I do believe it is time to go ahead and try to move my art account off to another place after the wonderful, somewhat ill-informed, and quite unexpected changes happening to FA. I've zapped a bit of my gallery already, and will be slowly removing the rest of it as time goes on. I will of course leave some stuff up because well, this is still FA.

There are many large warning signs going on, and I think a lot of it has to do with the way this most recent news came about. As much as must residents here will say, Dragoneer has been keeping the site going through a combination of luck, skill, determination, and support from the community. There's been a lot of questionable issues that have come up, but by and far this has been a community site for the furry community, by the furry community. It is due to that very fact that fundraisers were made and people had no trouble chipping in when needed - even if they were vocal about having to do so.

Part of the fundraisers is of course, to be part of Furaffinity. Part of the greater community and really even be part of the site. That sadly, has just been sold off. Call it what you want, but all the time and investment from donators, volunteers, moderators, staff, and especially artists has been used for a gain to a singular entity. This is after that same entity promised more transparency and ended up with $8k in donations still unaccounted for and a sudden surprise of the site was sold 2 months ago. Admittedly, the site itself is a work of love and volunteer work! Servers are expensive, rack space and bandwidth is expensive, coders are expensive, and really there isn't all that much extra income coming from the running of the site. Now however, the illusion of being community owned has been quite well shattered.

Love it or leave it, the TOS does contain "boilerplate" in it that allows the site to store, transmit, and display your artwork. The issue I have is that it includes "indefinitely" and all kinds of words meaning they can do what they want with the source once uploaded.. While the site was essentially run by the community, it was pretty much OK, but that has changed. The site is owned by a for-profit company that can use those very same boilerplate terms to monetize artwork posted to the site without having to negotiate with the artist. That isn't to say that they will, but they can do so without any further notice. Unless there is a part in the TOS (and if there is tell me!) that includes the severance of those provided rights upon removal of the artwork, I would not count this as a safe place to put up art you want to retain control over.

I am somewhat disheartened that Furaffinity has reached the point of selling out in order to cover it's bills, even after being able to raise so much money from fundraisers. I'm sure if the improved transparency had been put into effect, the community would have banded together to keep the site going as they have multiple times in the past. It is a great community and I hope that it retains it's luster, and who knows, maybe IMVU will be able to scout a good furry 3d modeler and get some decent avatars!