dA in ruins?

[Lei]

a little tidbit on the jark situation.

 I hid all of Yellow day. I didn't feel like being blinded. But Today, out of curiosity, I clicked on the yellow pictures to see how many were dedicated to the alien. The yellow favourites wasn't, but there were two yellow prints dedicated to Yellow day.

 Somehow, I think they missed the concept.

[SilentFyre]

I didn't do anything but log on and tell people I was back. Right now I am spreading the love through commenting on my watchers and friends pages. I personally think this is the best way to get the sense of community back. So far I've gotten one comment on my page and let me tell you, it brightened my day considerably. ^^

[RoxorFuxor]

Wow, big response.  I posted about it on Spyed's account, I honestly don't care.  Business is business, as they say.  DA IS a business, and I don't think many people realize that.  While I don't like the idea of firing someone for money, that is the way the world works.  If Jark really cared about DA, he would be saying that he supports the decision of his exco-workers and not to make a big fuss about it.  It seems he only cares about the money.  I am really sorry for him and I hope it doesn't hurt him THAT much financially, but life must go on.

[Lei]

Well, from what I see, Jark's just mad because something he worked hard on, since the beginning, was taken without a word. I'd fight for it if it were me, even if I was losing more money than I was making. Also, I can't help but Support Jark simply for the fact that he's working so much harder at this to get supporters. I see information in his journals and his friends and supporters, and although I've seen some of spyed's supporters reason, usually they just rant about the stupidity of the jark supporters or something.

 But yeah... I like and support jark, but that doesn't mean I have anything in common with his other supporters

[Databits]

Considering I don't know much about DA I can't really say a whole lot about it's community. However, I have looked at both sides, since people were so kind as to link the particular DA pages for me. From what I've read, I get the impression that the people who support this Spyed character just don't seem to have a grip (all seem like they are throwing an empty note).

Considering I've seen good free services with large communities go down the toilet as soon as it went paid, I wouldn't expect anything less in this situation. Esspecially if this Jark fellow build up another community site which could easily be done better than DA was.

[SilentFyre]

Updates: dA has changed their submission policy without setting up a formal notice.

http://justthorne.deviantart.com/journal/6182638/

Justthorn explains this in their journal, bolding text they found important. I find this extremely disturbing. They are getting far too much power over my own personal artwork. I am one step away from completely pulling out of DeviantART. I'm giving this a week to get fixed, if even that, and then I am leaving. I'm tired of this crap happening.

Anyone have comments on this or feel I shoudl pull out immediately? I know I'm not great in the legal scene so I was hoping someone of you older and/or smarter people might understand the situation better than I currently can.

[Databits]

Actually no, no matter what, the art is your intellactual property. You own the copyright to it. DA cannot pull such rights from any user. The worst thing they could is make an agreement policy that grants them a non-revokable license to the work that you posted up. Which is what it looks like they did.

[Xepher]

Actually no, no matter what, the art is your intellactual property.

That's not always true. While there are several protections in place to ensure that entry-level artists (and other creators) have copyright in their favor, it is legally possible to give up, sell, or transfer copyright ownership to another person or entity. This is pretty common practice in the music industry, where the record label owns a copyright, not the individual creator. Also it goes for most movies as well, which is why Disney pushed so hard to have copyright extended for another 70 years. There are several writers I know who got burned by this. They got taken in by scam "publishers." They thought they were just selling publication rights, but because they didn't read the contract, they were actually selling the copyright itself.

Now, I skimmed over the new DA agreement, and it doesn't seem like they're doing quite that. They've got a clause specfically saying the artist retains full copyright, but as noted above, they are setting it up so that they can do whatever they want, with anything you post, with no compensation. Most likely this just means they're going to offer to sell on-demand prints of the art there to make money... without paying the artist of course. Worst case scenario is that they resell the whole archive to an art and photo stock company who in turn sells it to something like microsoft, and suddenly your art is packaged with MS publisher's clip art, and a copy is on millions and millions of computers around the world, and you haven't made a cent. Or if they were really evil, they could take your art, draw scribbles on it, and post it in some show somewhere about "The Stupidity of Teenagers and Wannabe Artists" with all sorts of nasty comments about how stupid you are and then give everyone your personal information.

Don't expect that to actually happen though.

The rest of the agreement looks like a pretty standard CYA agreement. All those other "evil" clauses that were bolded... well, most of them are there to protect them from lawsuits. A lot of it was devoted to absolving themselves of responsibility for damages if other people "steal" your artwork and such. That's pretty much a neccessity, as they can't actually prevent other people from taking it and using it.

The only other bits of note are basically saying they can advertise the site, do interviews, let your page show up in screenshots, etc. Basic advertising CYA. If CNN interviewed them, and someone at the office had your page open in the background, you could possibly sue them if that wasn't in there.

In my opinion, it's a lot less evil then people seem to think it is. It just looks evil because lawyers are involved, and they always have a bad smell about them. I also think that too many amature artists get way too uppity about their art. My favorite examples are the completely awful artists who draw like 5-year-olds yet put watermarks the size of Rhode Island over their pictures, and have copyright warnings that take several paragraphs at the bottom of each page. Imagine the number of complaints a place like DA must deal with everyday. I'd want a lawyer and his big words watching my tail too. I honestly should have a similar agreement for the services here, but frankly, I still hold out hope for humanity, and by refusing to put in a bunch of legalese, I like to think I'm doing some small part to keep the world a friendlier place.

