User:Angel Emfrbl/Fanart stealing

There was a time when fanart stealing went mostly unnoticed by me but due to a big event, I don't anymore Its all here.

What is Fanart stealing
'''Fan: Ah! Awesome! Thats a cool picture! I must download it!'''

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your monitor output screens, this in a nutshell the root of fanart stealing. Its no different from downloading soundtracks off the Internet and while its not copy righted its not any less shameful. There are many forms of FA stealing and many anti-FA stealing sites out there trying to discourage it. Its just most of the Internet doesn't think its a big deal.

My history with Fanart stealing
Going back to high school, I had work stolen by someone else, who paraded it as their own. Everyone knew it was mine, it was a drawing of a dragon, only I drew dragons like that. Busted art thieves, artwork retrieved - but ruined. The girls returned it but not in a state I could use it. I was angry... Annoyed and upset.

Okay back in the days of me being a Beyblade fan, I came across the dread "fanart darkness" which you can read on the article I've linked to at the top of my page. Basically, I felt a lot for these girls (they were mostly girls) and knew how they felt. I was one of those that joined in Beholder's parade to down fanart stealing, that is fanart used without permission. Beholder was even kind enough to get permission for one of our sites members, who avatar was stolen fanart. So what happened in those days of fanart darkness? Well, many stupid remarks were made to a decent man who didn't even have to speak to us, nor help us, nor attempt to supply us with info. From these comments I began to consider what I classify as types of stealing.

Fanart stealing Types
Okay the rough history out of the way, now for types.


 * 1) Search Stealing: You type in a word into Google, see something amazing and downloading it onto your computer for personnel use. Fair enough, its stealing, so long as you don't reupload it no one will ever know.
 * 2) Ownership Stealing: Basically you not only take, but then claim someone else's work as your own. Very, very, very wrong! You should NEVER claim this. I've seen this done so many times, and it was even within the Beyblade forums, I saw it in a Mortal Kombat forum too, where three artworks got supplied. You know, people may praise you, but they turn ugly when they find out you stole it. People want to see the real you at work, no matter how bad you are, not how good someone else is. Some forums will ban you for it.
 * 3) Borrow Stealing : A lot of people do this, they take #1 a step further by adding the artwork to their signature or avatar or website.
 * 4) Honour stealing: the most BS justification for stealing I've ever heard is "They should feel honored I am using their work". How do you know? Did you ask them? If you stole without permission then I know you can't have approached them. In the case of stealing, say Japanese artwork, my experience with Japanese fanartists is they only feel honored if you ask permission first.
 * 5) Bandwidth Stealing: Direct linking to a image, steals not only the artwork but bandwidth as well.
 * 6) Shared Stealing: Same as Honour stealing, but instead your reason is "everyone else does it".
 * 7) Edit stealing: You edit the image and resubmit it with edits. Its not the same image as before, yes, but the original artwork is still there and still under ownership. You've just decorated it up with a blond wig and pink bows.
 * 8) Babel Stealing: "The owner is Japanese and I'm English!". Still dam well ask permission! This is one of the sorry-assed oldest Anime/manga blame for stealing I've seen. Write them in English, they won't be able to read it but doesn't matter, even if their Japanese that might not be a problem. A lot of Japanese fanartists have someone close to them who can translate for them and some can do it themselves. Don't get me wrong, a lot of them won't be able to reply but don't presume Japanese = unable to understand, their human beings, many of them can get around the language problem. Bottom line, if you know the tongue they speak with, ask, if not ask in English.
 * 9) Blame Stealing: You blame the artist for uploading the image you've downloaded when all they wanted to do was show everyone else their skills.
 * 10) Uncredited Stealing: Basically stealing without even crediting the original artist, or directing others to admire his work. You've stolen the guys work, the least you can do is advertise his netspace as some sort of payback.

And the list goes on... A lot of these you can break without realising it.

The fan
Its the sin of every fan out there. Its ignorance mostly, many a time I've pointed it out I get back the words matching any one of the points in the types section. I've heard just about everything and for a change it'd be nice to hear an honest fan turn round and tell the truth - they don't care of the artist.

Lets take my Beyblade fan days as an example. Now there were sites being black listed by Japanese fans, for sites in all sorts of languages. What started it off was the posting on the Internet of a Japanese fanart's comic. Now... In Japan you can produce, and sell fan comics (taking into note copyright laws within reason). The uploader had purchased this comic off of the owner somehow and put it onto their site. Straight away, though its not a lot of money your taking away from the fanartist, why are they going to buy their fan comic to read when its up on the net for free?

After this fancomic got put on the net, the original artist was alerted to its existence. Naturally she was upset, this artist was a popular and renounced fanartist who just had her work stolen and up loaded by Western pigs and she was screaming murder. I know back then Japanese fans of Beyblade and English fans of Beyblade weren't talking anymore, the guy (known as Beholder to us) who opened up the English version of his site where this got brought up originally opened the site to close the gap between the fandom... But English fans are rude it seems, and seeing the fanart stealing nightmare in the Beyblade fandom was proving all this correct.

