This isn't a legal question, I'm just interested in philosophical standpoints on this: do you think artists should be allowed to erase all traces of their own art from the internet?

e621 seemed to take a hands-off approach on this back in the day, before the legal implications became prohibitive.

There has been an interesting divergence in philosophy of various furry art archives since then.

At one end of the spectrum you have modern e6, which has a user friendly way for artists to take down all of their content without sending a DMCA request.

In the middle you have the various boorus which don't have an easy way to take down content, but will respond to a properly formatted and itemized DMCA request.

At the most extreme opposite end, you have the Permanent Booru which not only does not respond to any takedown requests, but makes the underlying data that it mirrors from other sites functionally immutable using IPFS (a side effect of all this mirroring being that the tagging system is kind of a mess, being derived from multiple sites)

as much as anyone else, yes.
you don't skimp privacy concerns when they directly affect everything in your life, just as much as you wouldn't tell anyone that nasty horrible secret you did when you were 13, or tell those that know to please not tell anyone else.
nor should you do so for current active communications.

while it's sensible to maintain art for historical preservation, the systems that exist don't properly anonymize the art from the artist unless the artist specifically has a psuedo profile solely for that art, or otherwise they can be traced back from their psuedonym to their actual art simply by their personal artstyle, much like a signature.

the problem faced is that your actions have consequences, and people like to dig into others for practically any benign reason, judge them for it and reject them.

"right" is a strong word, but like, if artists don't want to be bothered, don't bother them. We won't miss much by respecting artists' wishes.

aversionCapacitor'

Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Your mention of historical preservation reminded me of another archival project that in some ways overlaps with this topic.

The Internet Archive project, the largest of its kind to my knowledge, aims to preserve as many websites as possible, with a stated philosophical position that the internet itself is a record of humanity's history.
The archive's existence seems to run into this same philosophical question, but regarding the internet as a whole, which is the tension between preserving history and respecting individual privacy.
Most people would oppose having all of their internet activity linked to them forever, but most people also support preserving history, which makes this a fairly nuanced topic.
In some ways, furry art itself is the history of the Furry community. When notable art is lost, some may argue that a piece of the community's history is lost as well.

This is topic that will always come up, never has right answers and depending on your opinions and viewpoints can make you seem like bad guy for either side.

When it's massive corporation in question, people seem to always just assume that it's their right to get the thing especially if the company in question aren't selling or giving it anymore.
But when it comes to individuals, suddenly peoples tone immidiately changes and most are leaning towards artists rights (outside specific circles).

I do still lean on the side of preservation. Because even though individuals have and should have full rights for their works, after they have published them publicly that is the line where I feel like it is public information and part of current history and as such is part of many other peoples lives as well, not just you as individual creator. It's an experience that happened and should have record left of it. Mona Lisa is kinda cliché to bring up, but what if da vinci decided they wanted to burn it because it didn't meet their standards? Or if there was art gallery after which everything was burned, people would thrive to preserve any photographs of the works they could still, even if originals were gone.
This is also kinda why I'm still not entirely content with paid rule either, because most paid material never gets released publicly by authors, so the only preservators of those works are piracy websites and because it's pornographic content, most of those websites do not care about preservation, rather they care about ad revenue they can get by sharing that content in poor quality.

There's also slight difference between individual as private and individuals works on legal level as well. If talking of what individual has said or pictures of individual, then yes those should definitely be able to be forgotten completely if they so desire. Even with that things have changed as there is record of you saying something horrible 15 years ago and someone can just dig it up when convinient.

Still feel like it's better idea for authors to keep their rights, but I would at the same time hope that they would realize the situation and take it into consideration.
Whining about not getting access to artists work is selfish and entitled, but artist erasing their works after releasing them publicly (or worst case paywalling them, never releasing them publicly and then erasing them) is also selfish to some degree.

