Its OK to repost art: the case for art-reposting.

[garystu]

Reposting is platform-agnostic sharing. If you're ok with people smashing that Share/Reblog button, you must be OK with people reposting your art, because they are the same thing.

Share/Reblog buttons are a platform-approved systematization of a folk practice. If you only allow people to share your work through the systematized means, you're helping web silos maintain themselves. Gross. Don't do that.

Releasing art needs to mean letting it go to a certain extent. I'm sorry, but the "if you don't want it reposted, don't post it online in the first place" crowd are completely right.

Reposting is also preservation. In a brute-force way, like piracy. Genuinely, the more copies of a work exist, the more likely it is for One copy to survive into the future. Reposting is creating more copies. It's preservation.

Spoiler

You may have noticed an elephant in the room missing: Credit. I generally think crediting is good and you should do it. I also recognize bibliography is work, and don't begrudge people who don't.

BTW: people sign their work to remove the work of crediting for future reposters. Signing your work is so people can repost without needing to credit you - the credit is baked into the art!

Have you seen art like this?

Why do you sign your work if you don't allow reposting, and you put the big "donut repost" on the art as well! Whats the point, to add as many ugly watermarks as possible? Christ almighty. I block every artist who does this tedious shit, I fucking hate it.

[close]

[Dreamwings]

At it's basis it is the same, but I think the reason that most artists are against it is because when other people repost it, then the number doesn't go up on their end but will for the other person. If the account is big enough then the number will go up thrice as high as for the other person as it would for them and if the account didn't credit them they get none of said repost's power. For a lot of people who are or are trying to make social media/internet artist a job, the number going up for them and them alone means life or death.

I agree with your thoughts though. There are so many pictures from the 2000s that I only was able to find from reposts and imageboards like Derpibooru, Danbooru, Zerochan, etc (which btw, the imageboards I feel do image reposting the best as getting the highest quality copy, sorting everything, and making sure the source is found is priority). There was one piece from an artist I found from a WINAMP SKIN that I would not have seen otherwise as all of their stuff was exclusively posted to a niche art website in the 1990s that is completely unarchived by the Wayback Machine. Even though they put their real name on the art and was given a link, there is absolutely nothing of it left (or even any records of the person for that matter). The only work that survived was that Winamp skin and that was, even then, only by chance. That Winamp skin was made by someone who wasn't the artist (though they did ask for permission before making it according to them). Artists like Eric Schwartz had their work traded on floppies in the 90s and despite there having been hundreds of other artists at the time making furry animations for the Amiga, his are the only ones that survived into the future because they were shared around so much and because there were so many copies of it (that and he generally stuck around for a while in the 2000s and 2010s so if someone looked up the name they would be able to find him or something relating to him to go from there but still).

That being said, I don't know if it is necessarily a one-size-fits-all thing. Like I said at the beginning, people who make internet artist their job need the number on their stuff alone, hence why they enforce the art to not be reposted. For those, it surviving on would be less of a priority to the immediate income that would come from it. We could probably argue how valid that is and being a social media influencer is till the cows come home, but the point I am trying to get at is for some people, reposting would be detrimental not just to ego but to their livelyhoods. Regardless of thoughts on capitalism and defining yourself by the numbers big corpos enforce, it is something that affects people's income and I feel like those thoughts shouldn't entirely be discarded.

My personal stance for my own stuff is I don't mind too much so long as my signature/watermark isn't being cropped out or credit isn't being taken. Said watermark has my name, and I have so many accounts and have had them for long enough under the same name that people can find the source fairly easily I think. I'd probably be pretty pissed off if their number went higher than my number of course since I barely get anything when I post it, but I try not to care about all of that stuff and as long as it can be seen where it comes from, then people who do care and want to see more can go on a journey to find me from there. But I have DMCA struck people who try to take credit for my things in the past (have only had to do it twice but still).

[larvapuppy]

On some level I think artists know that what happens to their art after they post it online is out of their hands... I don't think that means we get to completely throw etiquette out of the window, though. In a perfect world we would all be respecting each other's boundaries and rights. The reason artists use "ugly" watermarks is because their art is clearly personal to them, it's something they deeply care about, and they want some level of control and consent to be involved if/when it's reproduced. Or at least some accountability/credit. Treating art like a commodity that only exists to be consumed by the masses erases the artist's intent.
I assumed that the general consensus was that people with manners will only repost art with permission from the artist, but maybe not? Are we really entitled to make infinite copies of someone's art and spread them wherever we want? Is being able to go back and view art we liked forever into the future(preservation) a good enough end to justify the means?
It is sad when art or graphics get lost, but we don't seem to be as concerned about losing the art of beginner artists or art that is considered less desirable. If preservation was really our concern we would be infinitely reposting all art. The real reason certain art gets stolen and reposted is because the reposters know that it will gain them internet attention (and sometimes even money, depending if the platform allows monetization).
That being said, I'm not completely against reposting art. Plenty of artists are fine with their art being reposted! I just think that we should think a bit more about the artists' wishes and intent for their pieces. Art that was clearly intended to be used as web graphics/decor, for example, seems more okay to repost/reuse on our own sites. Fanartists tend to find reposts more acceptable, oftentimes as long as they get credit. I think it's pretty sad when a piece of art is floating around with no more ties to its original creator.
Here is an art piece that I like & that I think is relevant to the topic of the commodification of art online.