deviantART Submission DISagreement
A good friend of mine, justthorne, is a concerned deviant, and senior member, who is not happy with the draft of the “revised” deviantART Submission Agreement. He took some time to write-up a great 3-part analysis of the newer document and how it affects all artists and why everyone should be concerned. Considering that the administration is dropping his name as being part of the modification process, even though the draft does not live up to his expectations, should be cause for concern.
Take the time to read the following:
deviantART is the largest online art community that the Internet has yet to see. It is a community for artists to share their art with the world and for art lovers to view and interact with these artists. At this juncture it is a one-of-a-kind site. The corporation banks on this when it enacts draconian policies.
For those who have not been keeping score, late last year deviantART revised its submission agreement after there were many issues brought to its attention regarding how the previous agreement did not do enough to protect deviantART’s artists from the corporation. Not that a deviantART written agreement is meant to protect artists, because, that is not the intent. The purpose of the document is to ensure that deviantART can not be sued out of existence for displaying ones art online, among other more mysterious reasons.
The submission agreement was revised and a draft posted online by Richard, the Director of Community Development. Unfortunately, many of the previous problems persist and new ones have been introduced. The updated agreement is far worse than the previous in many respects, as explained so eloquently by Joel in this comment.
An interesting aside; take a look at how Richard responded. Is that how you expect a leader to respond, especially when addressing legal concerns of the very artists deviantART relies upon?
The administration tries to clarify their stance on the agreement, though with a lot of rhetoric and illusion. They attempt to rationalize why certain elements have been added to the agreement rather than opening up their minds to the possibility that certain clauses were placed there for dubious reasons.
Unfortunately for Daniel, he is a mere messenger. Knowing how the corporation operates, it is almost a virtual guarantee that Daniel was not involved in the rewrite process.
Be careful when reading this next part. It is based on my experiences while on staff, my knowledge of Angelo through the past 7 - 8 years and how I perceive deviantART, Inc. to function today. These are not to be taken as fact but, as I said, perception by way of many first-hand accounts in similar situations.
Got that? Do not say that you were not forewarned!
Based on my experience working in the deviantART, Inc. environment, what probably happened was the following (I caution you that I am merely explaining how I perceive things to work now based on how they did prior to my ouster): Angelo took the concerns that he heard from justthorne, Richard, and whoever else was involved at the onset, and then spoke to the law firm on his own. There was probably nobody on this call other than Angelo and the lawyer(s) that he spoke to. Angelo is the only individual on staff at deviantART, Inc. that knows what transpired on this call. Whether he bothered to pass along the true concerns, or was capable ot vocalizing those concerns, is unknown.
The law firm goes to work and puts together a revised agreement only to then pass it back to Angelo. He then emails it to the core staff (people like Daniel, Richard, etc…) for “review.” If the staff has questions then they are sent to Angelo, who addresses their concerns directly, rather than allowing the staff to engage the lawyers on their own. This allows him to “play God” by answering any, and all, questions concerning deviantART and artists legal issues; he responds in a manner that would lead the average deviantART employee, or volunteer, to believe that he knows the correct answer to any and all questions. The staff ultimately trusts, whether rightly or wrongly, that his answers to their concerns are the same answers that the law firm would offer up.
That is a general summation of how the process used to work. I find it hard to believe that a megalomaniac would change his modus operandi.
As you can see, Daniel was probably not part of this rewrite process other than to ask questions he may have had after reading the draft. His voice was undoubtedly never heard by the law firm. The questions he may have asked were then answered by Angelo rather than the law firm. The answers offered are not necessarily right or wrong, but since Angelo has no formal legal training he generally ends up passing along “possible intent” rather than directly addressing the concerns. Legal documents are open to interpretation in many ways and the answers generally only reflect the point of view that the corporation would like the community to believe rather than the possibility of something insidious. It is an odd situation and one that allows Angelo to control how information is presented and disseminated by the staff.
Remember, deviantART is a huge site that is currently being run by a young, uneducated, wannabe businessman, who only has real-world work experience in the agent side of the entertainment industry, after he ousted the 2 original founders. He has yet to produce a viable business plan for the site and, even worse, has never run a successful community oriented website on his own.
Is it any wonder that someone who has a work experience history with RIAA-types is not doing everything that he can to protect the very artists that the site relies upon in order to stay alive? deviantART seems to have a blind spot to these very issues as they have been lingering for months without reconciliation. What can be done to force deviantART to better protect artists rights while maintaining theirs?
But I digress.
