As some of you may have read in my last post I am currently working with a team to launch an NFT art market on Hive where artists can tokenize and sell limited editions of their artwork. I have been part of the cryptoart community since about 2018 which at the moment is largely based on Ethereum. There has been a huge explosion in the collecting of these artworks and I and many others have been asking, why not do this on Hive?
That dream is finally coming to fruition and I will tell you all about it in a future post because today I am here to express my concerns about our expectations in the art community.
I am hoping to onboard many new artists with this service, all those people will be getting a hive account, and some of them may be tempted to blog, YAY!
But... I have some concerns.
As you already know @hivewatchers takes reports for a wide range of abuse on the hive blockchain, such as comment farming, spamming, identity theft, copy/paste, plagiarism, etc. and they have done a lot of good work. We do have a lot of abuse since this is a monetized platform, it comes with the territory and I applaud them for taking care of this the best they can.
I understand that fighting abuse is thankless and difficult and not the funnest job. Even with the best of intentions abusers slip through and sometimes non-abusers can get caught in a wide net.
My concerns
The art world is full of debates, what is good art and what is shitty? What methods are considered skilled and what methods are considered cheating. How do we find the line of fair use of iconic images in personal art that we create, what is considered tasteful vs. pornographic.
All of these questions on the face of them have clear answers at ends of the spectrum but also clearly have a lot of grey area in the middle. It is difficult to know where to draw the line.
My worries about this have been happening for a long time but what prompted me to write this was an artist who flagged and banned by @hivewatchers yesterday for not citing a source they used. The comment looks like this:
it does indeed appear that the artist used a reference but IMO they created a new work by transforming the original art. Also to be noted the image was from Pexels which does not require attribution.
DO I THINK ARTISTS SHOULD CITE REFERNCES?
YES. And I will continue making posts and reminding people that this is considered best practice.
However I do not think the terms, plagiarism, copy/paste, fraud etc. are applicable in this case.
In another post the user was accused of using an auto art generating app when that does not appear to be correct either.
I see in the comments that they appear to have been unbanned which is great, because multiple people kicked up a fuss about it, but I do believe there is a big disconnect in what we perceive to be the correct methods of creating and presenting art on HIVE vs. the rest of the broader art community.
Allow me to give you a few examples:
Rembrant and many renaissance painters used camera obscuras to project scenes onto a canvas so they would have accurate proportions to begin their painting.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/did-rembrandt-have-help-180959809/
OMG Rembrant was a tracer!
Would Rembrant be downvoted on Hive? 😂
Oh no, Vermeer too? FAINTS
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/johannes-vermeer-traced-masterpieces-1047359
Pinhole cameras, camera obscura ,projections are essentially old school versions of tracing, but they created beautiful art that people enjoyed!
COLLAGE
Collage is an extremely popular medium these days, especially in a digital age where we have access to so many images! There are thousands of pieces of digital art trading on https://superrare.co/, https://knownorigin.io/gallery, https://makersplace.com/discover/ and other popular art markets that use unsourced images!
They didn't even draw this they just cut and pasted images in a pleasing manner!
NO SOURCES CITED, and these are selling for a lot of money!
Based on an MMA fight scene:
Reddit logo!
Oh no a baby yoda with no source!
None of these have a link to a source that was used as inspiration. Again, I'm not saying in a blog you shouldn't cite sources, but in the rest of the art world this isn't really a norm!
Pop art is a great example of this:
Famous artist Ron English does recreations of famous people and iconic characters. He does them with his own style and flair but I can guarantee you he looks at the originals as references.
Would Andy Warhol be downvoted for not citing the Marilyn Monroe pics he used to create his iconic prints?
I think you get my point here, art has many elements and methods and there is no one correct way to do art, sometimes it involves references, inspirations, remixing, fair use of images etc.
So what would I like @hivewatchers to do?
There is no clear answer here but I would implore them to look outside of Hive and see what is happening in the broader art community. Hive has quite a small user base, we struggle to onboard and retain users! I don't want actual thieves to get away with anything, stealing art and being deceptive is not cool!!!!
I do however think we have had the same criteria for calling artists plagiarist for many years and maybe that criteria needs to be re-evaluated as it is far too narrow. If any of the above artists came here and posted their amazing art and got called a FRAUD I assure you they would leave and consider the art community here to be a joke and I wouldn't blame them!
