Most likely to make you aware of it in case you don't want it posted to the wrong place or people trying to make money off of your hard work.

My work being used commercially is definitely a problem (people will probably MENTION that within the notes) but I'm talking more about them being posted in free galleries, like the Chans and various other archive-like websites.

It's how I found you, and you're on my watchlist because of it.

I think they're just trying to be helpful. But there's a big post discussion on Artists Beware right now that might be drawing more attention/awareness to the issue than normal.

Where's this discussion?

http://artists-beware.livejournal.com/512189.html

Specifically, a Tumblr blog has garnered a lot of attention because it has been reposting works (although credited). There's been 300+ comments since it was posted 2 days ago.

Because a lot of artists get butthurt when their art is posted in other galleries, so people tend to 'report' art being posted in other galleries to the artist.

Any idea exactly why that's a problem for them?

Nope. I never quite figured it out myself. Imageboards like Kemono and fchan have DNP (do not post) lists, and they're usually composed of big-name artists, so I guess people have become accustomed to reporting "big-name" artist images being posted on image boards.

The last time I've been to an imageboard and looked at the DNP list, it was mostly all the paysite artists up there. Which might be a correlation in that a lot of big names have done paysite work. :P

Not strange for paysite owners to feel bad about potentially losing paying customers, so that explains them. Still, the others..

They feel out of control of the distribution of their art.

That's a problem for them, when this is the Internet? ... It almost sounds cruel that one can feel bad about the inevitable.

Indeed. My personal problem with art I get commissioned is that nobody ever puts credits when it's reposted. I don't inherently mind people reposting it on the chans and such, I just mind when the artist and also the characters aren't credited, both because I want the artists to get their due for the work they've done for me, and so that characters are harder to steal. (It's just irks me on a very deep level when people impersonate others.)

I agree it's futile to stop all distribution, but the big places at least let me tag the artist and characters, which is what I usually just bother with.

Seems like e621 is where all my watchers come from, eh.
Ever since the first Renamon flash, the watch count exploded up by 2k, and I noticed someone's uploaded that on e621 really quickly.