Go check out the submission agreement journals that justthorne just published. They are well worth the read, especially if you are an artist that submits to deviantART. Contrary to what the administration party-line may be, there are problems with the current submission agreement and its draft revision.
If you find your art being sold by an unnamed entity in a compilation, or other similar products, without your prior consent, do not say that you were never warned …
at this moment what do you think we the users should do… i’m starting to feel like my art is very unsafe on the site and i have an instinct to pull it all right off…
what do you think i should do?
This makes me so incredibly sad and frustrated. It really makes me wonder how one person in such a position can be so incredibly blind…
Most people don’t even care about the Submission Agreement and because of that, these nasty things continue…
This reminds me what the boss of sony music said about Rootkits…”most people don’t even know what rootkits are”…my point is taken I’m sure .lol
I do care about it a lot and I don’t even submit art in DA anymore but some of my friends do, so I usually read a lot about it.
In the end it’s all about money so artists continue to submit art there…I’m sure it´s about art also but if good artists just said NO to these wrong things, I’m sure the corporation would change the Submission Agreement because they would lose a lot of money.
The problem aren’t the persons who run DA, the problem is the community that doesn’t give a sh#t…I’m sorry to actually write this but its what I see..go ask if they care about the Submission Agreement. Most of them will say no.
I the other hand people who come here actually care so not all is lost around DA.
I think I changed my mind, I beleive now that this realy does effect everyone. These journals realy made me think, and in some ways opened my eyes to the real dangers that are now out there on this mine-field the corporation has given us.
It’s a shame we don’t have an election process as to whom controlls DeviantArt.
The biggest problem I see now is how hard it is to leave deviantART. Other, comparable sites, have a nice “Delete My Account” button. One-click and confirmation, and a day later, you’re gone. Reading the deviantART submission agreement, it’s obvious they want more. Not only can they not offer a tool to delete everything for you, instead leaving it up to you to individually delete every single piece of art from your gallery (and giving reasons[!] for every one), they also prevent you from deleting some of your materials (e.g. comments or the user page). At the same time, the submission agreement seems to say that it holds for everything you ever uploaded until you removed it all, and then you can’t remove it all. Does the agreement ever end, then? Why isn’t there a simple clause stating that the agreement is void when, say, all deviations are removed?
I wish I knew what task dA gave to the lawyers. “Protect our interests, but make it look neat” or the more reasonable “Protect our artists as well as possible”?
And this is part of the reason why I left DA.
It’s not the whole reason, naturally, but it’s a big part of it.
My sympathies for all those who still have their art there. It’s a shame that such good work will, no doubt, be used without their consent, and neither will they see any profit or recognition from it.
Scott, my deepest sympathies go out to you, that your child, your dream, has become so…corrupt.
You’re a stronger man that I, I feel. If I knew this happened to my child, to something I’d created…I don’t know how I’d react.
This is really shitty you know. I guess you’re losing the legal battle by the way things are sounding. I really wish that Angelo would have an accident or something. He never really bothers to give valid reasons as to why he is doing what he is which makes me nervous about his status on dA. He needs to be overturned. He’s like the sadam of dA!!!
He is an adult with the emotional mindset of a child, running dA in much the same fashion as his emotional intelligence quota.
All I can ask here is the same thing I asked Thorne:
What must I do to make sure my art, and the rights to use it, are permanently removed from dA forever? The time has come to even delete what is in storage, to burn my last bridge.
thank you for those links. how utterly sad.
Sorry, this is slightly off topic, but I felt like dA has been unfair in their recent policies. I honestly think that they are pretty much going downhill. Yes, they may be getting bigger, but when will that bubble pop with the kind of censorship going around? I was recently banned because I was trying to stop an asshole from harassing me. What the heck is that? And that asshole still lives to be rude and a jerk to everyone in the forums and he’s still not banned. Oh, and they also don’t ban people calling others derogatory terms that will offend people that are handicapped. Not only that, they close forum discussions where there is a nice discussion going on, except for me trying to get rid of the harassing asshole. That just angered me beyond belief.
I’m still sorry to hear about what had happened to you. What’s the place without the creator? I have this big dream to eventually be a CEO of some large company and buy out dA and give it back to the people. But it’s just a dream. It’s not even a goal yet because it’s so unreachable. But, we’ll see.
I just wish something was done about removing comments and deciding who can post something and who cannot. With the kind of censorship there is around here, they are still flapping their wings about ‘free speech.’