Yes and no. Posting something to a website is like publishing something to the public. You shouldn't expect it to ever disappear after you've done so (and IP law doesn't allow you to mandate everyone else to delete their private copies either). To expect people to follow you forever on all platforms just in case you change your mind from "spread my work to everyone" to "no one can know I exist" is folly. That said, taking down your personal site or account is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It takes effort to maintain such things and no one should force you to do so. Though of course, suddenly taking it down without warning is extremely rude to your followers. Being rude to people is a personal choice.

If you want total control over the things you create then you shouldn't show them to anyone and if you enjoy someone else's content then you should make a local copy if you want to use it for any length of time. Outside of those two things, there are no guarantees and morality changes with culture and time.

Piracy always wins in the end. Nearly 100% of all "art", be it movies, TV, or music, is available for free within seconds, and major corporations and trade associations have been fighting that for decades. Absolute archivists or whatever you want to call them will back up whatever they find interesting, including furry smut. e621 plays nice these days and respects the rights of artists and character owners, but is still considered a villain by some of them.

While there is a so-called right to be forgotten in the EU and some other places that may apply to embarrassing information beyond criminal convictions and revenge porn, the Internet never forgets. Usually.

"Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it."
- Linus Torvalds

Yes. They don't owe anyone but commissioners anything. I can't agree with this archiving aspect people are talking about. It's not an artist's duty to be part of an archive. Especially when they join that archive merely by the act of maintaining an artistic presence on the internet in the first place. No one has any sort of inherent responsibility to others on the internet.

Of course, people are understandably disappointed and upset whenever an artist goes dark. That's something that should be considered too, especially if they utilize their work to earn money. While I think an artist should consider the feelings of their fans, ultimately they have the right to do whatever they want with their art. But I also think that's something which will always be true - no matter what reasons one might have for wanting to remove art, people won't like it. The best thing an artist can do is give some sort of warning and explain their reasoning.

popoto said:
Yes. They don't owe anyone but commissioners anything...

I would want to say that character owners also fall into this category too, but it will diverge from the philosophical discussion to a legal one.
In the absence of a signed agreement of copyrights, it will default to the artist in that they retain all rights to their works, be it commissioned or otherwise.
However, this changes if there was an signed agreement made between the two parties, based on the artist's terms of service at the time the piece was commissioned.

This may differ from artist to artist, but most artists will retain their full rights to publish, advertise, or even sell their commissioned works (in the form of prints or digital downloads).
The commissioner may have the right to publish "public" versions of the commissioned works to anywhere they like, provided that credits/watermark was not removed and that no alternations were made to the final product.
The character owner, most importantly, will retain their copyright of their own characters. The artist may not produce more artworks of the characters other than in the commissions. The character owner can sometimes retain the right to not be published or used in advertisements, but this will be superseded by the artist's publication rights if they have agreed on it before commissioning.

In a scenario where the artist has chosen to nuke all of their artworks off the Internet, the commissioner may still retain the right to post the public versions of their commissions to wherever they like as per the agreed upon terms of service. The artist may not alter their terms of service for the commissioner after the completion of their commission.
In a scenario where the character owner was not contacted for the use of their characters, the character owner's copyright supersedes both the artist and commissioner's rights to publish (e.g., Nintendo's copyright and trademark of their characters allow them to submit DMCA takedowns of fanarts, especially when they are being used commercially).
In contrast, if the artist has retained sole rights to the artwork as agreed upon by the commissioner and character owner, then they may not post it (publicly) again once it has been nuked.

In the end, all of this depends on what rights were agreed upon when the artwork was being commissioned (i.e., was there a "Transfer of Copyright Agreement" made).
I'm not sure how far e6 will chase when it comes to the commissioner's right to publish, say if the artist had transferred publication rights to the commissioner beforehand and then nuked everything, but I think it will still default back to the artist based on my experiences.

acidph said:
This isn't a legal question, I'm just interested in philosophical standpoints on this: do you think artists should be allowed to erase all traces of their own art from the internet?

