$realitysquared

The fact of the matter is that we respond to every situation which is brought to our attention.

The oddest thing that seems to happen with blatant art thieves around here is that a huge mob of people get outraged, write journals, attack the alleged thief but somehow, amazingly, nobody manages to remember to report it to the staff.

There are nearly seven million accounts here now and over fifty-one million deviations and somehow people expect that we'll simply just notice the drama.

It's not a question of the number of staff available; it is simply not feasible for any reasonable number of staff to be able to actively monitor, in real time, a community where twenty-five thousand people or more are active every single second of every single day.

All the community oriented efforts at policing the site are going to have limited effectiveness if you don't bother to notify the staff using the proper means. And once you do, don't expect an instant response; there is always a line of reports ahead of yours.

Sometimes thins are reported which are non-issues; not a case of theft at all and sometimes the whole report comes off as ridiculous to the extreme.

We get reports all the time which involve similar looking deviations with the obligatory "OMG TRAYCE" or "OMG COPIED" write up slapped in there somehow.

Now I covered the issue concerning tracing in another journal so I won't harp on that again here but I will address the dreaded species of Devious CopyCat (digredior effingo cattus).

Now considering the sheer number of people with a deviantART account and the sheer number of works residing in the galleries similarities are going to happen. And even if the similarity is completely intentional it still doesn't mean that your art has been stolen.

Please stop with the "Pose Theft" reports. A figure can only be shown in a finite number of positions and there is simply not enough of those positions for everybody to get their own personal one to own and cherish forever; you need to share poses with each other and if you can't do that I'll take them away and put them in the closet so nobody can play with them.

Stop with the "Character Theft" too while you're at it. If your character looks like a horse then, duh, everybody else's horse character made after yours is going to *gasp* also look like a horse. The same goes for wolves too; and for every other "cool" animal type for making into characters (because God forbid that anyone choose a lame species like gerbils for their roleplaying alter ego).

And yes, you can stop reporting lookalike fan characters too because you all draw stuff that looks exactly like something from a Sonic the Hedgehog game and the irony of reporting somebody for ripping off your character design which was ripped off from the official character design for Knuckles is clearly lost on you.

You cannot lock ideas and concepts up into a box and "own" them and if you show your art to the world you will inspire or influence somebody who might create something based off of your concept.

If you can't live with that idea then maybe you should look into being a plumber.

Now when you do report something we need information. It simply isn't enough to write "stolen" or "obvious" or "..." in the field and leave it at that (and yes- I've seen exactly those write ups in reports recently)

We need to know what was allegedly stolen, whether it was a piece of a work or an entire work, and we need to know who it was taken from and we greatly appreciate it if you can show us the original work.

I cannot really stress how important it is that this basic information be provided because without it we cannot make a judgment and without a judgment we can't take any action.

I mean, you are the person reporting it so (in theory) you know all the details, you know who created the original work, you know where the original was posted, and it should be a matter of moments for you to give us that information.

Now for some stuff we might be able to recognize it instantly but please don't make that assumption. I think everybody on the planet can recognize Angelina Jolie on sight but we appreciate it if you take the time to name her in your report anyway.

We throw out a certain percentage of reports every week which simply are nothing more than a vague accusation. Essentially if you don't give us usable information you aren't doing anything more than making an accusation, and we don't take action based on accusations without evidence.

The skinning community is particularly poor at providing proper information. I realize that any specialized section of the creative community will develop a certain nearsightedness and focus on their own little genre where certain things are "obvious" and everybody "knows" certain things or certain people.
But outside of that genre your specialized "obvious" knowledge becomes little more than answers to a game of Trivial Pursuit as far as the general population is concerned.

It simply isn't enough to claim that "This skin (X) has elements from that skin (Y)", not when skins or themes can contain a huge number of "elements", not to mention that fact that every skin is forced to work within the same narrow confines and parameters and thusly tend to look alike at some level. If the buttons or the logo or whatever piece it was was stolen then state it, because we simply don't have the time or the inclination to do a side by side comparison of every pixel contained in a skin or a theme based on nothing more than what is essentially an empty accusation.

Information people, we need information.

I've noticed that a lot of people have this Torch and Pitchfork attitude when it comes to catching an art thief. Nothing less than an immediate ban, purge and IP ban seems to satisfy them and they tend to get upset and confused when we don't do that.

There is a reason why we do not immediately ban every single person who violates our copyright policy.

Essentially Art Theft can be broken up into two distinct categories; Ignorant and Deliberate.


As I said way up there at the top of this tl;dr journal the Internet, and to a certain extent the classroom, indoctrinates people into a certain 'free-for-the-taking' mindset. Because of this a lot of artists simply don't know that what they are doing is wrong and that they will be penalized for it.

We cut these people some slack.

It's certainly an uphill battle; especially when it involves people with no natural talent who rely upon harvesting the internet for interesting images to manipulate. There's a lot of confusion, pain, outrage and no small amount of whining involved but eventually they either straighten up or they leave or they get banned as an unredeemable repeat offender.

Those people who straighten up often become better people and ultimately every one of them contributes to our educational effort whether they know it or not simply because most of them mention what happened to at least one other person either online or offline. Even those journals about how the Evil Fascist Ogre Staff took down their art, beat them with a lead pipe and kicked their dog have some grain of educational value about what is or isn't allowed buried in there somewhere.

But basically we recognize when somebody simply doesn't know any better and we try to give these people a chance to do better and educate themselves. Banning them forever isn't going to accomplish that particularly well.


Now the real thieves are the people who know that what they are doing is wrong.

If we catch somebody erasing a signature, cropping off a copyright statement or covering up a watermark we know we've caught somebody who is acting deliberately. They write about how many hours it took them to draw the piece, or how the photograph was taken during their vacation, or the writing was so hard to get just right, and they give a dozen other fictitious details to make people think that the deviation was their work.

These are the people who get no mercy.

By deliberately erasing a signature or watermark, cropping out the original artist mark, signing their own name and describing in detail how the work is and always has been their own creative product these people reveal themselves to be without any sense of honor or scruples and they do not deserve to be a part of this community.

They get banned forever and they don't qualify for a second chance.

Second chances are for people who can be trusted, who you think might be able to become a better person.

In my eyes, deliberately misrepresenting the creative work of another person as your own irreparably damages your trustworthiness. I cannot bring myself to offer them a second chance because in the back of my mind I will never be able to trust that they will resist the temptation to steal another piece of art so that they can gain a quick path to the prestige that they obviously want.

Because that's why they do it isn't it? To bask in admiration and respect and the prestige which their own meager artistic efforts will never gain them?

Everyone vows to change and never steal art again after they've been caught, but at that point their vow is meaningless and their word is worthless.