I don't think the opinion that art is a common good like air or language is popular at all.
It is very popular, it's the most common argument used by people defending the use of any and all sort of art on the internet to generate datasets for IA. You can search more about it regarding the recent scandals of DeviantArt and Artstation allowing AI-generated art on their platforms.
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Plus, I don't come from a "tech people" background; I also produce and publish art. I just license it freely.
Sorry, my bad, but so do I. Which of these is your actual day job tho?
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The difference actually is not that artists are poor and programmers somehow get paid for writing free software. The difference is that programmers in free software attempt to solve a problem they face themselves and then publish a solution for everyone else to use out of the goodness of their own heart without any payment in return, simply for recognition, pride or solidarity. Art can be the same thing: creating art to enrich the world with, well, more art, for recognition or simply to try it out for fun.
You missed the fact that the only reason programmers are able to work on free software it's because they do have a job that actually pay the bills, try to do charity work when you don't know when the next paycheck is coming.
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Most of the time seeing "stolen" or uncredited art is not an act of choosing between buying it or pirating it, you would otherwise just not have bought or seen it at all. Barely anyone is willing to pay for art in the first place, and the people who are, are not going to be dissuaded by non-credited work here and there. No customer was lost; there just wouldn't have been a customer or consumer otherwise. Plenty of studies have been made about video game piracy as a tangent, where it does not hurt the sales at all but instead even might support it because people "try before they buy". And me using a little character gif for my website that someone else made is, honestly, not going to result in a lost sale for the character gif artist, if they even sell at all.
You are comparing common art made my regular artists to corporate-funded content, which is unfair. I am all for pirating things from big companies since they have their share of surplus value added to the product but the same cannot be said about indie games, for example.
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But the artists we are talking about are freelancers, who would they unionize against? ... and larger art sectors as in those with a steady salary are not the ones we are talking about either.
The reason they are freelancers is exactly because the industry refuses to see them as worthy of stable jobs. I recommend browsing communities where artists who live with an artists paycheck go and post about it to see the actual state of the industry. You seem extremely out of touch with what most artists think of the current conditions and please, I beg of you, I dislike twitter as much as the next person but the opinions here are from accredited industry workers who work on big things such as marvel movies and triple A games.
I just do not think that art is something that belongs to the artist. Art is a social phenomenon that exists in and permeates society as a construct of the whole community, not a singular person.
Why?
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Where is the difference in a neural network learning patterns from existing art in hours, and a person learning patterns from existing art over a lifetime? If you argue like that, then every living artist stole all of art history. Everyone who has ever used elves or orcs owes royalties to Tolkien, and likewise Tolkien owes to the canon of folklore and mystery throughout human history. Goethe did not own the character of Faustus, and the Divine Comedy could not have been written without the generations before.
Please read aforementioned links to understand better.
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I think art should not be a commodity, full stop. Art, like language, should float all around us, and an artist is one who adds to the common canon we all share.
What a noble cause, I think most artists prefer to be payed though.
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The bottom line is: making art should not be a "job", art should be a hobby, a pastime, a fundamental part of human existence. Art being a product for sale and lockdown is a distortion of what it should be.
You do realize that the only reason you can say art is not a job is because you, who also claims to be an artist, do have some other form of income in your life, right? A privilege.
You place art on a higher moral ground with no valid excuse to do so other than "its part of human nature", therefore judging and considering unworthy those who try to get payed by the effort they put into it simply because they do not meet your exoteric moral standards.
Programming is but a complex outcome of math and logic, when ancient sumerians made the first historical evidence of written maths they were simply writing out what nature made. Therefore I don't think programming should be a day-job since its a fundamental part of life.
Do you want me to send an email asking to join as per written on the rules or may I consider myself a member already? XD because I just added the webring to my link pages
I just feel like there are two schools of thought when it comes to the role of art in society.
Yours is a popular opinion, which I personally like to call the "programmer mindset", let me offer a counter argument and explain the problem with this.
Programmers and "tech people" come from a place of privilege but we just don't realize it.
Often programmers who enjoy open source and think code should be free and editable by all and wish to do the same with art forget that programmers enjoy one of the higher paychecks available while most artists struggle to make ends meet. Of course a programmer don't mind someone taking a piece of their code since they know they will have more job to do tomorrow but this is not true for artists. If you work as a tech person on a company you are used to having your code edited and mangled by others, its part of the business and the reason we work in teams but artists work mostly alone as freelancers.
