RANT

[melannen]

So I was reading a metafandom thread whining how EBUL it is to steal fanart to use in vids without asking permission first!

Part of the grand tradition of "It's all fair use! Unless it's what *I* produce, in which case it's STEELING!" I get *really* sick and tired of hearing that.

I do tend to give somewhat more leeway to fanartists¹ on that, because what they do, at least with books and live-action fandoms, can be more comprehensively transformative than fic tends to be, and also harder to control once it's out there. (And they tend to do more buying and selling, which has *always* puzzled me - as far as I know fanart is no more protected than fic, so why do we buy and sell it when that's anathema for fic? Especially the fanart that's basically direct copies of stills, whether traced or not, but that's a different rant.)

What really got me today is someone I generally respect posting with a comics icon and saying she didn't credit the artist for the icon - which was just a simple crop, no alteration - because that was canon, but it's still horribly bad to not credit all fanartists every time!

What?

I see this fairly often, and it *always* gets me, particularly when people post comics icon bases to share, and insist that *they* get credited for them, but often don't even bother to *name* the penciller or anybody else who worked on the original art. Because *clearly*, scanning and cropping is far more work than producing the art in the first place, and anyway indy comics artists make so much money and have so much name recognition already that they don't need to get paid in whuffie. Right?

(For the record, since JF doesn't have icon comments available yet and I'm too lazy to look up all the credits again anyway, the art in the default icons I've been using lately is by Robbie Rodriguez of Oni Press. And it's made of win. And when I finally get around to posing the iconset to share, I'm going to request that if people credit anyone, they credit the original artists.)

¹and by fanartists I here mean people who draw. People who do only manips are a whole nother kettle of black.

Comments

[kaesa [journalfen.net]]

Ugh. This is why, if I ever make icons of art, I tell people they don't need to credit me but they have to credit the artist. I'm always a little baffled when they want to credit me for some cropping, resizing, and a border. I've never made icons of fanart, but that's mostly because it never really occurs to me to do so.

(Also, I think JF does have icon comments, because I remember filling them in.)

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

Dude, agreed. ARRRRGGH. I just don't *get* that mindset.

*also has comments on JF icons*

[lindentreeisle [journalfen.net]]

I'm with you on the bullshit hypocrisy thing.

One thing I did want to mention though; I think the major part of the distinction that's made between using fanart and using canon/pro art from the actual show/comic/what have you is this: when you have work that's recognizably from the original copyrighted work, everyone involved knows that it's not YOUR work, you're just using it. But when you use fanart, there tends to be an inherent assumption (unless you say otherwise) that the fanart is your own. I think what bugs a lot of people is that if a person using the fanart doesn't credit it, the viewers of the new work are probably going to be confused as to its origin and think the fanart was done by the person presenting it as part of their new work. And that rankles; understandably, I think.

That said, I think it's still wrong to use the pro work without crediting. Because there's also the factor of, if you did the work you should get credit for it. But at least with using pro work there's not that implied ownership of the original work.