I've been here for three years and I care deeply about this community, now that we have actual communities* I finally see a golden opportunity to onboard users like never before and I am afraid that could be jeopardized by over-zealous flagging and black listing, it really only takes one accusation to hurt someones reputation.
/end rant
To follow on twitter, personal account, Alien Community account <3
First of all, this is not a rant. I find this post valuable and timely. In a way this give many of us, who are not artists, clarity on what is acceptable to the community in general and what is perhaps frowned upon.
I consider myself a consumer of art. I am attached to the local fine arts museum, and I buy paintings frequently. I will have no problem paying $500 for the Broken Native piece... if my wall scenario is acceptable. What I am trying to communicate is as a consumer of art, I get to decide what I buy. Similarly I get to decide what I vote on the platform. That part is simple.
Where it gets complicated is because of a HW blacklist or ban, when a true artist gets discouraged by the manual curators from getting curated. For a lot of people, that is not only a hit at their true "reputation" (not talking about the strange number next to your name), but also at their earning, due to the monetary nature of this platform. I think anyone can make a mistake. An artist can make a mistake, similarly HW can make a mistake. As long as we are being adults and willing to correct our mistakes I think we can make a difference together.
Well I guess it felt like a rant while I was writing it lol! Thanks for taking the time to read, hopefully it can spark some reflection, I think sometimes we can stuck in a rut or routine and it may take a little kick to re-evaluate things and decide how to best move forward :)
(Thanks azircon for your comment).
Referring to your post. I would like to know which artist was yesterday falsely accused as you avoided giving any details of it so we could all see and check up validity of your claim ourselves.
Also, just because there is pervading deception, dishonesty, content theft and plagiarism being spread around all social media making stealing or plagiarizing someone's art, photography or writing becoming a norm, it does not mean that it should be allowed on Hive.
No one pays you on other social media/blogging platforms for publishing content. Sot hey all steal and plagiarise.
Once there is any possibility of earning added to any of these social media/bogging sites out there, they introduce strict rules about use of someone else's content and have repercussions for not following these rules (banning, stopping earnings, removing the content, etc).
Hive is not Facebook or Reddit. We get paid a buck here to post honest and original work.
Also, just because image is from Pexels it does not give a right to someone to use deception directed at the community making their post look like they are author of that photography (by avoiding giving a source of photo) or making post look like they are complete author of the artwork making it look like they have completely drawn it from scratch (while they actually used the photo which they traced so most of work was already done for them).
So if I take your photo or drawing from your Facebook/website (even some that you forfeited your rights or sold to Pexels or Shutterstock), put it in App to use as under layer and then use this app to trace all the lines over and add new colors, then I will be all fine to publish it on Hive without any mention of the source. Making my "art" and post look like am the whole creator of this craft without use of any help?
I cannot draw or paint at all. I am completely useless when it comes to such artistic skills. I tried that app once though. You just put random photo there and used few tools that 8 years old can master. I traced the lines of the photo, added some colors and auto generated patters. And the final piece looked like really nice legit piece of digital art. It took about 15 mins to create. App did most of the work for me.
Some of the things you're saying here are why there are problems I think.
Even if someone traces a photo "most" of the work is not done for them. Tracing is only helping you place the elements, and as Julia points out in her post, plenty of master painters and contemporary illustrators trace. I guarantee that if I give someone Photoshop or Sketchbook or some similar application and they have no artistic ability, if all they use it to do is trace, they will not be able to create anything that looks good.
Artificial Intelligence apps are a different story. You can import a photo, do a single click and get something that looks really nice.
This is just not really how art works. Nobody sits in front of a blank canvas and just pours out a ton of information from nowhere. It's all built on something else, reference, research, inspiration, etc. So this way of looking at it is flawed from the jump.
I think we need some clear definitions and standards and those need to be created by people that have experience in a particular area. Artists for art, writers for writing, etc. I'd be happy to work with you guys and the rest of the community to standardize something so that we can all work together better.
I don't want to take on the burden of doing all the moderation by myself. Especially as my Community starts getting into the thousands of active users, but I also want to minimize false positives, and weed out all the misinformed ideas.
