Above are 2 pictures:

1.) I recently saw that Tyler Oakley reblogged my ‘I’m Still Alive’ post.

2.) Upon closer inspection (the orange arrows), I noticed the “source” was changed to bonushumor. And sure enough, in the reblog menu my attribution was stripped.

It was my original post [proof]. In fact, if you tediously went back to the very first note it would say “fororchestra posted this”.

I’m calling bonushumor out on this, because this is the #1 problem with Tumblr. I mentioned before how people reclaim my music as theirs, and now it’s happening with posts. Here’s the thing: The internet is an archive. I’m all for reblogs and remixes (with attribution), but not for re-claiming someone’s work as their own.

Last week I explored Tumblr to find original artwork so that I can hire someone to work for me. But when I saw someone’s work I liked, almost every source or credit was not to the original artist. Sure, there were times when the uploader was the infringer, but other times it was because the sources were changed by rebloggers weeks after something was uploaded.

Changing a source is theft for the purpose of link bait and financial gain at the creators’ expense. It’s disgusting. It financially hurts the already struggling artists and their work that ultimately keeps Tumblr in motion.

Youtube stopped this last year to disallow duplicates in independent and major films and music. Deviant Art doesn’t allow this. Neither does Pinterest. Soundcloud has started to take action on this. Twitter doesn’t allow people to edit retweets. This is because they all understand the importance of attribution and posterity for their users’ original content and community integrity.

Tumblr, our attribution - whether a painting, movie, picture, or song - deserves to stay untouched for our portfolio.

Please do the right thing for your community of creators. Please fix this.