As a throwback to OP's question, I would like to ask them this philosophical question: Does the commissioner have the right to publish their commissioned artworks if the artist had (a) transferred the right to publish to them, and (b) currently wishes to no longer have their artworks be publicly displayed?

thegreatwolfgang said:
The character owner, most importantly, will retain their copyright of their own characters.

Characters aren't copyrighted except in certain specific cases which companies like Nintendo know about and can afford whereas the majority of character owner can claim neither. However, the characters are still owned by the character owner, so your points are still valid.

(Note: not a copyright or trademark lawyer.)

any artist who feels like it can stop uploading their works and close down the accounts they used for it. getting everyone else to do the same is a little trickier. if you can convince everyone who has downloaded or hosted your works to delete them then, well, you've convinced them to do so. "allowed" doesn't really enter into it because you've convinced each party individually instead of asking for permission from some greater internet authority. practically speaking it doesn't strike me as easily acheivable, though.

thegreatwolfgang said:

As a throwback to OP's question, I would like to ask them this philosophical question: Does the commissioner have the right to publish their commissioned artworks if the artist had (a) transferred the right to publish to them, and (b) currently wishes to no longer have their artworks be publicly displayed?

I suppose you can find an answer to this in the phrasing of the question: the "rights" have been transferred and the artist "wishes", not demands or requires.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Does the commissioner have the right to publish their commissioned artworks if the artist had (a) transferred the right to publish to them, and (b) currently wishes to no longer have their artworks be publicly displayed?

In my personal opinion these questions are more clear cut than the original.

Regardless of legality, I would find it very difficult to be sympathetic to an artist's claim to privacy regarding a piece of art that they accepted payment for.

As others have pointed out, when a piece of artistic expression, be it a drawing, a book, a piece of music, or otherwise, is published and sold for money, most people would say that you implicitly give up the (both ethical and legal, depending on the terms of publication) right to erase that piece of work from public view.

Of course, a commissioner might choose not to publicly display that art out of respect for the artist's wishes, but I don't personally think they have any ethical obligation to do so.

As an artist...
Yes, we can do whatever we want with our own art, spaces and life. But also many of us are aware that once we uploaded something online, it will always exist somewhere in the internet :p.
Demanding someone (that doesn't owe you anything btw) to do what you want for the sake of your own pleasure is a very disgusting, entitled and selfish behavior.

The Algorithm must be fed.

clawstripe said:
Characters aren't copyrighted except in certain specific cases which companies like Nintendo know about and can afford whereas the majority of character owner can claim neither. However, the characters are still owned by the character owner, so your points are still valid.

(Note: not a copyright or trademark lawyer.)

Sorry, when I was writing my points, I was reading off more "professional" artists' Terms of Service page. The ones that would require you to sign a legally-biding Commission Agreement before being able to commission an artwork. As part of their copyright/trademarked characters clause, they mentioned that they "will not reproduce a Copyrighted or Trademarked image or character without expressed written permission of its Copyright or Trademark owner, and as it pertains to Australian Copyright Law." So my guess was either the client already has the relevant documents to prove their ownership/copyright of their characters or the country's copyright law automatically covers their rights.

But the point you brought up did have its merits, most of the community do not even have a registered copyright for their characters. It is mostly based on trust and the unwritten rule of "do not steal" that is keeping everything afloat. And when that rule is broken, it becomes more expensive to hire a lawyer than to register a copyright.

acidph said:
Regardless of legality, I would find it very difficult to be sympathetic to an artist's claim to privacy regarding a piece of art that they accepted payment for.

As others have pointed out, when a piece of artistic expression, be it a drawing, a book, a piece of music, or otherwise, is published and sold for money, most people would say that you implicitly give up the (both ethical and legal, depending on the terms of publication) right to erase that piece of work from public view.

Of course, a commissioner might choose not to publicly display that art out of respect for the artist's wishes, but I don't personally think they have any ethical obligation to do so.

But then the dilemma comes when you flip the story, what if the artist wants to publish and sell a bunch of merchandise based off a commissioned artwork of your character?
Say you had relinquished your right to not be published when commissioning from the artist (and signed a legally-binding contract), and now you no longer wish for your character to be used in that manner, do you still have control over your character then?

