DeviantArt Loves You - Part I

(UPDATED: Aug 15)

So DeviantArt loves you...

...which of course is very nice of them. We all need a little love now and then I'm quite certain

Although using the term "love" is stretching it a bit too far I'm sure we all get the idea about the love spoken of here. Artists love the possibilities dA is offering, and dA naturally loves the art we make and upload here.

I think however that these declarations of affection should run deeper; and well, basically become less cliché.

This journal entry concerns every hardworking non-blantantly-art-stealing creative soul here, and of course the CREW keeping everything fully operational.

SO...'ere we go!

That's just the way of things
Just recently I had a nice but short exchange of words with ValeriaVi. She recently received a Daily Deviation for this Little Dark Kitty. So like many others I went to have a closer look and drop a comment or two. The first thing I notice there is an unmistakable line of threats and warnings in the deviation description. Something along the lines of this:

"This is my hard work. Don't steal or use it with out my permission. If you do I KEEL YA!".

My first thought was: "Whoa! Chill the eff down Miss. I'm only here to have a look and say a few words. Don't ZAP me! PLEASE! I'M INNOCENT!!!"

I knew however where she was coming from with this...since well...many, many (MANY) others do the exact same thing.

But the intarwebs (as we ALL know) is infested with Leprechauns. If anyone of these bloody buggers see something shining like gold they nick it. They grab the art and run off never leaving a single word or clue behind.

Fine then. I decided for a joking approach to these *WARNINGS* of hers. I already knew about these art-stealing-problems just like a gazillion others. And we all know that not a damn thing can be done about it.

So all I had was poor yet well-meant advice: Accept the circumstances as they are and stick to the fact that people obviously love what you make (quite sh*tty advice since lots of her stuff unfortunately ends up on mugs, tee's and so on without her explicit granted permission).

I then insinuated that growing tired and moody over it serves no purpose. It will not change a thing doing so. The web is simply just one giant Xerox machine.

Anywho, like I mentioned in the beginning of this ValeriaVi is not alone with this problem. We're all (more or less) victims of this and so I chose to address it here. Something has to be DONE ABOUT IT!

And as I found out shortly after giving my (crappy) advice to ValeriaVi; something actually can be done.

Problems/Solutions

Problems/Non-working Solutions:

Legal matters:

a) When you upload art on dA you can choose a license to go with it (and add your own *WARNINGS*). That's fine and takes care of the legal parts of it. I'm thinking maybe that dA is required by law to have these license options there. I'm not certain though. However. It simply solves nothing that they are. Nada. It doesn't hinder any thief in not giving-a-sh*t about some legal texts saying this or that. The thieves (the art LEPRECHAUNS) grab whatever they please and likely don't give a rats ass about reading stuff like terms, conditions, licenses, threats or warnings.

Technical problems:

b) Speaking of images there are a gazillion ways to download/grab them: Drag 'n' Drop, Right-Click --> save image to, screendumping apps, PrntScr Key Pressing etcetera. Infact your browser makes copies all by itself. It's called caching. It copies whatever images are on your screen, renames them, and puts everthing into certain browser folders on your computer. Website scripts used (often Javascript) to prevent copying things like images is boring simple to circumvent. For instance many javascripts try to prevent mouse right-clicking functionality in order to prevent the saving of images (or other website content). However, simply by blocking Javascript execution within a browser or by snooping around the HTML markup spotting image urls, thieves will get what they came for in no time.

DNS and IP banning of remotely controlled run-amok image-grabbing scripts is also poor protection against any person determined to get the job done.

About preventing the PrntScr key ability to grab images off of a screen from within a browser; it is near impossible to accomplish. The PrntScr key function is a system level feature that no browser (IE, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Chrome etc) can prevent. Well, not exactly because I found out it actually can.

Solutions (Yes, they're out there):

So I'm thinking with all this that it simply can't be true. Simple good protection of art/images/photos a completely impossible task? I mean Apple managed to protect their music, apps and movies. Microsoft did so with their XBox marketplace contents. Sony did it with their contents and all sorts of online movie/music/whatever rental services and shops have managed this as well.

It's all just bits and bytes right? From images to games to HD movies; it's all the same.

Searching here and there I finally found this:

ArtistScope CopySafe: www.artistscope.com/protect-im…

It protects everything displayed on any webpage. On dA for example this would mean things like: Text (such as your poems, stories, journal entries and so on). Your animations can be protected too. Those made with Flash for instance. And of course all your art images regardless of format (JPEG, PNG, GIF etcetera).

This is all achieved two-folded: One part involves the servers and any website/code/database implementation needed. The other part is a simple user/browser plug-in requirement. Combined with other cleverly implemented stumbleblocks it's pretty much as far it goes in terms of protecting your art and keeping loose-fingered art snatchers in check.

This all brings me back to the "DeviantArt Loves you..." intro I started with. I think the dA staff should look into this and hopefully get something of this sort implemented. The dA Love is nice sure, but it would add quite a lot to it if dA, not only truly acknowledged their artists rights to protect their hard work, but actually got something done about it.

Words and checkboxes are simply not enough to solve or prevent anything.

OK. PHEW!

I'm pretty busted from going through it all (AGAIN). Fingers are sore and curled like pigs tails (slinkies)

Please spread the word if you feel all this matters. Personally I believe it does.

Thanks for reading and remember to watch out for those nasty art Leprechauns.

Part II: r-a-z-z.deviantart.com/journal…

(UPDATED: AUG 15)