with work like NVIDIA's GAN face generator. There is endless amounts of training data even on a takedown plagued e621, and more on other sites. Popular artists have uploaded hundreds and even thousands of images.

There will still be artists 20 years from now, but anybody who uploads can get their style copied by a machine. There will also be a demand for people who can use the AI tools more effectively, just like you might hire someone to use Photoshop or video editing software.

Updated by anonymous

Lance_Armstrong said:
You can already see where this is going with work like NVIDIA's GAN face generator. There is endless amounts of training data even on a takedown plagued e621, and more on other sites. Popular artists have uploaded hundreds and even thousands of images.

Well, I for one take comfort in that NVIDIA can only handle one type of animal and only in one visual style. Furry is going to be a very hard problem for the hundreds, if not thousands, of animal types represented in the community, across a wide variety of artistic styles. That's a lot of training to try and overcome. It's the same problem as with using AI to suggest tags on e621's images.

It'll be interesting to see if NVIDIA's work can be flexed into realistic humanoid heads, such as Tolkien elves. And I wouldn't be surprised if it gets applied to anime at some point, as there is a sufficient body of samples with a consistent visual style that I could see a network being successfully trained on it.

Updated by anonymous

Imagine if someone would download all of models used by SFM artists, code in generic poses, few generic kinks and set up a random generator.
Generated post every second.

Could be done easily enough today, probably easiest using Blender and setting up a python script.
God blacklist help us if someone actually does this.

Updated by anonymous

ikdind said:
Well, I for one take comfort in that NVIDIA can only handle one type of animal and only in one visual style. Furry is going to be a very hard problem for the hundreds, if not thousands, of animal types represented in the community, across a wide variety of artistic styles. That's a lot of training to try and overcome. It's the same problem as with using AI to suggest tags on e621's images.

It'll be interesting to see if NVIDIA's work can be flexed into realistic humanoid heads, such as Tolkien elves. And I wouldn't be surprised if it gets applied to anime at some point, as there is a sufficient body of samples with a consistent visual style that I could see a network being successfully trained on it.

Anthros, elves, and the other non-ferals are mostly upright bipedal humanoids with two arms and two legs. If they had DNA, even the feline anthros or scalies would likely be closer to being 100% human than chimpanzees or gorillas. Especially the primate anthros.

Visually, they have similar outlines and small features common to the type of creature.

As it turns out, NVIDIA is experimenting with more than just human images:

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/04/15/nvidia-research-image-translation/

Here is what rudimentary style transfer looks like:

https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/generative/style_transfer

https://medium.com/tensorflow/neural-style-transfer-creating-art-with-deep-learning-using-tf-keras-and-eager-execution-7d541ac31398

Now look at these:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/nvidia-ai-turns-sketches-into-photorealistic-landscapes-in-seconds/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/a-picture-from-a-dozen-words-a-drawing-bot-for-realizing-everyday-scenes-and-even-stories/

The techniques will reach a point where you will be able to scribble a crude outline or type some words, change some parameters, and get a drawing almost instantly. By training with an artist's works, you could get something immediately recognizable as a fluff-kevlar or reign-2004 drawing even though it is generated by a computer.

If you look at an image and immediately recognize a human, a cat anthro, or a fluff-kevlar drawing, your brain is automatically evaluating a number of factors that lead you to that conclusion. If you have never seen any of fluff-kevlar's work, and I show you twenty of fluff's images, I can show you another 1,000 images and you should be able to easily tell if any are by fluff-kevlar. Artificial neural networks approximate the learning process and can be used to reach the same conclusions. Generative adversarial networks and other techniques allow you to vomit output based on the training and slight tweaks that guide the result to a conclusion you desire.

Fast forward 10 years. The hardware will be better, and the software will be much better.

I'm pretty sure that commercial software exists right now that, with some leg work, could integrate auto-suggested tags into the e621.net upload form. Running neural nets on your local computer to train with most of e621's images and tags should also be possible. Remove all of the flash, webms, and animated GIFs and the training set should fit on a 2 terabyte SSD.

Updated by anonymous

Thirtyeight said:
What I hate is how the more talented an artist is, the more unstable they seem to be;

Artist: creates a breathtaking work of art.
Me: Holy crap, that's amazing!
Artist: No its not, its garbage! I don't deserve to call myself an artist! I should just give up artwork forever!

I'm not joking, I literally saw that happen from an artist I liked.

