And I didn't draw it, but somebody other than the artist posted it here, would I be able to request it to be taken down? I mean, it just sounds like it'd be fair, considering that I'm the legal owner of the character. Especially if it was posted without my consent.

And on a related note, what if the artist posted it, but it was a drawing of one of my characters, and I wanted it taken down? Would I just be up shit creek without a paddle? There's just something not right about that.

This is all completely hypothetical, by the way. I just want to know the boundaries.

Please see the takedown information page.

Please note: We will honor art removal requests ONLY from the legal copyright holder of the art.

The copyright holder of the art is the artist, unless specific arrangements have been made. You could ask the artist nicely to put in a takedown request for you.

You can also request that the artist give you full rights to the picture when you purchase it (though the most will charge extra for it). To my knowledge, you'll need it in physical writing for it to be legally recognized.

If you owned the character to the point that it is provably copyrightable, then yes. you can take it down.

Thanks for the info, all. This is good stuff to know.

It's really difficult, if not impossible, to strike a good balance between "too easy to have art removed" and "too hard to have art removed".

Back when I first started administrating e621, I was hoping to take the easy and clean-cut approach of "if you're not the artist or the copyright holder, you can't request a submission's removal, period". Over the months since then though, I've softened up and have started allowing removals based on character ownership. Not "I paid for this picture", but "my character is in this picture".

I intend to rewrite the takedown policy to be more clear about this shift in attitude. Basically, I don't feel I'm doing the site's reputation any good if I make artists happy by taking down their art when they ask, but telling character owners that they can't make the same requests and have to go through artists instead. That annoys both them and the artists, which is the opposite of what I want.

On the other hand, getting to the point where artwork is removed so readily all the time also means e621's users start looking towards other sites to find what they want. So, I either upset artists and character owners, or I upset the users that make e621 the great site that it is.

For me, this isn't a question of "what can e621 legally get away with". Obviously, we could get away with quite a lot if we chose to, since only the most determined furries would actually bother filing any sort of lawsuit against us. But personally, I'd prefer to not end up with a pretty terrible reputation like the previous e621 administration did before they quit. And I'd rather the site not end up with such a bad reputation too.

There's no perfect answer to this. But, as things stand, if you are a character owner and request the removal of an image that contains your character (that isn't protected by Fair Use), then we'll honor it.

Sorry to say, Char, but- Lame.

123easy said:
Char, that was awesome and you deserve cookies.

I assume exceptions will be made if the art was uploaded with the artist's permission?

Shatari said:
I assume exceptions will be made if the art was uploaded with the artist's permission?

You mean the character owner's permission?

And, an exception to the image being deletable, or...?

Percy101 said:
You mean the character owner's permission?

I believe he means "what if the art was uploaded with the artist's permission, but not the character owner's?".

Which is an interesting question. Here's a question I'd like to ask:
Is this administration planning on going with a blanket "if any of the owners of any of the characters in the image wants it gone, it goes"? If not, what can counter a character owner's request to have an image removed? If an owner of another character in the image wants it on e6? If the artist wants it on e6? If the commissioner wants it on e6, and one of the other character owners wants it gone?

Snowy said:
I believe he means "what if the art was uploaded with the artist's permission, but not the character owner's?".

Yeah, pretty much. It would be really annoying to have to hunt down any and all people involved in a commission whenever I upload one of my sister's pictures, especially since the main reason she asked me to upload here was so that her art would get more circulation.

Snowy said:
I believe he means "what if the art was uploaded with the artist's permission, but not the character owner's?".

Which is an interesting question. Here's a question I'd like to ask:
Is this administration planning on going with a blanket "if any of the owners of any of the characters in the image wants it gone, it goes"? If not, what can counter a character owner's request to have an image removed? If an owner of another character in the image wants it on e6? If the artist wants it on e6? If the commissioner wants it on e6, and one of the other character owners wants it gone?

I am pretty sure I will always default to what the artist wants over what the character owner wants. That may not be how it actually works in the world of copyright, but the artist is the one that put all that work into actually creating the image; therefore, if they object to taking it down, it will remain up.

Again, lame. What if the artist sold the copyright to the owner? Stick to the tried and true rules, Char. They may have a few people who get their panties in a twist, but it is the proper way to go. Nothing will please everyone 9as you know all too well) but kowtowing to everyone won't do anything but make people treat you like their bitch. :\

Percy: Fuck off with that stupid "editted your post in a quote to support my POV" shit. It was enver funny when it first started with the "fix'd" comments, it's not funny now.

123easy said:
Again, lame. What if the artist sold the copyright to the owner? Stick to the tried and true rules, Char. They may have a few people who get their panties in a twist, but it is the proper way to go. Nothing will please everyone 9as you know all too well) but kowtowing to everyone won't do anything but make people treat you like their bitch. :\

If the artist sold the copyright of the artwork to the character owner, then I imagine this would be brought to my attention by either the artist or the character owner at some point.

I think removing artwork at a character owner's request is probably going to lead to FEWER takedowns, or at least smaller ones. If we tell a character owner "Nope sorry only the artist can request removal of the artwork", then they're going to go bitch about us to the artist instead. This creates a situation where the artist may very well turn around and tell us "I don't want to have to deal with my commissioners having to ask me to ask you guys to remove art all the time, so go ahead and remove all of my art now and put me on the DNP list". Or maybe they'd want all their art removed because they don't agree with our policy of not honoring character owner's takedown requests.

And I'm pretty sure there's not very many artists out there that would actually refuse to send us a takedown request if one of their commissioners was asking them to. Therefore, I see forcing the character owners to ask the artists to submit a takedown as being a completely pointless step that only agitates both the character owner AND the artist.

123easy said:
Percy: Fuck off with that stupid "editted your post in a quote to support my POV" shit. It was enver funny when it first started with the "fix'd" comments, it's not funny now.

Yeesh. Some people have no sense of humor.

Anyway Char, that just generally sounds really good to me. It's a nice middle ground. Not everybody will be pleased, but it's a much easier process and many more people(I'm sure) will like this policy than the previous one.

I still strongly stand by this point. Screw the character owner, and keep it as it is now. Thats the way US law works, and I see absolutely NO reason to change it.

Percy101 said:
Yeesh. Some people have no sense of humor.

Anyway Char, that just generally sounds really good to me. It's a nice middle ground. Not everybody will be pleased, but it's a much easier process and many more people(I'm sure) will like this policy than the previous one.

Also, yeah, don't do that fixed shit. Its against the rules.

Princess_Celestia said:
Also, yeah, don't do that fixed shit. Its against the rules.

It's not against the rules, but you still shouldn't do it.

Riversyde said:
It's not against the rules, but you still shouldn't do it.

Wasn't that like, DJ's thing?

ippiki_ookami said:
Wasn't that like, DJ's thing?

Doesn't matter if it was or wasn't, it's still puerile and annoying as shit.

ExplosiveBlaziken said:
Doesn't matter if it was or wasn't, it's still puerile and annoying as shit.

I totally did not have to Google puerile.

ippiki_ookami said:
Wasn't that like, DJ's thing?

It was. It wasn't removed because deadjackal left, it was removed cause we didn't think we needed it anymore.