The communities that make up Tumblr are built by artists, writers, GIF artists, shitposters, illustrators, and other creators sharing their talents with the world. It’s a place where the world’s creators can put their best work in front of an incredible audience. The tools that we built are built for creators and artists to do just that. Over the years we’ve watched countless careers born here, books launched, talents discovered. Tumblr connects people to their audiences and allows them to pursue their work in a greater capacity. We want that to be achievable for everyone on our platform.
Post+ is a move toward this goal—making sure creators who dedicate their time and effort to producing content have the choice to be paid for some of what they do, if they decide it makes sense for them.
Right now, we’ve got our beta testers and a world of feedback to incorporate, which is exactly how things get made and get better.
We do, however, want to address the main concerns we are hearing:
Fanfiction & Copyright Infringement
Basically, the process works the same as it always has. And yes, the following information is coming to you straight from a lawyer:
We fully support Creators sharing their fanfiction and fanart on Tumblr. We encourage sharing creative work of all kinds on the platform.
Fanfiction and fanart are frequently considered fair use and we support our Creators’ fair use rights. Monetizing fan work does not necessarily mean that it isn’t fair use.
Any content posted on Tumblr, both free and monetized, should follow our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines, which prohibits infringing the intellectual property rights of others. Whether a piece of fanfiction meets the requirements for fair use varies depending on the work. Intellectual property rights holders are in the best position to decide if they think a fanfiction or fan art violates their rights. If they do, they can use the normal Tumblr DMCA process to identify content for removal. Creators can also take advantage of the normal counter-notification process if they believe the content was misidentified as infringing.
Using the block feature and Post+
Post+ creators will be able to block subscribers in the final Post+ product launching later this fall, and resulting from our beta feedback. At the moment, testers of the Post+ beta will need help from Tumblr Support in order to block a blog that has become a paying supporter.
We will continue to answer questions over the next few weeks over on @postplus
As always, our priority is the people who make up this weird blue universe, and we’ll keep working to make sure we’re serving you as well as we can.
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