My favorite was some guy who got a comment saying that the scan of this pic is too low quality to see the art (he drawn in a notebook, made a photo and uploaded it), things like this kinda happen when you dont have proper scanners or just an okay phone.
He flipped that no one respects his word and by the time i ended at the end of the comment chain where people not discussed the art at all but various scanners and cameras i accidentally refreshed the page and met with a 404 error, the whole account was gone.

Updated by anonymous

BirdOfGrain said:
Imagine if someone would download all of models used by SFM artists, code in generic poses, few generic kinks and set up a random generator.
Generated post every second.

Could be done easily enough today, probably easiest using Blender and setting up a python script.
God blacklist help us if someone actually does this.

To be fair if they make it to actually look decent and use the freely released models i wouldnt have much problems with it.

Its hard to find a specific model even after its free release but if someone would just make an auto-creator for it, that could flood the net with nice videos.

Updated by anonymous

NotMeNotYou said:
Two words: Fair Use.

Fair Use doesn't apply to fan-works. Fair use allows reproducing pieces of a copyrighted for for purposes of commentary; they aren't a license to do whatever you want with a copyrighted work just so long as you don't replicate it exactly.

Updated by anonymous

I never fell into the "download everything" mentality because I don't feel like dedicating a portable hard drive to every picture and video I come across that I like, but it seems like it's the safest option. Especially when it comes to japanese artists who seem to keep a finger on the "delete account" button at all times.

Updated by anonymous

A lot of this whole conversation, and pretty much 90% of conversations that happen on this damn forum is "shut the fuck up and just accept that's how it is", totally disregarding the conversation at hand, the points brought up, and everything in between, as unacceptable/unthinkable. And I'm not even talking about breaking the law.

Any disagreement is met with "god, you're so unrespectful to all of these homogeneous groups of people I'm speaking on behalf of for whom I definitely know the opinion on this subject" or a similar personal attack/insult about being a child, or being an idiot, simply because that person just won't agree with you.

There is a reason why e621 is regarded so poorly nowadays. You guys don't want anything ever to change, the website has been stagnated for pretty much a decade by now, any external idea or proposal is just shot down without a thought, or given the silent treatment.

You turn every single thing people talk about into your dick-waving contest to show just how sturdy the current status-quo is, and how much more you "know" about the subject, when truly, your forum is *DEAD*, and you're just looking for any poor soul to come over so you can bolster your egos.

User engagement is worse than minimal nowadays, and it should be very clear why:
You have shunned it, drowned it out, and otherwise straight up shut it down to oblivion.

You are an authoritarian, unagreeable, prideful, spiteful, selfish bunch; and you should be ashamed of yourselves especially to even call yourself an "archiving community".

You do neither.

Sorry for derailing the conversation even further, but I had to get this off my chest after reading this "conversation".
You can expect no more activity from me. I'm done.

(wait for it, wait for the people proving my point and celebrating)

Updated by anonymous

furryMaxime said.

User engagement is worse than minimal nowadays, and it should be very clear why:
You have shunned it, drowned it out, and otherwise straight up shut it down to oblivion.

You are an authoritarian, unagreeable, prideful, spiteful, selfish bunch; and you should be ashamed of yourselves especially to even call yourself an "archiving community".

Site seems pretty popular to me. Just because you’re mad doesn’t magically make the site unpopular. Maybe the site doesn’t like unagreeable, spiteful hypocrites who post threads accusing people of tracing their art without any evidence? Nah, it’s the horrible Nazi admins for locking that thread and not you, the toxic user. Do what you said you would do and leave. Go out in the real world and act like this, just don’t be surprised when the world treats you like a child when you throw another tantrum or disagrees with your misbegotten opinions.

Updated by anonymous

I'd agree with furrymaxime. I stopped going to comments and don't participate in these threads which are so clearly just complaint threads about artists deleting their work and projecting half accuracies willy nilly in some ego vent echo chamber.

I also disagree with a a number of how policies are handled here but then I realized I can't be bothered to have a discussion with it - every topic relating to it is met with "that's how it is so shut up amd eat your corn flakes." It's some reddit tier levels of one-upness, moral molehills, and lack of nuance. Normally I don't care because most rules are sound but it's ungodly irritating to see people treat it like the gospel and dogma.

It's a porn site, not god's gift to earth. Lol@ the above comment being just another "oh look at you whining about-" sort of proving the point exactly by not acknowledging any of the points and deflecting the subject at the matter at hand with personal, also irrelevant jabs. The above is far more toxic than anything Maxime posted in the most hilarious of irony.