Interesting thing about the AI art is there are 1 click apps but also I have met a lot of people recently who are programming their own algos and textures to apply to images which is a lot of work, trial and error. Even with a trained eye it would be hard to know which is which sometimes. (although artists who are integrating that kind of tech are usually very upfront and proud about their methods). We are at an interesting intersection of art and tech!
Even the one click ones can be used in creative and interesting ways. I don't have anything against the tech. I think it's really cool and interesting, but there's a spectrum of uses. For every person using them in interesting and cool ways, I think there's probably 10 who care nothing about making art or something creative. They just see an easy way to get some rewards which they then will rinse and repeat constantly. It's why I think something like that should be judged by the Community they post in.
I didn't mention the user because he was unbanned and I didn't feel like he needed more negativity or scrutiny on his posts. I replied to the hive watchers account with a link to this post in his comments section so whoever I was discussing his case with can find it that way.
This post is not about that specific incident. It is my thoughts in general about how we can improve the experience on hive for artists and hopefully retain more of them. It was meant to illustrate that while we indeed have abuse it is a lot more nuanced and I think there are grey areas where users need not be banned outright and called frauds.
This is a piece of art at my local school. I took it with my phone right now during my evening walk. If I post it as a blog post I will make $20 on it. If I self vote I will make $30. Questions is do I do it? Am I adding value to the chain?
Point is I choose not to post it for rewards. Some others might.
As Albus Dumbledore said; it’s your choices that makes you who you are.
This is pretty much my view. As the Admin of a pretty big community, I do definitely need help with moderation. So as long as we're all working together and being grown ups I think we'll be stronger together.
I just can't wait for this excellent. I hope the Hivewatchers issue can be sorted out. I think the art community and the selling of artwork NFT's a gamechanger for Hive. Keep hammering away!
Thanks QUA I think it's going to be awesome! I am bursting at the seams to promote it but it's not quite ready yet lol! Soooooooon!
I agree. I plan on buying some for my new place 😀
I'll help you promote it when it comes out! looking forward to it!
I listened to your NFT showroom talk with @aggroed about your art token project. Looking forward to seeing how the market reacts to new ideas like tokenizing art.
I have only spoken about it in private but I do have some ideas concerning this.
I think we need to adopt a model similar to the US govt where we have "Federal Laws" or Rules enforced throughout Hive, ie things that we *ALL agree shouldn't be allowed. example would be unambiguous plagiarism, ie, someone takes my actual painting and posts it and says they painted it. I think we all would agree that's not okay.
Then I think we should have "State Laws" or Community rules, which are things that are allowed in particular Communities.
I think this has the best chance of defeating true abuse while not stiffing the growth of Hive, and creating a poor user experience and leaving the judgment on what is and isn't abuse in the hands of the people most knowledgeable about a particular subject ie the Community owner/Admin.
This has been pretty much the unofficial way I've been working with the different abuse fighting peeps.
Taking it a step further though, I think those "Federal Laws" need clear definitions and need stake weighted voting to come to a consensus on what we all want enforced at that level. I think this would be a good use of the proposal system to organize and figure this out.
At the end of the day HW is a tool to help and improve Hive, they should be working to support Hive, Communities and users on the blockchain. While I've definitely had moments of butting heads w people, I've also gotten a lot of help in shaping my community into what I want it to be.
I think we can all work together and that we have the tools to organize this in a way that makes sense where we can all win.
I find the art "plagiarism" an issue in the same way Julia does. If I paint it, it is mine, regardless of what my inspiration is. I don't even think references to the original work are needed (but might be included), as my painting is an original in and of itself - despite the inspiration. If I paint a near-exact copy and try to sell it as someone else's, it is a forgery.
For digital art where it is a simple pre-coded filter applied to a photo - fuck that, burn it.
The communities set up for art can police with whatever rules they choose. But I do not think "Federal laws" should be imposed on art, unless it is actual plagiarism, as it is with written text. You can't plagiarize a painting in the same way as text - you can forge it. In the digital space, forgery is a little ridiculous as it is a right-click, copy image and repost scenario - so it would have to be representing oneself as another - which is ID theft, something that is punishable at the "federal level".
Using a photo as the basis of a drawing or painting isn't plagiarism, it is a completely different medium for starters. Using another's painting as a basis isn't forgery unless one represents themselves as the original artist. Art is a personal expression and interpretation based on the skill and mind of the artist, some are more skilled than others, some are worse thinkers.
