So. Pawsru seems like an appropriate place to make a thread like this. The home of scum and villainy, of copyright fraud left, right, and centre, of rampant death of artist sales. ....Or is it? I don't really see paws as a bad place, to be honest. Sure, you're giving out paid artwork for free, and if I was artist, I'd have reason to be a little bit legitimately pissed. But why don't artists see paws as it is? It's free publicity. Seriously. People who have money don't want to give it to assholes. They will ignore your product based on your attitude in selling it, and base their desire to buy it on what you yourself do. Sexyfur is the only website I have EVER seen that was mildly effective in its ability to stop people posting their shit. With their retarded watermarks across all the images, they ensure that their paid artwork is released once a blue moon. But, the thing I want to bring into perspective, is the fact that, because of the steps they take to remove the ability of users to repost their artwork, I myself, like many other furries, lose the will to pay for their work. I say that sexyfur came close to being effective in their means because I did consider wasting my hard earned money on a subscription. Until I found out about the watermarks. Now, if Jeremy SueNow was less...cunted about the way he handles his 'business', then I would think to myself 'Oh gee, you know...I've seen these pictures. They are top quality shit. I think some of my money would be totally worth the ability to get the pictures fresh from the site as soon as they're available AND support the artists producing them'. But no. My thought pattern now goes like this; 'Hey, I can get the art for free. Just gotta wait a few weeks. I could support the artist, but fuck him. I'm not paying for watermarked bullshit'. The same goes for other artists. Highlighted recently with the guy who does the Dragon Heat comics (I don't even like the artwork, lol), who's chucking a major stink about his artwork being posted here, and discontinued his series because of it, apparently. Does this make anyone want to give him money? ...no. The general consensus is basically 'hey, fuck YOU, buddy!' because he's been such an absolutely autistic fuck about the situation. Thing is, if he handled it better and wasn't such an asshole about it, people might think 'you know, this artist is a swell guy. I'll buy his comic to help support him.' Why do so few people realise this? So far, I have purchased a few furry things; the two mainstanding ones are a subscription to the first round of Frisky Ferals, and one of Kadath's comics. Now, these are both things I could have gotten for free. Indeed, my copy of Kadath's comic showed up AFTER I saw the artwork already on here. I got a torrent of the entire first round of frisky ferals from here because I lost all the pictures due to a bloody HDD crash. Do I regret spending my money on FF and Kadath's comic? Most definitely not. And I would do it again, certainly. So, in closing; Does piracy = publicity for those artists who aren't autistic bastards about it? Discuss.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Tell us something we don't know. The watermarking scheme works as follows: people still pirate the pictures, but in fear of litigation they now have to blur them out, and that gives the real article a competitive edge over the bootleg copies. That's the theory. The real issue is, that all of the stuff you're talking about isn't actually worth the money. Especially the Dragon Heat shit is just that - pure shit - while SF is just cheap shit.
Actually, I find that content from SF is lower quality than the cleaned up content. Simply because of the watermarks. personally, if I got a subscription, I'd do the watermark removal to the pictures myself just to get them in a clean state, and then post them here to spite the website that did that bullshit.
>Does piracy = publicity for those artists who aren't autistic bastards about it? I would say so yes,but if the artists is an asshole people wont feel very much sympathy for them when their stuff gets riped.
TL;DR Most artists don't care about their work being posted, reason being? Well think about it, it gains them popularity, they get commissions, they make money. So either way, they make money.
Meanwhile EU signed ACTA: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/i_property/acta1201.html
http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?fp The petition against acta. EU parliament has to vote it yet...
