UPDATE June 25, 2018
Thanks for the positive feedback we received from fans about this issue. We wanted to add some extra details about what we’re doing to fix this issue with the anime fanart community.
- We have stopped sharing all fanart on social media, and deleted approximately 2500 tweets which made use of art without permission, though they contained source links.
- In the future, if we receive permission from artists to share their art on social media the source link will contain language like (Art via [URL], artist permission granted)
- We will continue to post art related to products that we sell (artbooks, doujinshi, manga), and from professional artists whose products we sell.
Our original apology post is below.
Hi, this is Peter Payne, the founder of J-List.
To all of our customers, staff, partners, friends, and critics; we would like to put on record that our position in relation to the current events on our social media, and the ensuing response and criticism. We have got this wrong and we are deeply sorry.
We have a large following on our social media pages due to the amount of support from our fans and customers, and we should be much more professional than we have been in the past.
One major issue that we’ve been committing is sharing fanart without the prior permission of the creators, and in some cases not sourcing correctly.
We’ve reflected on our actions and appreciate everyone’s feedback. Going forward, we will not share any fanart through our social media outlets unless we’ve been given permission beforehand by the creators.
From now on our social media will consist of products we sell, official art of anime series (Key Visuals, Posters from Magazines, etc), gifs, and memes.
We are truly sorry for disrespecting artists work, and their dedication/time. Also, we are sorry for the customers who have been supporting us and find our actions disrespectful.
We take full responsibility for our actions and hope to not disappoint you in the future.
We will now be doing everything we possibly can to prevent this from happening again.
Please accept our humble apologies.
Peter Payne
President/Owner of J-List