Ultimately, as long as the work is self-made, it is up to the "buyer" to decide if they will purchase. If you consider that a lot of the art on the platform is coming from non-professionals, I feel that punishing them for not behaving like they are world-renowned artists paid to be originals, is likely doing more damage than good.
People happily buy and hang prints of Da Vinci, Monet and Gaugin on their walls, and a poster printing company makes profit from the images of masters.
The real question should go to the artists themselves:
If you are copying the work of another, are you an artist?
Art isn't in the mechanical skills, it is in the ideas behind the work. Copying the ideas of another isn't artistic, any robot can do it.
Couldn't have said it any better. Thank you.
Yeah I think community level policing is a good way to move forward. If someone wants to create a post a pic of your lunch community I may not upvote those posts personally but if someone else sees it as valuable and wants to upvote it they can, that's what stake here is all about.
I guess the simplest thing that we all ask for in art posts is honesty so we can know what we are voting for with confidence. This is meant to be a social community and sometimes people want to just have fun and I think we lose sight of that sometimes.
i agree with you. Art has special considerations, and so a group of moderators who deal with art should be the ones making decisions.
As far as I am concerned? @hivewatchers can kiss my ass. Promoted them early on the HIVE blockchain and once again they abuse their position. Fuck @hivewatchers. Not personal to the members, but @hivewatchers is full of shit along with @flagrewards.
If I used an app to redraw a piece of art work, is that plagarism? And what about lifting an image off internet, editing it or adding effects to it? Where do we draw the line?
Art is such a specialised area, perhaps there should be a separate team to review art plagarism, either within Hivewatchers or independently managed by the art community?
Those are all great questions and exactly the kind of gray areas that are harder to evaluate. How much transformation is required to consider something a new piece of work? Digital art has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities which include some very crazy cool original works and other lesser transformed things that some would consider lazy/not art. Lots of food for thought!
And Hive is so unique because you can monetize your work, but your rewards doesn't come out from a particular person's pocket but literally from everybody else's. That's why the requirements needs to be more stringent. If the art community believes there are ambiguous areas , then imagine how difficult it is for HW to manage it.
I guess until there is a solution either they err on the side of caution or let the abusers run wild on hive .
Yes unbanned, hw has unvote two posts and keeps the other downvotes, i don't care about that as long as that may change their criteria and the mess they have about "Plagirism" definition, and also the discrepancy they have about the meaning of ART. Guilty yesterday said professional artists told us that to fight everyone that use some inspirations or not using classical methods, these "Pro artists" were someday Noob artists or maybe still noobs but acting like pro and nobody's perfect in this world maybe you see yourself a pro artist and others see that you are nothing each one has his own perspective. The whole problem is the pre judgment that may kill the artist passion and let him/her just leaving the chain, hw before banning should have a converstion with the accused first than if he/she give no proof than you can go ahead and downvote and without using selfvote because it is a "Discrepancy" to fight abuse by abusing.
This is exciting about the NFTs. I've minted a few in ethereum, but it's clunky and presently, it's expensive. Please keep us informed on progress.
Yeah the expense and time to push transactions through can be really frustrating, especially when you need to pay gas again and again to set a price, change a price, cancel etc.! I will make a post all about it as soon as the site is ready to go :)
Maybe hivewatchers should run it by art experts like you here first?? Love this post. Reblogged. I appreciate Hive Watchers but sometimes they miss mark and I have seen a few users disappear because of being flagged unjustly.
In another comment midlet mentioned now that we have communities we can help enforce that on a more targeted level, some communities may be okay with certain content while others are not. I think this can be a good starting point.
Everything you just said, YES.
The NFT has me interested. I don't fully understand it yet, but I am interested. I am also largely in agreement with your thoughts on content police.
I wonder what HW would think of Duchamp's ready mades? There is art that specifically defies common sense definitions of art.
Derivative works is always a grey area - normally the deriver owns rights in their derivation but not in the original. Courts make this a subjective test. Music largely sorted this with a system of license fees for samples. I've yet to see something similar for visual arts though the stock image sites are trying.
Sorry for wall of text. I think where that leads is that art, and it's value, is hard. Best leave it to the community (and mods) to police but give them a hotline for calling in help when there are bad cases.
