Allow official_art to bypass banned_artist?

There's a number of artists who have asked to have their art taken down from Danbooru, but still produce official artwork for various products. As far as I know, official artwork is rarely, if ever, denied non-commercial redistribution.

Shouldn't there be a provision to allow users to see official art, even if the artist's banned?

The top example here is Parsley (paseri here in danbooru), who releases artwork for Girls Frontline and Kantai Collection yet explicitly promotional pictures are still blocked from viewed just from the transitive result of being properly artist-tagged.

Previous discussion topic #16213

Danbooru respects artists' requests for removal of their artwork, at least in theory. We'd be doing a pretty lousy job of honoring that assurance to artists if we made an exception for images belonging to another copyright holder.

iridescent_slime said:

Danbooru respects artists' requests for removal of their artwork, at least in theory. We'd be doing a pretty lousy job of honoring that assurance to artists if we made an exception for images belonging to another copyright holder.

Doesn't *COPY*right holder imply that only holder of this right have a say in what you can COPY (and put on danbooru)?

rowaasr13 said:

Doesn't *COPY*right holder imply that only holder of this right have a say in what you can COPY (and put on danbooru)?

Come back when you find a copyright holder who has specifically requested the art of an otherwise banned artist to be allowed to be hosted on Danbooru. Then (and only then) you'll have a point.

When an artist requests a takedown I have to assume it applies to all of their works. If anything, we need to be even more careful when an actual company is involved. There have been cases of sites getting into trouble over things like datamined official art being leaked early. We also have some artbook and calender scans by Paseri that are tagged official art but that definitely aren't freely available. Just because something is official doesn't necessarily mean the company won't care.

I'd might as well step in to give my say on this matter:

I'm actually in favor of the tag override since this would allow those artists (like myself) making fanarts of existing copyrights to have an easier time getting their reference material, especially if it's high resolution. To take the existing issue with Parsley as an example, the artist's done full-body character designs across GFL and KC and with those not available here due to the artist tag (which, unfortunately, brings the "banned artist" tag with it), we've had to seek other sources that would generally turn up lower-resolution versions of said chara designs.

While I understand that DB has nominal and theoretical obligation to abide to an artist if he/she doesn't want their works here, works done under an official commission/request/agreement would might as well be granted exemption also for the sake of other artists who make fanart.

It might also be stemming from a dissatisfaction with the whole ban system per se, to which I've sent an email to the site admin expressing such, among others. But I must digress, this paradox of official art and the status of one who made it being "banned"/hidden on the site to avoid legal issues is one many of us as fanartists have to confront.

I want to bring this up again as an URGENT matter, especially regarding Parsley F's involvement with hololive. Case in point, post #4939364 and post #4939388.
This is the first-ever illustration of HoloJP's newest generation (HoloX) and it got hidden because of Parsley F's contribution (Sakamata Chloe, bottom left), resulting in collateral damage to the other members illustrated as there is no visible original character design to work with.

I propose, at this time, to make amendments to the current banned artist system to allow official works by these banned artists on a case-to-case basis. This had been tackled before (in April 2020) but concerns regarding official art were raised by the site admin himself and the matter since set aside. While we understand Evazion's sentiments that there is danger in allowing official art to be hosted on the site, especially if they're gated content, a case-to-case basis of judging such official art with the active participation of the builders and admins in sorting them out, gives assurance that we will still not infringe on the original copyrights.

To rebuke Iridescent Slime and SkylightCrystal, we will not be doing a lousy job of keeping our word on these artists if they were just asked to produce art for another party that has the better call. In addition, corporations who hold such copyrights will only act on an aggressor party if they:
a. find out about it themselves, or
b. find it out from the artists in question, who may not have the final say in any case.

And another thing to consider is Evazion's statements that a takedown should be blanket to all works under the artist. We have examples (like Noukatu) where they are only given a partial ban for certain reasons. I move to let official art be a reason for exemption based on KyteM's original stated reason.
They will still be banned as per the status quo, but the banned artist tag should only be retained for their other works not recognized by the staff as official art that has been approved for public viewing.
All in all, the system needs a revision because the "it applies to all because we say so and we think so" is not appropriate for the current situation.

