The overall feeling I get is that the community generally considers the author's will to be of highest priority, even if following it is detrimental to the long

The overall feeling I get is that the community generally considers the author's will to be of highest priority, even if following it is detrimental to the long-term public cultural heritage. Creators can and will occasionally use it as a weapon - when someone uses their art in a way they deem offensive, they may retaliate by pulling their art from the primary distribution site, and requesting anyone who has them to not re-upload them. The community will generally comply, and will berate the offensive-art-user (not the author) en masse for causing the loss to happen. The general distrust against danbooru et al I think stems from the lack of conformance to this "word of god overrules everything" mindset. Not sure if it's related to the above, but Japanese copyright law protects moral rights (chosakusha jinkaku ken 著作者人格権) much stronger than the US does: they apply to all works, and cannot be transferred nor waived. The most you can do is sign a contract agreeing not to exercise them. There have been lawsuits in the past where selling a PlayStation memory card with a hacked save data of a game was ruled as a breach of the work's integrity. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%82%81%E3%81%8D%E3%83%A1%E3%83%A2%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%AB%E3%83%A1%E3%83%A2%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%82%81%E3...