I'm sure the urinal would be a big hit on trending 😂 I actually think NFTs could be a great way to secure rights and this is one thing we have added to the art tokenizing process, the ability to declare the work for private or commercial use! For sure the moderation moving towards being community based seems to be a popular opinion and exactly the reason communities are made, so we can curate our own experience.
If you need some BEE, I can sponsor some. Like your work as always
Not sure what we will need quite yet but there will probably be some fun promotional opportunities to look for :)
I am SO GLAD you wrote this! I think all the hivewatchers activity that is involved in the art communities should go through an established art curator such as you or a group before they auto post such accusations, and put these creative artists on any blacklist. It needs to be done in a much better way. Maybe we can form some group to help out with this? What is your suggestion?
Did you post this link in the Hivewatchers discord channel?
I didn't but one of their moderators/helpers has responded here and has been involved in the discussion in the OCD server so I think they will see it
Great post for sure.
I had to help a friend I've known for years, and someone who is the co-founder of an EOS project get off a blacklist. It was unbelievable.
Good thing you bring this up now, because the last thing we need is for new artists and the NFT project artists to get scared off. We probably need to create a sub-group in Alien Art Hive to deal with disputes and artists who get wrongly accused. It wouldn't be a bad idea to make a new channel for this, and then work directly with hive watchers too.
So far I have only muted two people, one who spammed some Korean drama movies, and another who was using a photo filter and saying it was a drawing. As more people get onboarded it could become a problem!
Me enamoré de la claridad y la forma que le das a tus palabras para hacer entender tu punto de vista... Gracias por mostrarte claramente detalle a detalle... Soy músico y siento este post como una aclaratoria para todas las artes que conjugan en hive...
What does that even mean?
It seems potentially extremely broad.
I believe the definition they are using for this is when someone applies a filter to a photo and tries to pass it off as a drawing/painting etc. which sadly does occur and is sometimes really obvious but not always!
Excellent -- I think you are spot on here ... Hive does have these moments of thoughtless blacklisting and such, and every one of them is dangerous for mass adoption. Art is a particularly tricky area, of course, tricky because of course we want people to not plagiarize but also people are making decisions who are not familiar with collage and other collaborative forms of art. People need to understand the chilling effect that acting without understanding can have on this platform we are trying to grow here... but it does take times and "rants" like this are necessary to push that!
On another topic, I look forward to hearing about the NFT project ... I have been looking at Mintbase and some other spots, but I will wait to see what you come up with!
Another area I have of concern with @hivewatchers is their policing of recycled content. Fundamentally I understand where they’re coming from, but on any other social media platform I see professional artists regularly circling back and posting old works from their catalog that they might have already shared a couple years ago. I have zero problem with it there, and thus don’t considerate it wrong on Hive either. I think Hive works best when people use it like any other site or social media and let the rewards take care of themselves. I think it’s very clear when repeated spamming of the same content is egregious, versus normal social media marketing strategies of frequent posting, and re exposing popular work, and previous content that may be newly relevant or timely.
After talking with them, since this is something I promote in OCA, the compromise was to not make the post a direct copy paste of the previous post. It can contain the same images, just make a new post. I think they use automation to find these things, so it just makes everyone's lives easier.
I personally think reposting is okay if the rewards are declined. I would love to see works that have been posted before but haven't gotten any attention, or to show to new followers. But reposting can be considered as an abuse once the content gets rewards again and again - which encourages others to do so - thus, lowering the overall quality of the platform.
Interesting to see where this goes; perhaps the community could provide a an author whitelist to @hivewatchers for posts inside that community?
As a photographer, I've never been a fan of artists taking photographers work and calling it their own. It should be like music, where both artists get credit and split the copyright/royalties. Maybe the blockchain could help with that?
But you aren't giving many answers, only asking more questions? At least Hivewatchers make a decision and then act!! The reward pool belongs to the community and decisions on its distribution must be made by the community.
So let's see where your argument against the current Hivewatcher definition abuse ends? Do we apply similar rules to literary work too? Writing is still an art? Photography? What constitutes art?
I think you need to site down with curators to give the rest of us unartistic mortals some guidance on what is art and what isn't? Please draw up your own list of guidelines for Hivewatchers and the rest of us to peruse!