Take care Jark, best of luck with everything.
sigh. this whole thing sucks tits, ass, balls, you name it. :(
I think angelo is a scary guy personally-his manipulation of info/events is obvious…and I agree 100% with Lorri. But,he has an aim,as yet unknown to us in fact,for the future of DA that has got nothing to do with being beneficial to Artists in the first instance but only in the 2nd or 3rd(if that!)I think DA is on a programmed course known only to angelo at this moment(who knows?) and one day it will come out.Personally, I could see him selling it to someone.
I hope your legal struggle is going ok Scott? You know you still have legions out there!
I wish you and yours all the very best for the future anyhow…I hope you get a resolution that suits…
The whole thing was/is very confusing for me. Usually I understand these things well, but this doesn’t make sense to me at all. Why can’t they say something like this. “Devaintart retains the right to showcase the Artsists work and to contact the artist if someone is interested in using/buying/copying their work”
I have only submitted one piece sense this started. I tried to contact some of the other Admins, Moonbeam13 for example, and have recived no reply.
I love dA and the friends I have on there, so I don’t want to leave.
What advice can you give to us, the everyday users of dA?
Thanks for your insight. From what I gather left and right you may be spot on.
I concur with Onie’s words about seeing your brain child possibly run into the ground like this.
But still I hope sanity will prevail … and that’s what we all must work towards to :-)
this is just wrong, to be so easily twisted around that bastard’s finger like we were some cheap money commodity, I am growing to despise DeviantART more and more now. My chances are 40% that i will leave DeviantART now. i cannot stand this ominous presence ruling our fair art community!
JARK! THE SOONER WE GET OUR PROMISELAND THE SOONER WE CAN LEAVE THIS BASTARD’S OPPRESIVE IRON GRIP! HURRY BEFORE THIS HITLER TAKES IT ALL AWAY FROM US!
As a member of DeviantART, I have to agree. This new Submission Agreement Policy is wrong, illegal, and unconstitutional. This Policy should be removed ASAP and rewritten so that artists will never lose their works for any reason.
Not only will this result in millions of angry people, but this could also pretty much bring to light DeviantART’s downfall altogether.
That’s just my personal opinion on the matter.
Right now, many artist (both pro and amature alike) who have gotten hold of this information are already packing up their galleries and journal entries and leaving.
DeviantART is not making things better, they’re actually forcing us to leave the one place we call “home.”
It’s like they’re saying “Hah! This is OUR work. NOT yours! :p” Like some schoolyard bully stealing from little helpless chrildren.
Personally, I wish DeviantART never writen that Policy. It’s just plain wrong. I wish that someone would do something. Something drastic. Something that would change things for the better, and make DeviantART the safe place it should be. Because I don’t know how long we artist here have now. I feel that we are all now just hanging from a thread, hanging for dear life. Like we’re on our last tank of gas, or our last breath. I feel like I’m going to die and have a heart attack if this keeps up.
I know that if worst comes to worst there’s still Side7 and SheezyART.Com, but SheezyART’s server is down at the moment, and I feel that I got nowhere else to go.
So therefore, I’m against this and asking that the Policy be removed and rewritten to protect all the artists and their works.
This policy must not be allowed to continue.
I stumbled off technorati, and thought hey! I remember him…and woa. Stun.
Well, this stinks. *goes back and logs onto dA after ages of being away* OMG.
I thought you did a great job with dA. I really liked how much it offered people-for free-and I *enjoyed* being a member. You guys really worked hard to make a good site and It’s a shame that things worked out they did. It’s truly dA’s loss.
Thanks very much for the heads-up on this, Jark. Good luck with everything.
I’ve arrived here while reading some reactions to the “submission agreement”… As someone said before, one of the problems is not only the people who run DA, but the users… I agree with that. But we must take into account that many people in DA are not native English-speakers or they can speak English, but they are not very into legal words and expressions (and we must admit that the submission agreement is twisted sometimes even for those who speak English fluently or have English as their mother tongue…).
Besides this, and if I’m not wrong (I’m one of those who can’t speak English fluently, as you can read ^^U), that problem doesn’t end with the deleting of all your artwork… I mean… Don’t you have to send a written notification to DA telling that you don’t want them to use your art anymore? (correct me if I’m wrong)
Anyway, I like DA. I may not like its new policy, but I like the idea and the site. I’ll probably leave DA, but I will still like the idea and the site. I myself thought about creating a kinda-similar-thing (everyone has crazy days sometimes, uh), but since I don’t have any idea of computering (I’d put my efforts and my time, but knowing nothing about computering is a great obstacle, haha), this seems impossible…
As a soon to be former member (waiting for the letter to make it ot DA headquarters) I have to say that this has felt like the ultimate betrayal. For the last 6 months I’ve participated in the discussions with the illusion that it might make a difference. Their actions have shown how wrong I was. At least I learned something and I don’t intend to make that mistake again.