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Picasso would not have been able to define a whole new school of art without all those who came before him and figuratively painted his way forward.
True, but when someone steals art from XYZ person it's not me, you, picasso, dali, davinci and all other artists who are harmed, it's XYZ alone. It's XYZ who lost one potencial costumer, its XYZ who spent hours studying and creating for it to be stolen in a second. Even a programmer who doesn't like sharing their code will probably not make a big fuss about being stolen because they know they will have another costumer tomorrow or so, which is not the case for artists and if you browse any art commission community you will see this.
The only reason we think its okay to take art and use it is because art as a corporate industry is weak and not unionized.
Here's a fun experiment: make a video using a very popular song, wait and see youtube remove it on a second. Now try and make a video with a popular piece of art, lets say RJ Palmer for example. Watch and see youtube do absolutely nothing about it. Why? Because music is a huge industry were millions and millions of dollars flow and they can and will sue you for copyright infringement while art is "just art", "just a silly picture someone drew out of love". Even funnier experiment: make a website to download free brand music and see what happens.
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On a small scale like this, "stealing art" is okay in my book: especially the GIFs and buttons and backgrounds and layouts and scripts that we all share and occasionally lift. The existence of the web revival does not threaten the livelihood of artists but instead perhaps even promotes it
This mindset enables big companies and people who can actually pay to do the same, using somebody else's art with the excuse of promotion is dangerous, its one of the most used excuses to get artists to work for free, because "you will get more free views".
I agree that using a silly picture in a personal retroweb website is pretty harmless but it sets a dangerous precedent, where do you draw the line? Artists are already exploited by so many, AI company admitted to using art without permission to train their datasets. There are plenty of cases where musicians and even video game companies did the same, and no we are not talking small indie people, we are talking big companies (but I don't think indies have an excuse as well).
Whats the difference between the "programmer mindset" argument and this?
On a perfect world everything would be free from the corporate hands but this is not our reality so when you use art disregarding the artist opinion you are helping put down an already pretty exploited portion of society. This may not be the intention but its harvesting the benefits of an exploitation created by the capitalistic society.
Edit: I also think it's pretty egoistic when an artist says "please dont use my art because it hurts my business" and the best argument people can come up to not follow this very simple instruction is basically " I don't think this hurts you enough " or " I don't think you are hurt at all. "
@TheFrugalGamer First and foremost I think it can be pretty rude of me to come here on this thread and tell you how to do stuff and flood you with unsolicited opinions so please forgive me if I sound condescending!
To justify myself, I personally don't like the idea of having to inject third-party javascript and css into a page to simply join a webring, it feels too dangerous for no reasonable motive, I am well aware this is how most webrings do it but I still don't think it justifies the risk.
Dollers these days don't have websites, sadly! Most of them are on deviantart and those who do have websites are using wordpress and other engines so having javascript or frames as a pre-requisite cuts out a huge chuck of people. It would be lovely if our peeps could all go back to having their own handmade site but before that can be a reality I feel like the entry bar for the webring should be as low as possible (not on quality, but on technical prerequisites).
I also realize my opinion is pretty biased because I am taking in consideration only the folks over at Pixel Lounge and not the other spare lost dollers out there but exactly because Pixel Lounge is the biggest active community right now it's a good place to start and proceed to fish the other lost dollers in the wild.
Those are my motives, they are all with the best of the intentions to unite the doll people but I realize it can also sound pretty condescending so feel free to ignore what I am writing here, no hard feelings
The problem webrings try to solve with javascript is that the last person who joins doesnt have anyone else to link to yet and members can go inative so in order to not have people having to update their links and codes everytime theres a change webrings centralize it on a js file which is a good solution but it can be simplified even more I think.
This way I proposed anyone can do it, even members with basic deviantart accounts since they are able to place links and images on their profiles. The member number is always increased +1 so the last member can simple link to member N+1, the webring admin simple has to map that link to the next new member when it arrives, before that webring.chosenfantasy.com/N+1 can simple link to member 1, closing the chain until the newest addition!