[griever]

I've been part of DeviantArt for a few years (my current account only says one though, cause I switched it) and to be honest, I've never felt the community that everyone's talking about.  Comments and friending others are nice, but as for the DeviantArt forums...well...they're just a disaster in the works.  

Though my roommate, I've heard bits and pieces about what's been going on at DeviantArt.  I dislike what they did because I don't think they're large enough for that kind of corporate backstabbery (who do they think they are - Walmart?) and I also dislike their money-grabbing mindset.  However, I realize that they need to make money, as image hosting eats up a lot of bandwidth.  Those kinds of policies are required, if paid memberships cannot sustain it.  I kind of wish I could poke them and tell them that their own site probably eat up a lot of  bandwidth as well and they should think about reforming that too.  >.>

And Xepher, I think your plan sounds great.  I really like the invite system (although I feel that gmail has been abused and that LiveJournal never should have gotten rid of theirs).  I realize that my idea is perhaps not so democratic, but maybe people with higher community standings could get more invites?  I don't aspire to this ability, but I'd much rather have someone with high standing (and a better eye for art, hopefully) having more opportunities to invite talent.  

Anyway, if you're wondering about support - I know two of my artists friends were excited to hear about your Phase 3 concept when I told them about it, because they're fed up with megasites like DA, Yerf, and Elfwood.  I realize it's only two people, but still...better some than none. ^_^

[Xepher]

Good to hear! As for "higher standing members" getting more invites... that's kind of the idea. Respect (whuffie) lets you do more things. Of course, inviting a bunch of people, means of bunch of people you're somewhat responsible for. To quote, "With great power comes great responsibility." :-)

On the overall social concepts, I hope to model a lot of it on true democracy, and some of the founding american ideals. For example, we have a congress and a senate. In the congress, big states get more votes. The senate balances that by giving every state the same number of votes. Since bills have to go through both, it maintains the ideals of majority rules with minority rights. Of course it won't be "states" in the case of an online community, but rather members and subcommunities. While "big players" will get more power, there will be plenty of safeguards to make sure they can't abuse it, the most important of which is that such power is actually given to them by the community. You can't remain popular and respected if you do a lot of unpopular and disrespectable things. The currency for the community will be respect, and that's something people have to earn.

[ChaosArchivist]

That is amazing... I may not be a member of dA, but I often go out there to find new, interesting ideas... At least Xepher.net is still good, so I have somewhere to find good art (and inspiration) online.

[Nat-chan]

was/ is there so much fuss about? I never knew... okay i have been a member for a few years ... but what i did notice a little is dthat they changed  a little about the licence policy. Major of my fav artists were thinking of leaving DA, so that is when i know. The DA forum ... it's a bit hostail, in my opinion. But the rest okay, i guess, when you pretend not to see the crap what some people are posting...

oh xepher, i think that your are idea is great! However, it might be unnessary to mention, there is one thing I am kinda worring about. You told about 'high leveled" art and the inviting system, which are really great. Still I am worried about some later 'invited generations'. I am sure that the 1 st generation is doing well, as for their friends, but what about their friend and their friends? I know you dont have the control over the matter. Then you can use the rating system. O_O nonono... not like gaia online, that system is totally crap. I was thinking outloud....

[Xepher]

Well, the idea is that later generations don't have the power to invite until they earn enough respect in the community. Also, things can be "fixed" retroactively. It is possible to bring a petition and get people removed if they become a problem. Also, I'm thinking that invites are going to need approval from more than just the inviter. That is, other people "near" them have to approve new members. Think of respect as an aggregate. Enough people with enough respect have to agree to the new member. Thus, people low-down the totem poll, as it were, need to invite GOOD people that will easily be approved by many others. People higher up in terms of respect... well idealy they've already proven themselves good judges, but the important bit is they have more respect, as such, they have more "weight" when it comes to new members, and don't have to convince as many other people. This keeps things moving at those levels.

It's like real life in many ways. Say I want to go bomb iraq. I can't. I have no respect in the circles of congress and such, so nothing gets done. Now, if on the other hand, iraq really NEEDS to be bombed, and I suggest it... well, maybe I can get more people to agree and they get even more. I can't convince the army to go attack, but me and 10 million of my closest friends sure could have a pretty good shot at it. On the other hand, there are people like the president. He wants to go to war, and he's really only gotta convince a few people close to him. Things (ideally) get done a lot faster at the high levels because (theoretically) the people that were placed there have earned our respect and trust.

Now, seeing how my example seems blatently a bad thing to most people, here's how Artica would differ from the government. Imagine that, if you didn't like Bush and how he was handleing things, you personally could start the impeachment process. :-)

The other thing is that, unlike america as a whole, an art site would be composed of much more like-minded people. There wouldn't be 10,000 unique interests to balance, but only a few dozen. As such, there wouldn't be the need for the radical compromises that tend to undermind the effectiveness of large government.

[MPSinclair]

This sounds like a very sound system, Xepher. I look forward to your "Artica" thread.

[EDIT:] Apparently you already made the thread, my bad. *scampers off to read*

[Thu]

Ouch. I think a new community started by you, Xepher, would be a great idea. But then again, there are people out there who love to spam and cause a lot of drama. And even if you give them guidelines, those people probably wouldn't read it or understand it.