I'd love a team of art curators following guidelines because in all honesty, what's going to happen unless the criteria are quite strict, is that a load of people are simply be going to be spamming the chain with absolute, 10 seconds to produce, shit.
Art is passion, spam is greed. Let's not confuse the two!
Best wishes with the NFTs, another great idea and use case to help creatives follow their dream :-)
But you aren't giving many answers, only asking more questions? At least Hivewatchers make a decision and then act!!
This post was meant to provoke some reflection on the subject and not give answers. There has been fantastic engagement and some ideas proposed so I think it's been productive.
The reward pool belongs to the community and decisions on its distribution must be made by the community.
This is part of the point, if the community deems something to be worthy of upvotes or downvotes then the chain is working as intended. Hivewatchers is a small group that has decided on their own criteria of what to enforce and act upon, does hivewatchers speak for the entire community? Not always as you can see there are lost of varied opinions in the comments here.
I think you need to site down with curators to give the rest of us unartistic mortals some guidance on what is art and what isn't? Please draw up your own list of guidelines for Hivewatchers and the rest of us to peruse!
LOL CALM DOWN
I'd love a team of art curators following guidelines because in all honesty, what's going to happen unless the criteria are quite strict, is that a load of people are simply be going to be spamming the chain with absolute, 10 seconds to produce, shit.
This chain is chock full of low effort shit but depending on who posts it they often get away with it, the enforcement is very selective.
What is the downvote on my post for?
Reward disagreement.
Okay, fair enough. Just thought I'd ask.
I saw the other day that someone did cide a Yoda source on Hive and they seem to have gotten flagged for that D: This is really worrying, and I already got 1 flag for accidentally posting my post twice- when I had lag before, I changed community and clicked post, so it actually posted twice. Now I'm careful about that, but reference sources, who doesn't use reference....
Also I'm excited for Hive NFT, it seems I wasn't accepted on knownorigin and makersplace and maybe it's for the better :D
Good luck with the project, looking forward to reading more about it ^^
I would suggest applying again with new art, makersplace is pretty slow, I applied to knownorigin and didn't hear anything back then applied again before I was accepted, they are all pretty inundated with applications and usually only accept a limited number of artists in each round :)
Oo that makes sense. Idk if I should if there is going to be Hive NFT :D I don't have much work I can sell exclusively. I read in the rules you can't earn/sell the same art anywhere else, but people still seem to post it on Hive (or cropped versions?).
It's perfectly fine to promote your own artwork on social media / blogs as long as you don't tokenize it anywhere else!
Ahh, that makes more sense, and sounds a lot better :)
So many good points here! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I think artworks have to be treated differently, with similar guidelines as the main cryptoart marketplaces. This requires an effort in curation/moderation, which can be financed through a commission on the sales. I am afraid there is not an easier solution.
Yeah. In the world of an artist, there is nothing worse than being called a plagiarist.
Downvoting is killing the future of any social media tool in my opinion. Sure when money making is involved we can expect fakes or copies just like in real life (ebay/alibaba). I would try to investigate the artist and this would influence the price I am willing to pay. No need for big brothers using downvotes. Better would be that "reputation" like on Ebay would be used but that too can be faked in this techno world …...
Well this is a funny point. You bring up Rembrandt...and the suggestion that he had help. (No proof.) Yet still he painted with his own hand and there is not another like it out there that isn’t a cheap copy. He didn’t use an app with the same filters and tools everyone else has. He didn’t make a slightly altered copy of someone else’s work. I’ve seen some of the pictures that have come through and without a doubt it is just a copy of someone else’s work, with one or two minor alterations made. There is nothing original about it. None of this is at all like making memes.
How would you feel if someone took one of your self portraits and altered your face with an app a little and submitted it in an attempt to sell your face and to see your face profit anyone but yourself? Would you feel a little violated that a stranger sold you?
The person who was banned that got me thinking of this topic was in the end accused of tracing to make the base of his painting, there is actually a lot of evidence that many famous painters used this technique! A lot of artists do this when first learning too as it can help you to learn how to draw certain shapes and features more accurately. I don't mind if people do this, what I am asking for is transparency about the process, then people can decide if they would like to support it or not with their stake.
A few people have made fan art of me and posted it on hive and got plenty of upvotes. Good etiquette would be to ask first always, thats what I would do, and most respectable artists do as well, but I also respect freedom of expression and don't really think that deserves being put on a global blacklist when people can just choose not to vote for it?