There is no legal requirement in any country that I know of to "register" a copyright. Copyright is a right automatically granted to you at the moment you create something. Which means that, yes, a fursona or other character is legally copyrighted by their owner and they have the right to compel an artist not to draw them, or not to publish images of them. Now in practice exercising that right can require paying lawyers if the artist chooses to make a big deal out of it, but that's not the same thing as not having the right at all.

I've never commissioned work myself, but it's my understanding that most furry artists do not transfer the copyright on their images to their customers. I'm not clear why not - certainly if I were to commission something I'd want to make sure I secured at least a perpetual publication licence to avoid precisely the scenario in this thread - but from what little I've gleaned from lurking on furry Twitter, artists are generally of one mind that they would mark up their prices by at least an order of magnitude if full rights were included. So in the vast majority of cases, the publication of commissioned artwork requires consent from both its artist and the owners of all the characters depicted in it. Occasionally one of them says no, which is how you end up with absurd scenarios like comics with 3 missing pages because one of the Patreon cameos has a chip on their shoulder about this site.

wat8548 said:
There is no legal requirement in any country that I know of to "register" a copyright. Copyright is a right automatically granted to you at the moment you create something. Which means that, yes, a fursona or other character is legally copyrighted by their owner and they have the right to compel an artist not to draw them, or not to publish images of them. Now in practice exercising that right can require paying lawyers if the artist chooses to make a big deal out of it, but that's not the same thing as not having the right at all.

In the US, at least, you do need to register a copyright before you can bring a claim against someone. And I believe it needs to be registered before the infringement for the claim to be valid. So while you do have a copyright automatically when creating something and can assert various rights, e.g. DMCA takedowns, to actually sue you need to register it and then you can only sue for infringements that happened after registration. Also, copyrighting a character requires said character to be quite particularly-defined, to a degree that I wager most fursonas don't meet. Copyright protects specific expressions of an idea, not the idea itself (patents protect novel/exceptional ideas, copyright protects specific creative expressions of an idea). Specific drawings of a character idea would be protected, as a drawing is typically a creative expression, but to have a government-granted monopoly on all independently-created expressions of the character idea requires a higher standard than just making/getting a drawing of your character that some people may recognize.

IANAL, of course, go ask one if you need a more accurate assessment, but that's my laymen understanding.

wat8548 said:
I've never commissioned work myself, but it's my understanding that most furry artists do not transfer the copyright on their images to their customers. I'm not clear why not - certainly if I were to commission something I'd want to make sure I secured at least a perpetual publication licence to avoid precisely the scenario in this thread - but from what little I've gleaned from lurking on furry Twitter, artists are generally of one mind that they would mark up their prices by at least an order of magnitude if full rights were included.

That's pretty standard across every industry. Doing work for someone else and giving them copyrights to it typically goes for much higher prices than simply doing the work and giving them a private copy, since the creator ends up with less afterward (they no longer have the copyright and are more limited with what they can do with their own creation). That's basically the kind of thing you do when working for a company; if you're a artist and are hired to create artwork for a game, you create the art and the company gets the rights to it to do with as they want. That kind of work is a lot more expensive than a private commission that an artist retains full rights to.

watsit said:
In the US, at least, you do need to register a copyright before you can bring a claim against someone.

This was the first I'd heard of that and apparently the US is unique in this regard. Wikipedia even claims this might put the US in breach of the Berne Convention, which specifically prohibits "formalities" being necessary to obtain protection.

In practice most such disputes would take the form of a DMCA takedown, but I would definitely want to talk to a lawyer before attempting to answer the question of whether or not an unregistered copyright for a US work is eligible to file a takedown or not. Of course, all of this is irrelevant for fursonas owned by people living outside the US, because Berne requires the US to honour their local copyright laws.

watsit said:
Also, copyrighting a character requires said character to be quite particularly-defined, to a degree that I wager most fursonas don't meet.