If anyone else in Danbooru objects for any reason, discourse here and/or in Discord is welcome. But consider this: would you continue making artists suffer by forcing them to seek out other avenues to grab the official art to obtain references needed to make fanart, where they may be of low quality? At least here, we can provide the full highres content to capture the small details and being of service to concerned and aspiring artists while still honoring our assurances to the affected artists who may complain using DeepL.

Thank you.

As far as I understand it, all artists that are partially banned are because the artist themself requested for those specific works to be banned, not because the site decided to ban some things but not others.

If I am wrong about this then please correct me.

skylightcrystal said:

As far as I understand it, all artists that are partially banned are because the artist themself requested for those specific works to be banned, not because the site decided to ban some things but not others.

If I am wrong about this then please correct me.

You are correct. I think there's a disconnect between the name "banned" and what it actually is.

In this case, it was apparently a mistag, so the post will be unbanned regardless.

That said, I disagree with the proposal, primarily on the grounds that it's rarely so difficult to access official art that danbooru is the only option. Those posts came from the official Hololive Twitter account, and our version is identical to the version found at the source, for obvious reasons. The majority of the time, anything qualifying as official art is available on twitter or pixiv, and anyone interested in viewing them likely knows how to find them if they aren't on danbooru. I'm not sure why the argument operates on the assumption that you wouldn't usually be able to find official art from official sources, at the same quality as you would on danbooru. It isn't like we somehow enhance the things we host.

That post wasn't even drawn by any of those artists, and the actual official models will be available later if they aren't already, and where danbooru is concerned, only Sakamoto Chloe will suffer from belong to a banned artist. She'll still most likely be available on Twitter and/or pixiv, and shouldn't be that hard to find.

We're really not here to help artists, it's purely circumstantial that they occasionally benefit from anything we do. Also, if you wanna view banned artists, consider contributing to the site and buying Gold, they can do that iirc.

Bringing this up after the whole shitstorm we suffered that led us to change how artist bans work.
If an artwork is clearly official art, it means technically and legally, your say in such matters of distribution as the artist who made such art is second to that of the original copyright holder that you've been commissioned/hired to work such a contribution. We've already seen one too many cases of official character works/game CGs/illustrations/etc. being shadow-realm'd because of the old ban system still in force alongside the DMCA-based system that it replaced.

To those who can't be bothered to scroll up, here's what I said:

...allow official works by these banned artists on a case-to-case basis. This had been tackled before (in April 2020) but concerns regarding official art were raised by the site admin himself and the matter since set aside. While we understand Evazion's sentiments that there is danger in allowing official art to be hosted on the site, especially if they're gated content, a case-to-case basis of judging such official art with the active participation of the builders and admins in sorting them out, gives assurance that we will still not infringe on the original copyrights.

We will not be doing a lousy job of keeping our word on these artists if they were just asked to produce art for another party that has the better call. In addition, corpos who hold such copyrights will only act on an aggressor party if they:

• find out about it themselves, or
• find it out from the artists in question, who may not have the final say in any case.

The admins have suggested something that would solve this grandfather clause mess, yet no one ever wants to do it because they're afraid that we'd be in the spotlight again. Afraid to take the risk when I'm only asking for some minor stuff that won't piss off a lot of artists who are invested to such commissions. The admins can do QOL updates to the site but won't even touch this shit.

I'm proposing something like what evazion once suggested when the shitstorm happened:

• Allow such official works on a case-to-case basis but to be on the safe side, only those from wikis and official SNS announcements like Twitter would be accepted. Works from personal accounts or scans would be excluded.

If you want to see how it might work, look at Yasuyuki. They sent a DMCA that removed most of their works but was sane and considerate enough to keep (at least some of) their official art intact. Be glad that we moved to a DMCA system because it gives artists better control at which works they can allow on archives like this, not like the old ban system where it affects all works regardless if it's official art or not.

I am so sick and tired of the BS called "keeping the old system when there's a new DMCA system in place" that's gimping us in archiving official art. If anyone wants to argue with me to hell about potentially angering artists further when they don't even have final say in official art, I'm all ears. If you still want to raise "ethical concerns" or the fear card, I'm all ears.