Many people supporting the stealing of fanart were any one of the types I listed above. Listening to them repeat the same remarks over and over again was both unbelievable to accept and Hell to withstand. at one point, because Beholder-Sama took sides with the Western side on something, someone assumed he was on our side. Wrong! Japanese man who loves Japanese fangirls = who do you think he was siding with from the start. They were using him to communicate with us their distress and he was watching our reactions to see who was the most respectable. I was amongst those honoured to win his respect because I stated to him I was against the whole fanart stealing because I knew ho it felt. About 8 of us won Beholder's respect in total, those who disappointed him were shamed and banned from his website and the rest of us got treated to goodies for supporting his bid against fanart stealing. I of course, due to connection problems (and a "no downloads" rule) never once was able to experience the goodies, I was honest about it, I even stated it was pointless for me to have access to it. I was still allowed in the are though, guess my honestly about it kept me in or something because I did asked to be taken off the list. O_O

Anyway, some success. The biggest forum with problems admitted defeat and lost all instances of fanart (yay!). The forum I was with got a lot of respect for being the first website to support Beholder's (he owned us anyway, though we ran ourselves). Downside, it was a killing blow for the fandom, this is not the way to let a website continue on in strength. A lot of fans got put off. Don't blame them, it was scary. A lot of fans were shunned, embarrassed and humiliated.

And for what? For the sake of a pretty picture. It's not even official artwork, its not done by the artist who did the series. It has no value outside of the artists own personnel value and a sign of achievement. Its style rarely matches the series style and is strictly speaking most of the time OC. In Japanese fanart you expect gay and porn comics at every corner, I never saw one kiss in Beyblade between characters, at least romantically which is a shame because we were all calling for it to happen. While most westerners accept it out of "trendiness", to the Japanese its not the same. Sex is treated differently across cultures, when was the last time you saw a "Used Women's Underwear" machine in the street in the west world? How often can you walk into a shop and find inflatable keyring boobs on the same counter as plush for "Hello Kitty"? At the end of the day, you can use official artwork for the same purposes as fanart, plus you're not upsetting the fanartist. Copyright laws had the rights to all images, but you can use them under "fair-use".

I.e: For example, in the UK you can photocopy up to 10% of a book without permission without breaking the law.

But is still amazes me to this day the whole ordeal over one fan comic carelessly being uploaded.

The Artist
So, lets say the artist does care shall we.

Why does an artist upload onto the net? Lets see, I'm doing the talking here from my point of view since I just started trying to produce computer abstract landscapes for selling and have uploaded fanartwork before in the past. I've been lucky to avoid a fanart steal in the past (yay for me!). But lets see, the reason why I upload is for criticism firstly, I want to improve in my case, but thats not going to be every fans reason, in fact few fans reason, for uploading artwork. The main reason is to show off. This was an artwork they did. I suppose they could tell their friends across the world they did a fantasic artwork but they've only got their word for it. From experience with at least Japanese fanartist, they are all currently trying their hardest to make stealing their artworks difficult. A lot of them can't write "Please don't steal" in English or the other 30+ languages and its not going to stop someone doing that. But when you see a site you can't right click on, its the first sign that this is a free art gallery and the artist wants to protect their work

So they put on the net the picture. They watermark it firstly, they can anti-right click it secondly. There are ways around both and a lot of people know this. The fanartists work though is at the mercy of stealers everywhere once it goes up. Its rare for a Japanese fanartist to steal artwork, but amongst the western world, I never understood why we do it a lot. I mean, I'd rather draw it myself, I'm quite able to.

So anyway after uploading to their horror the artist sees stolen artwork of theirs in someone's signature or avatar on a forum. They can PM the person using it who either doesn't reply or when does reply gives abuse. How does the artist feel? Gutted. They may turn to go as far as not putting more artwork up, which many artists did in the days of Beyblade fandoming. Congrats fellow Westerners - you killed the Japanese Beyblade fandom I hope your proud. According to Beholder many moved on to other manga and anime and gave up on Beyblade forever. So with the artist calling quits, that means the number of pretty pictures is now down by one less supplier, in the days of Beyblade that meant a lot of artwork wasn't happening. Its the easiest solution for any artist to do and resolve a problem, and the ignorants are the ones who don't realise their mistakes have cost a fandom dearly. Though ideal thoughts should be "Oh, the artist has asked me to take that down, I should do so" the truth hurts and ignorance/stupider is thick.

The Law
No biggy, copy right laws don't cover this...

...Or do they?

Okay little known fact, there is an anti-fanart stealing law in Japan, I won't list the details of it because I don't know them myself. In fact there is a very limited known international law that covers fanart in general under Copyleft law or some crap like that. So while you may be not breaking copy right laws, you are break copy left laws. For all those wondering what that means, copy left means you have the right to take the work and reproduce it AS YOUR OWN WORK, but not allow to recreate it as it was originally - there must be changes made. Shareware games for PC can be released under Copyleft. Its not used very often, because its very open to abuse, but generally everything used under "Free Use" or "Public Domain" is usually covered by Copy left. Whatever it is covered by, it there, its just most fanartists are average Joes like you and I - they couldn't afford to take it up further.

So this leaves fanartists work open to abuse.

I'm not a lawyer, I won't stand by any of my words on this section, all I can say is that I know an protection law exists for Japanese artwork and that there is a international law that covers it too. But I will remind everyone - when was the LAST time you heard it on the news someone taking another to court for stealing fanart? Your more likely to hear about the owners of the original material which the fanart is based on taking someone to court over copyright then a fanartist using one weak international law to get someone to take that cute piccy off their sig.

The fandom
I see sites toyed with ideas on fanart stealing. Some don't bother with it, others ban it and anyone linked to stealing. Some sites stress that when you show off your own artwork, its got to be your own artwork in the first place. Rare is it that sig and avatars with stolen fanart is banned which is still a big disappointment. Generally the biggest pleasure I get is when someone has been doing type #2 fanart stealing and seeing the reactions of others, especially after they've given the stealer praising remarks before they found out. If you say "Ouch" in five different languages then you know the reaction is bad.

I guess its the wests biggest redemption, we don't like fakers and we can kick them throw the door faster then he can open it. I've seen some barbaric reactions to fanart stealers, they were shocking but understandable.