@Inkerlink I think it depends on where you are from, both are marketplaces so they should carry around the same itens. I personally use aliexpress because amazon likes to tax me for every piece of adessive tape they use and every inch of oxygen inside the box regardless of local laws while Ali doesn't do that. I also strongly dislike Bezos XD
I'm now deeply interested in this! Can anyone set me on a path of where to buy these? I'd assume most online retailers but if there is a specialized or better place I'd love to know!
Do you mean any in particular? I got mine from aliexpress, the square one is a chinese brand, I can give you the link for the one where you can change the pet language to english so you dont have any nasty surprises XD The watch is also from aliexpress, I know they have quite a spread of bootlegs but this one is legit
Ooh alright, I'll have to consider it! Was just curious if there were any others because I only watched the digimon anime and I feel like if I had the watch someone would find out im a fake fan xD
But!! The virtual pet IS the original source, the anime came after it so you will be a truest fan than somebody who just watched the anime xD By the way I dont believe in such a thing as 'fake fan'. Do you like it? Then you are a fan, end of discussion and just bite whoever says otherwise
There's also Tamagotchi Smarts but its japanese only
Oh yeeeeeeas! Writing reviews is one of my favorite things to do!
Yeah, the pet on yours looks like a QPet, but the icons look different than the one I have. Weird! I do love the square form factor--I'll have to pick one up and compare it to the two I have and maybe even write a review of that too!
Please do!
@dotmidi Don't let the exercise part disencourage you, there are plenty of ways to cheat since it's a toy first and a fitness gadget second, for example if it tells you to do 10 dashes/punches/etc you can simply shake your arm really strong, it will count the same! Heres a nice guide and a video if you want to know more ^^
I think my QPet is in English, but it doesn't have the ability to dress up the pets. I do have a Hatchihoni that's in Chinese and lets you dress up, but the pets are all zodiac characters. I actually really love both of them, and I've been thinking about getting a few others to see if the gameplay on them is all the same. It's kind of hard to tell them apart, since they're all unoffical!
Gigapets are super fun! They only have one pet on them, but they're very well done, both the vintage ones and the newer remakes they've been doing lately.
Ex-cu-se-me you actually went to all the trouble of translating and writing this guide!? I love it, I need to get one now T_T
Sadly I dont think mine is a Hatchioni, it looks like this but the gameplay sound like pretty much the same
I have another idea, I had it yesterday during insomnia so I didn’t have the time to test it out but let me know whatcha think.
This idea requires 0 javascript, 0 frames, 0 php. What if instead of using code to make the redirection to other members we used the host configuration? I am not sure if this is something all hosts allow people to do but its worth a shot.
Let's say you are member number 1, your site is Banana. Your assigned address at the webring would be https://pixelcuties.club/1 when someone tries to access pixelcuties.club/1 they would be redirected to banana
You would place a link to pixelcuties.club/2 regardless of who it is or if it already exists.
Later I join the webring, my assigned address is https://pixelcuties.club/2. My website is Melon when someone tries to access pixelcuties.club/2 they would be redirected to Melon
When members join or become inactive its as simple as changing the address being redirected in the host.
If I become inactive the admin can simply change pixelcuties.club/2 to redirect to Tofu, the site of the newest member.
This way even people with only deviantart accounts can join since they need to only place a common link in their journals.
Watcha think? I will have to try it out by myself.
You know, it's funny--I too associate this with the old web, but when you really think about it, these days if you're surfing without an adblocker this practice is alive and well with video ads! I cannot remember how many times I've gotten mad because some stupid advertisement started playing without permission on a news site I was reading.
You know! I haven’t really thought about it this way but it is a very valid point and I agree!
This is a thought exercise, nothing is entirely good or bad, on this thread lets take a moment to think about the things that were not so good in the old web so we can learn with them.
1 - Uncredited content everywhere I dont mean using images from actual big copyright holders like nintendo, animes, published comics or authors, etc, screw them, use their content as you please, I mean small creators like using fanart without giving credits to the artist or taking pixel creations that clearly were not meant to be used elsewhere. Of course we still have these problem today with the likes of pinterest but at least it is somehow credited (sometimes). Back then some images used to travel miles online to be edited in avatars, signatures, make into layouts and the original author didnt even know.
You are right! I checked the manual and it is indeed a QPet XD Is yours in chinese? I got another one that I think its a newer version because it has more features (e.g:you can dress your pet) but its only in chinese so I ended up getting the one in the picture that at least allows to change to english
I didn`t know about gigapet, I will have to check it out
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