So what you’re saying is if I stencil something you’ve produced and sold on your website that I’m just creating fan art as long as I say “i stenciled this other persons photo.”
That’s good to know. If I said I am going to do this with all the contest winner’s photos, I am sure I would get a HUGE number of large downvotes. Right? Or is everyone in agreement they Hive-Watchers is wrong and I can do whatever I want with your photos??
Any individual person can do what they choose with their stake, most art posts that look low quality usually make very little payout, thats allowing the stake to decide. It doesn't always work but it's generally a good system. We need to keep a lid on people who are blatantly passing stuff off as their own when it isn't and thats where Hivewatchers can shine and use their delegated stake to make a big statement.
Some artists enjoy collaboration, it's the lack of honesty and not asking permission thats the biggest problem. it's about being respectful of each other in a community.
Please make some iterations of my art. Be honest about what it is in the title/post and dm it to me, I will upvote, I'm excited to see what you make!
As tempting as that sounds...I am not the kind of person who does that.
I see the correlation as this:
A document written by someone else + a few minor changes = plagiarism
A photo created by someone else + a few minor changes= photo plagiarism
If there is no golden standard then the whole system collapses and the reward pool in Hive will be raped just as the reward pool in steemit was.
A lot of people seem to be missing the point that the main issue here is transparency. Most of these methods would be fine if people were transparent about the methods/process. Then people could feel confident in supporting content they think should be rewarded or choose to ignore it if it doesn't meet their standards.
I don’t think I’ll ever be fine with it. If someone stole my heavily coded love letters and got some cooch and $5 payout I would want my cut because it isn’t their idea, work or content that they are reaping benefits from. They would get paid and laid on my words, my thoughts and my work.
Theft is theft.
I’ll tell you a story that shows what I mean.
TRUE STORY:
This is exactly why I stopped holding contests. Where I was giving out money and repurposing my payouts right back to the next contest, to help people out during the second month of quarantine, we had Hive community leaders straight up stealing everything but my name and running an identical contest (right down to the payouts) concurrently with mine in an effort to steer away contestants so that the plagiarist could profit from it. (Ironically the leaders of “Original Content Decentralized” did this)
It doesn’t matter that they made a few minor changes or “stenciled” it after mine. What mattered was that they stole everything, slapped a new paint job on it and attempted to get paid off my work.
They didn’t credit me, they didn’t offer to send the rewards to null, and they didn’t acknowledge me when I jumped in their chat to point out that they interfered with a work of charity to profit from it. And it wouldn’t have mattered if they did any of that because that doesn’t change the INTENT of their actions. Their intent is to take someone else’s work, maybe scribble on it a little and pass it off as their own in an effort to profit.
The situation with the photos is no different.
Removing a watermark, stenciling over the area and adding some hair to the eyes is not original. It is concealing the theft of someone else’s work.
I don’t know how much clearer I can be about why this is still plagiarism.
It just shows the absurdity of copyrighting a tiny segment of the endless road that is the human mind. It all builds on each other, that is all human beings ever do. Drawing a line in the sand is arbitrary and at the end of the day obsolete.
For the one plagiarist who outright copies another one's art and wrongfully claims credit for it a hundred genuine artists and inventors are being stopped in their tracks for evolving what came before them. We are so mixed up that we confuse the two all the time.
Great post!!
Fuck @hivewatchers
That account is run by scammers!
Thanks for making this post it's very good to a post like this because the way hivewatcher and hivewatchers treat people it's really bad
I've been blacklisted for over two months now for a small mistake I made with my other account kggymlife and in turn they Blacklisted this account for no reason
I've took all steps to get off the (fake) Blacklist but now I'm just being blanked while still receiving downvotes on my original content and also hivewatcher spams the same comment over and over all day long the funny thing is they ment to be fighting against spam
Not spamming them selves I really hope that something gets done about this and if anyone reading this can help me get off the blacklist I've been wrongly put for two months now i would really appreciate your help
Flagged for supporting plagiarism.
Flagged for having an overly round head!
😂
Flagged for being a clown
#clownlivesmatter
Flagged for cultural appropriation
Flagged for being to blame.
yeah, flagged for being a clown!
#clownlivesmatter