*hug* Thank you for continuing to look out for us, Scott.
I don’t know you ever worked with thar malignant narcisscist.
& stand here today with your character and sanity intact. ?Yesch!*shudders*
I think about what that must’ve been like for you~ & it’s just ridichulous…I could never do that. I would just laugh bitterly every day;it’s just *too stupid* to even address after vry long.
I recently deleted all of my “original art” deviations as a precaution (all that’s left is my Naruto fanart, for the moment.) I recently just stumbled upon all the plain yellow pix from August ‘05 and I still am kinda lost but I am worried enough. English is my first language, but I really don’t get legalese. Deviantart is a great idea, and for artists like me, a good tool to show off their art (I cannot afford a domain)… Thank you for creating it but it’s a shame what’s going on now. Thank you also for getting the word out on what’s going on.
Best of luck in the future, take care, and thanks for the resource that was dArt. (BTW, I have a little yellow pic I put up today, not the nicest but it’s protesting. kyuubi.deviantart.com, yo.)
~Ari
Well i joined DA a few month’s ago, and was a bit troubled about the submission agreement when i read it at first but when i considderd the amount of people on it, i thought that i somehow misunderstood it. Now my artwork is jewelry, and i considderd it not that important in relation. Now that i’m getting more familiar with the extent and size of the inc. that is DA, i must admit about getting kinda worryed. And more people are getting that way, fast, i think.
Now DA is still a fine ship if you ask me, only the captain leaves a lot to be desired. Isn’t there a way, like in the old day’s when a captain was not concerend with the welfaire of his crew, to commit mutiny and make him walk the plank or drop him of on a deserted island. Or something in that derection.
Also i think that a lot of people on DA don’t know the value of there art. Because it’s “just a hobby” to them. They mainly do it to come into contact with likeminde people and they aren’t realy concerend with the possible “theft” of there work.
If i had the resources to make something like DA i would, but i’m to inexperienced and poor (at the moment) to do it.
I started a forum thread and some are being rude others agree.
Scott, I’m sorry you have to see your site turned so bad. When I joined dA everything was great, and now, *shakes head and sighs* its not. I give you all the kudos int he world you have strenght and I admire that.
I think mutiny is a great idea. We just need to get more people out there and make it happen.
Sigh. It makes me sad to hear things are going so wrong these days. deviantART is the best community in the whole wide internet, but the fear of losing works that are rightfully mine is great. I’m not a popular artist, I will never be a professional or anything, but still there might be a small risk of losing my works. And I’m afraid because of the community - I love DA, it’s such a wonderful community and peopel there are not only good artists but friendly too, but what will happen when our art is not ours anymore? Will people leave? This considers me so much. I would send a PM to any of the staff and make an official complaint about this, but I don’t want my account being banned.
I’m sorry to see your very own community being turned into this. We all owe you so much, and until the situation gets really bad, I’m not leaving. I still believe the community can be saved, but the staff has to act first, not the artists. Why don’t people think of anything but money?
I have been on dA for quite some time. It used to be a place of inspiration to get better and to work towards my literary goals but now with this new turn on the site I think I might have to collect all my previous works and start over.
It is a shame that they have played us like a set of cards and I hope that everyone can learn about what has happend.
Im sorry to hear all these horror stories and peoples` dreams taken because of dA’s submission agreement clause. Art is more than just something from the mind its from the heart and this really makes everyones heart break.
The tragedies that have occurred, the pain it has brought. I wish you all well and that this can be cleared up. Im going to take in some further research with a lawyer friend to see if she can define this a wee bit more for me.
Thank you for the honesty in this article. I hope many people can learn from it.
This may sound stupid, but I’ve been thinking over it, and since I read the same idea in some DA journals, maybe somebody could find it interesting… What if you move all your artworks (just if they are illustrations and so on) into fanart section? It’s just a question, but… If this elven maiden in your gallery (it’s just an example) is you own version of Arwen? And, as far as I know, DA administrators don’t know aaaaaall the books, films, comics… in the world… So, who can deny that this or that character is a fanart of whoever?
Well on the contrary as illistrations may be more or less stolen in an aspect, literature is often taken and discredited. I know this one well, for I am an author/poet. Hence why I removed all of my pieces and saved them to my personal computer with 4 hours of work doing so.