Rules are supposed to be impersonal, but people use it to make personal attacks against others who don't like it; artists who DNP because of TWYS, etc etc. Not common but it does happen, and frankly a lot of it gets a free pass.

Updated by anonymous

There are two sides to every coin. Changes in policy are hard to make when every proposed change will have wide consequences many people don't realize. Not only do changes have to implemented on a 2.1 million submissions database, wikis have to be written, changed and updated, users have to be informed of the changes, things have to be monitored, and possibly related things have to receive the same treatment all over.
We're not against change if it's for the better, but every change needs to have a sound justification and actually offer tangible benefits to off-set the effort needed to implement and monitor it.

Change for the sake of change benefits nobody, instead it'll just cause confusion.

Updated by anonymous

Oh yeah! I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me NotMeNotYou.

I forgot to mention you will never accept anything that would require any effort, even if we provide lengthy explanations for general reasons and even some specific use-cases that would greatly benefit from changes. But no, it's "change for the sake of change". Lol. You just expect your "popular" "community" to do all the manual labor and then LITERALLY ask them to just stop putting in their freely-given time and effort into your damned website altogether the moment somehow one human error, or someone else forcing the wrong classifications on top (meaning it requires your time), means you're a problem. (this is from both perceived, and personal experiences here)

So, uh, TL;DR, add "lazy" to the shit pile. Bye.

(On another note, I fucking called it. "Privileged" meaning they want to "better the website", my ass)

Updated by anonymous

Its not perfect by any standards. Theres a shitload of toxicity still here. Yourself right now and the way youre acting being one of them.

But fuck it if this site hasnt gotten better in the last 2 years and with the exception of a very small few site staff have overall improved a lot in terms of trying to make this place better.

If you hate it so much. Leave. Seriously just go. Its bad for your (or anyone's health) to INTENTIONALLY consume media that is toxic for them and thats what youre doing right now @furryMaxime

A lot of artists have dnpd e6 and permanently left for some of those reasons and thats theyr prerogative bc putting your own mental health first is the most important thing you can do.

Take some time away from here yourself and you might start to feel happy again.

Updated by anonymous

@furryMaxime You said that you would quit, and yet you are back? If you hate this site so much and you want to quit, I would recommend actually staying away instead of coming back. It's not good for yourself keep coming back to site you hate for sake of being mad about the site.

Updated by anonymous

furryMaxime said:
So, uh, TL;DR, add "lazy" to the shit pile. Bye.

(On another note, I fucking called it. "Privileged" meaning they want to "better the website", my ass)

Dude, you can't sit here shitposting all the time and then say you "called it" when someone responds and calls you on it. I mean, they're literally building an entire new site, so saying they're lazy just doesn't hold up.

Please do yourself and us a favor, and just go away like you said you would.

Updated by anonymous

furryMaxime said:
Oh yeah! I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me NotMeNotYou.

I forgot to mention you will never accept anything that would require any effort, even if we provide lengthy explanations for general reasons and even some specific use-cases that would greatly benefit from changes. But no, it's "change for the sake of change". Lol. You just expect your "popular" "community" to do all the manual labor and then LITERALLY ask them to just stop putting in their freely-given time and effort into your damned website altogether the moment somehow one human error, or someone else forcing the wrong classifications on top (meaning it requires your time), means you're a problem. (this is from both perceived, and personal experiences here)

So, uh, TL;DR, add "lazy" to the shit pile. Bye.

(On another note, I fucking called it. "Privileged" meaning they want to "better the website", my ass)

I've literally spent 12 hours of my own time (in one day no less) implementing all changes required for the switch from dickgirl and cuntboy to gynomorph and andromorph respectively. I've also done all the actual legwork from the rule change that we will no longer help facilitate the piracy of commercial works. Making the takedowns and deleting them took some 8 hours as well.

I am entirely capable and willing to put in the work required into something if the benefits are there, even if they're small. But the benefits have to be there. Your proposal(s) wold have simply changed an arbitrarily drawn line to a slightly differently drawn line, and would have not had any tangible benefit for anyone.

Updated by anonymous

furryMaxime said:
There is a reason why e621 is regarded so poorly nowadays.

It's poorly regarded because back in the day, e621.net just straight up stole people's artwork, gave artists little recourse in controlling their own copyrights, and strutted around like it had the goddamn right to everything. The people here have worked very hard to be friendlier to the people who, you know, actually make the content that it uses, but it takes a while to overcome a bad reputation.

Updated by anonymous

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