Forum - View topicNEWS: Otakon Bans Sale of Fan Art in Dealers Room
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mdo7
 Posts: 8234 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm not a con attendee but, is this sale ban a big deal for any con attendees reading this article?
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gsilver
Posts: 766 |
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If I understand correctly, this just makes it more clearly defined whether it's official merch only (dealers room) or fan art (artist alley)
Unless there's something else going on, this is probably a good thing? |
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Mune
Posts: 416 |
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The selling of fan art vs official art is going to be tough. It means that all items must by either inspected before setting up in the dealer's room or will be inspected upon complaint. Good luck with this, as it means someone has to be designated either at the beginning of each day to do inspections or respond to inspections during the convention.
I'm guessing that this change is because someone bought something in the dealer's room, thinking it was official art and found out it wasn't. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8234 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I liked to mentioned A.I in here too because A.I generated art can resemble real artwork meaning they can looked like official artwork and we've seen accusation of artists using A.I in arts so I can see why the fan art vs official art can become blurred with A.I generated artwork. |
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mad_yeti
 SubscriberPosts: 27 Location: Seattle |
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This is already how it goes at a lot of big conventions, but how it's enforced varies a *lot*. I've sold at ones that don't enforce it at all until someone complains, but also one where staff came by to inspect products multiple times (and even asked us to remove trinkets we made with legally licensed fabric, just to be on the safe side
 ) Regardless, yeah, it's a huge job to enforce, and I don't envy being the staff assigned to deal with the vendors.
If a company that is precious about their IPs has a big presence there, that often influences these kind of policies. |
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mad_yeti
Subscriber Posts: 27 Location: Seattle |
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You also sometimes see businesses that try to skirt the line in the vendor hall by going 'we're not *selling* this fanart poster, but it's free with any purchase'...
And there's a ton of bootleg merch these days made with fanart someone scraped off of Pixiv (or made with AI now, yeah), slapped on mousepads and advertised as genuine. I often see vendors selling this stuff, knowingly or not. I'm sure this policy will stop a lot of the low-effort stuff, but probably not all of it, some people will get angry, and it will be messy. Probably not stuff the average attendee will notice, though. |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1728 |
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I wonder where the sale of doujinshi (imported from Japan, not an artist’s own work) fits into this scheme? Perhaps no dealers do that?
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2561 Location: Online Terminal |
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MelodyShaper
Posts: 25 |
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It's pointless to try to appease people who's been mindbroken by AI because they'll jump at shadows and accuse anything they don't like of it. Best to just ignore them. But this isn't even about AI. It's about fanart VS official merchandise. I'm not in the hobby of buying prints but yeah if it turns out a cel or poser I bought was fanmade and not official I'd be upset too (although I feel like it'd be easy to tell quality wise) |
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mdo7
Posts: 8234 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Yeah, I understand that. But my point is that A.I generated "fan" artwork that can look official can blur the line between official and fanart because generative A.I can make a fanart looked like official artwork. That's why I get concerned about A.I generative artwork being used to make a fan art looked too much like official artwork, and you throw in official artists probably using A.I or being accused of using A.I for their artwork, that can become not only confusing, but hard to distinguish official artwork and fanart if generative A.I are being used for any type of artwork. That's why I have concerned about A.I being used in both official and fan arts. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7394 |
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So for those who haven't been to Otakon, the past few years, there have been more and more artist alley style tables in the dealer's room and it was getting really noticeable. I've seen it in the past where there was maybe 1 or 2, but it was getting to be like, 5, then 10, then 20. Instead of letting them in the Dealer's Room (I'm presuming they did it cus they had the money to do it), they're just saying "go back to the artist alley".
So I'd call this a good thing, overall, from a user experience standpoint. Dealer's Room also has a section for other cons to have small booths and Autographs are in another area. There's also usually one foreign doujin booth that's typically in the Dealer's Room section. The discussion about AI bans is separate from this (though I'd expect the general rule to be a ban on it) |
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psipsy
Posts: 57 |
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Doujinshi is safe, as it's regularly sold as commercial goods in Japan and has been for decades. One can go into any of the doujin shops in person or online, and buy doujinshi like anything else. |
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