New "free art" website

[shirikdraguinea.livejournal.com]

IMPORTANT EDIT
Just had this comment via FA from one of my watchers:
Major alert - shortly after following that link, my google account has been hijacked and has been mass spammng. I have d/c'ed from the internet (using phone atm), and am virus scanning. Be VERY careful, or avoid altogether.
If anyone thinks they got something nasty I'm really sorry - try running HouseCall ( http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ ) - its an online based virus scanner so it can't be affected by anything on your system. I had no negative consequences from visiting this website but some others have - if you have been affected I am incredibly sorry :(


A friend of mine recently alerted me to yet another art theft rich art site - Never To Much Yiff. You can see it advertised at the owners FurAffinity page and he states:

"You can download and archive of 11,745 sorted by artist. I am not selling it is free to download so enjoy and please donate 2$ every 5$ goes to animal shelter of my choice"
(I took some liberty with this quote... the typos on the picture made me cry).

So in a nutshell, this person Techie9098 is putting up work by other artists without permission, and charging "donation" for them. I haven't checked the artists affected by this though as it requires downloading a torrent with all of these files.

Just a heads up for people.

EDIT:

His main page has been replaced by a Caramelldansen video but the download link remains and the torrent is still on pirate bay.

Comments

[lurkerwisp.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's pretty despicable to take something that the creator made freely viewable and charge money for it. That thinking actually is pretty awful of you.

That's taking all the free condiments and setting up a booth outside the restaurant to charge money for them. The restaurant has the right to stop you from selling them, and to call the cops to chase you off when you steal piles of them - even if you're just rearranging their display so the box is outside the restaurant. On top of being theft it's morally very wrong.

When I was a kid I visited Europe with my family. In a Belgian city we came across a statue of an angel with wings stretched out along the walls of the building it stood at the corner of. To this day it has inspired me to desire to create public art for the purpose of beautifying public space - not because someone charged admission to the street, but because the artist wanted to do nothing more than create a work of beauty for the public. Nobody has the right to take what the artist made public and earn individual profit from it.

Similarly, as an artist I have also been inspired to create art which is private and personal - or to create art for someone else with the same effect. Nobody has the right to invade my private expressions of emotion and creativity that are not shared publicly and gain profit from it.

Paid work is even more of a violation - as it really does steal income from the artist.

Public work, private work, and commission work all have their own compounding reasons for the rights of the creator to necessarily outweigh the benefit of works being distributed against the creator's will. That is looking at the situation as a whole, and there aren't other considerations to discuss.

[animehoneybee.livejournal.com]

Your example isn't exactly on point (for one thing, restaurants include charges for condiments and such in the amount they charge) because IP is not like tangible property. If IP is condiments, then its a magic bottle that can never be used up.

"Nobody has the right to take what the artist made public and earn individual profit from it." I think thats a nice story (I mean that honestly :) ) but there are a lot of instances where such things do happen, let's just consider the public domain. Even if the artist was totally against it, once they are gone and their work enters into the PD, then it can be turned into a profit. The thing I'm concerned about is that how long it takes something to enter the PD, as it is ever changing and pretty arbitrary. I bring this up because how can we say that something is legally (morally, maybe not so much, some people might still respect the artist's wishes) wrong during the 69th year after the artist's death, and then magically it's okay in the 70th? In commenting on this thread at all, I'm just trying to point out that its a complicated situation that is not black and white.

" Nobody has the right to invade my private expressions of emotion and creativity that are not shared publicly and gain profit from it." I agree, but putting things on the internet is considered publicizing it. SHOULD someone take it? no. but you don't have the legal right to stop any particular person from looking at it, right? Beyond looking, what they can do with your works is the subject of this debate.

"Paid work is even more of a violation - as it really does steal income from the artist." I agree. You say 'more' of a violation, meaning that if not for this factor, maybe the situation wouldn't be as bad...I don't think we actually disagree all that much on the issue as a whole. Perhaps I just went too broad with my arguments from the start.