If this is a real requirement, then I wonder if some of the less imaginative Pokémon designs are legally copyrightable.

As someone who was born in raised in Germany, a nation with some of the strictest individual privacy laws in the world, even I am not exactly on board with the notion that an individual maintains complete control over their freely available and distributed public works. Paywalled content is another matter entirely, but not the point of contention, as most people understand that it is unethical to undermine the livelihood of others. Let me try to provide some examples of what I consider to be morally equivalent situations for free and public matters.

Example 1:
While sober, under no duress, and of legal age, you set up a kiosk in a public space where anyone can download a copy of your new mixtape to their devices. Hundreds of people use the structure you set up to download that material. Should you, as an individual or a business, then be able to threaten to sue anyone who hosts downloads of the material you yourself made freely available to the public? Even if you later decided to backtrack and paywall that release, I don't think many people would argue that suing the public at large here would be the ethical course of action. Likewise, I don't think you would call the public "entitled" for being upset about this decision after the fact.

Example 2:
Let's say you do something stupid in public that you regret and somebody films you doing it. Would you then be in the ethical right to threaten to sue them for recording your actions in a public space that you performed, again, while completely sober, of age, and under no duress? Once more, I think people would generally agree that you are responsible for your own actions when you're a grown adult in a clear state of mind, and the person who recorded you in this scenario should not be threatened or punished for it.

Transferring these examples to the narrower world of furry art, your free galleries are the equivalent to these physical public spaces. Anyone can gain access to them, and anyone can download from them. You are fully aware that downloads can and do occur. Are you in the ethical right to then sue people for hosting those files when full accreditation and sourcing is given? Like with the examples given, I think the answer is 'no'. You do have the legal right under the DMCA, but I don't think this is the ethical course of action, both from the perspective of your individual experience and the larger objective of archiving art. Even if that artwork is personally painful to you, such as depicting a character whose owner you had a bad breakup with (or political disagreements), I would personally consider myself a bit of a dick for then trying to remove it and go to the ends of the earth to punish anyone who doesn't.

Don't get me wrong: There are *absolutely* situations where you are in the clear to request or force artwork to be removed. If you were intoxicated, demonstrably mentally unwell, placed under pressure or abuse in a relationship, or not yet an adult (as well as other serious factors), you can and should try to use your legal means to take down material that was produced under those circumstances. These are serious cases of personal violation that validate pulling a 180 on public availability. However, these situations are relatively uncommon among takedowns. The majority of such requests boil down to "it's old, I don't like it" or similar, which I never feel are ethically justified for removing what you yourself added to the public domain (by force of threat).

That was a bit long-winded, but hopefully it sheds some light on the perspective of someone who doesn't always side with artists or commissioners on these issues.

acidph said:
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Your mention of historical preservation reminded me of another archival project that in some ways overlaps with this topic.

The Internet Archive project, the largest of its kind to my knowledge, aims to preserve as many websites as possible, with a stated philosophical position that the internet itself is a record of humanity's history.
The archive's existence seems to run into this same philosophical question, but regarding the internet as a whole, which is the tension between preserving history and respecting individual privacy.
Most people would oppose having all of their internet activity linked to them forever, but most people also support preserving history, which makes this a fairly nuanced topic.
In some ways, furry art itself is the history of the Furry community. When notable art is lost, some may argue that a piece of the community's history is lost as well.

I am avid supporter of archiving of all kinds. Without real discrimination and filtering. Opinions and laws change but history do not even if there are (and there are sadly) people that try to change it for their convenience. The more historical material and the more spread it is, the harder is altering it without leaving obvious traces.

@Songbird
Example 1, I agree.
Example 2, it depends. There is in my country and AFAIK whole Europe right to personal visage or reputation as it's called in english. You can be filmed and have no right to complain if you are part of big group and are in pic/video becasue place is crowded and it's impossible to take aformentioned pic/video without people. However if you are main focus of such thing then author has to need explicit permisiion or suffer legal consequences. Exception are public figures such as politicians etc.
People do stupid things. It's normal. They suffer consequences. It's normal. But in my opinion they shouldn't suffer consequences of action they performed when they were young and stupid when they are older and wiser, and maybe even respected among community. People change and learn. Mistakes are part of this process. They suffered from them after making them, making them suffer again years later even if they are completely different person by then becasue you don't like them is simply immoral.

