v-s.net v0.6

Monday, 1:08 pm in The Soapbox

This has been going around in the last few hours; people finding their art for sale on T-Shirts in a shop in NYC. Everyone’s suitably outraged about it, but what I’m wondering is whether or not these people – most of whom have their work at dA – are aware that they actually don’t own the exclusive rights to their work any more. Anything uploaded at dA becomes the moneymaking property of, well, dA.  It’s quite possible that dA has on sold work to this third party; they’ve done it before (alternately, the shop owners may just be dicks). A few months ago my boyfriend found a bunch of computer dust covers advertised as having ‘deviantART artwork’ on them. dA can basically on sell as much of your stuff as they want, and you can’t get stroppy at them. For those of you who don’t believe me (sorry about the legalese, but bear with it a moment);

In the event that we have sublicensed your materials to another website, it is your responsibility to have your materials removed from that website and you will not hold us responsible or liable if the other website refuses to remove your materials. […] Artist hereby grants to deviantART a worldwide, royalty-free non-exclusive license to do the following things during the Term: (a) to prepare and encode Artist Materials, or any portion thereof for digital transmission, manipulation and exhibition in any format and by any means now known or hereafter devised; (b) to display, copy, reproduce, exhibit, publicly perform, broadcast, rebroadcast, transmit, retransmit, distribute through any electronic means (including analog and digital), and electronically publish any or all of the Artist Materials, including any portion thereof, and to include them in compilations for such purposes, by any and all means and media now known or hereafter devised (for avoidance of doubt, the rights granted to deviantART hereunder include the rights to make Artist Materials available on deviantART Site(s) and/or third-party websites); (c) to modify, adapt, change or otherwise alter the Artist Materials (e.g., change the size); and (d) the right to sublicense to any third party the Artist Materials or any part or element thereof subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. […] Artist hereby grants to deviantART (i) a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use during the Term Artist’s name(s), group name, photograph and/or likeness(es) and biographical materials […] Artist also agrees not to assert any privacy, publicity, moral or similar rights held by Artist (and any other person(s) whose performances are embodied in the Artist Materials) under the laws of the United States and any other country in connection with the exploitation of such materials.

Quoted From: dA policy

What does this mean? My law is a leetle rusty, but basically I think it means dA has the same legal rights over your artwork as you do (ie. they can on sell it, put it on a t-shirt, use it with impunity, and so forth).

Incidentally, while I’m at it, most free web hosts – including places like Geocities – have similar, or often times worse agreements. It’s very hard to display art on the web while still retaining full and exclusive ownership and control of it.

Just something for you all to get even more paranoid over.

• Tags » copyright, deviantart, dramallama, law and order degree, teh lulz
• Music » Malice Mizer, "Illuminati"