Illustrators and writers both have to worry about things being stolen.
Thats why this is such a tragedy.
Dear Scott,
deviantART.com reached the astronomical levels of success through hard work and love by the hands and imagination of people such as yourself, Scott, and your colleagues (former or otherwise).
As much as mutiny would be amusing, it can’t really become a reality, because of all the work I just commented on. So many people join deviantART every day, and through all the pulp, dozens, if not hundreds of real works of art are submitted every minute. This is why people come here - for the artwork… to browse, to try to make a name for themselves — to try to make a buck.
It’s that last one that kills it for everyone, but on the same token, without dollar signs, nothing really works in a capitalist world.
I’m here to stay ’til the site either goes down in flames or until I get deleted - or until my art gets ’stolen’, and I’ll be right here standing tall with my high morals in tow.
I disagree with the new agreement, but because I want to stay, I clicked ‘Agree’. Aah… the irony! :)
Regards,
(Mr) Loren York
Hear hear!
Remember, deviantART is a huge site that is currently being run by a young, uneducated, wannabe businessman, who only has real-world work experience in the agent side of the entertainment industry, after he ousted the 2 original founders. He has yet to produce a viable business plan for the site and, even worse, has never run a successful community oriented website on his own.
Don’t forget the ‘new OMG we werkded so t3h hard!’ DA privacy policy is a xerox of another just found randomly on the web.
I could write a 2 site long agreement and nearly nobody will read it and just click agree.
It might be a sin to link to deviantart!
I wrote a few thousand words about this submission agreement as it stands today here:
http://mans0n.deviantart.com/journal/7923240/
a few people might be interested in reading it!
I wish I hadnt have ever sent anything to deviantart at this point!
What really strikes me as ironic about the legal age garbage is that (in WA State, and to the best of my knowledge, most anywhere in the US), you are considered “legally competent” to buy -life insurance- at age fifteen.
So I chortle a bit at the 18 thing to have an account on an artwork website. What garbage.
But while most of it I don’t fully understand yet (I only just now really heard about this garbage, if you can believe that. I’m not a forum-goer), it does sound like a bunch of bull. Toss in your getting kicked off of the management team, and the smell of bullshit really picks up…
I am currently a member of DA, and only found out about this today, but I think someone should start a mass deletion of their accounts on DA. We should make an art site, better than DA. Or simply hack in to DA, change the passwords for the asshole admins, and get it over with. lol.
Scott,
I must say I am disappointed. In late July/early August, when you where first removed, I was on the bandwagon, changed my avatar, talked about it in my journal, on the forum, made deviations, you know the drill. I still stand by that. I think it was wrong of dA to remove you without precedence, warning, or given reason. This has caused me to lose a large amount of faith in dA and the administration.
That said, I do not think your attitude is mature or reasonable. Angelo was your friend and coworker (if not co-founder) for years, if I remember correctly, shortly before you were removed he came to visit you in Japan. Then suddenly he becomes a megalomaniac, a thoughtless beast, the evil, horrible monster in the closet. If this is who he truly is, why was he even on the dA administration? If this is who he truly is, why let him in your house? If this is who he truly is, would you, as a responsible father, let him befriend your son?
This is the first problem I have. As soon as you were removed you turned every single bit of how dA is run into something horrible. Mostly Angelo, but nothing about dA is safe from your wrath. As soon as you’re gone, dA is suddenly this horrible place run by trolls.
As someone who is, ostensibly, trying to get back dA, and from there turn it around into the wonderful site it once was, why do you attack it so? Many, many people have left dA because of what has happened regarding you and Angelo. Hordes more have left because of your continuous attacks on the site. Will they be quick to return once $Jark is back?
There’s a reason I no longer have ‘Support Jark!’ in my signature. Admittedly, it’s partially because the fad has died down, but the larger issue is, I no longer have faith in you. I don’t really want to support Jark anymore. That isn’t to say I support Spyed, but I see no reason to support you either.
So here’s the point of this whole comment. Scott, prove to me, and to all of the artists out there, that you DESERVE our support. Don’t be spiteful, don’t attack everyone who’s hurt you, rise above them, so that I can see you are better than them. Call on the public to rally around the idea of fair administration, don’t use your position of influence to spread hate, mistrust, and fear.
I’m sure many people have already said what I’ve said, and I’m sure many more will too. Perhaps you have learned by now to just tune us all out. I truly hope not. I want to support you, Scott. Give me a reason to do so.