Nevermind this. I didn't realize the topic was this old and what I said had been covered in much greater detail already.

acidph said:
This isn't a legal question, I'm just interested in philosophical standpoints on this: do you think artists should be allowed to erase all traces of their own art from the internet?

THis is a philosophical point of view:

Their right is doing anything that doesn't interfere with others.

But, frankly, if artist is wishing to disappear or be forgotten, they aren't one and never were.

swiftkill said:
But, frankly, if artist is wishing to disappear or be forgotten, they aren't one and never were.

Interesting point of view. So ones who want to dissapear are more akin to craftmen that simply want to get paid and don't care about recognition nor creating something unique, but something what sells and when it gets inconvenient or not profitable anymore they want to get rid of every trace of their connection with craft or particular branch of one.

arter said:
Interesting point of view. So ones who want to dissapear are more akin to craftmen that simply want to get paid and don't care about recognition nor creating something unique, but something what sells and when it gets inconvenient or not profitable anymore they want to get rid of every trace of their connection with craft or particular branch of one.

I think it's shortsighted, and strips out the human touch.

Some just can't handle the publicity or fame that comes with creating the work, or their beliefs could change as time passes that makes them feel the need to disassociate with old work. Be it religious, sociological, or political.

acidph said:
This isn't a legal question, I'm just interested in philosophical standpoints on this: do you think artists should be allowed to erase all traces of their own art from the internet?

It's a paradox. You might be able to scrub your work off the first few pages of google, but that'll never stop the work or the identity from being drug back up again given there's archives and backups somewhere in existence, or some long lost hard drive that wasn't properly wiped or disposed of.

arter said:
But in my opinion they shouldn't suffer consequences of action they performed when they were young and stupid when they are older and wiser, and maybe even respected among community. People change and learn. Mistakes are part of this process. They suffered from them after making them, making them suffer again years later even if they are completely different person by then becasue you don't like them is simply immoral.

Pretty much the cancel culture crowd of the fandom, doesn't take much to find incidents of that kind of behavior, be it about politics or anything else people find objectionable in their world view.

In my opinion, they should not. But copyright laws exist. I hope copyright gets abolished soon.

electricitywolf said:
In my opinion, they should not. But copyright laws exist. I hope copyright gets abolished soon.

Meanwhile I saw an incident recently of some artist on DeviantArt, who chose to take down their account there because their work was being turned into NFTs by scammers.

Imo, once you hit post, you've forfeited all control you have over it in order to share it as widely as possible. Any attempt to wrangle control back is just wishful thinking and an act of futility that, more often than not, just annoys everyone involved. These people need to learn to let it go once it's gone, and understand that they should really think about the stuff they're posting since once it's posted, it will be impossible to remove, no matter how many hoops they jump through. You can't get a cup of fresh water back from the ocean.

The ONLY control I believe they should have at that point is the ability to claim ownership. If someone else is claiming to own or of drawn something that you made, full power to you to go after them. But a site that just happens to get your art piece on it? Not your enemy. Someone using your art as reference and IS NOT CLAIMING TO OWN IT? Get over it, it happens to hundreds and thousands of artists and it's part of the deal of posting it online. You don't want to deal with the consequences? Don't post.

If you've drawn, written, or said something political or takes a stance on something, you can't erase that, the only thing you can do is show your new view and understand there will be people that will always refer to your older one. I've changed stances on things, I've said things I regret, I've worded some things poorly, but I understand they're there forever, all I can do now is shown I've changed and acknowledged my mistakes.

Tldr people need to stop trying to act like they can get around the consequences of posting things online.

No one has the right to disappear. You are stuck on this hell hole of a space rock whether you like it or not.