Did you know that dA doesn’t think that fractalists own the parameters to their images? That in their eyes, an image made from someone else’s parameters isn’t art theft? Well, it’s true and I’ll explain. It will take a moment, so please bear with me.

(I won’t be naming names in this article. Some of you will know exactly who the players are and some of you will have no idea whatsoever. That’s okay, because the background of what I’m going to tell you isn’t as important as the outcome.)

A few weeks ago, a deviant was discovered to have used other people’s parameters to make those people’s images and then posted the images as their own. In some cases the images were uploaded exactly as the other people had made them and in some cases this particular deviant cropped the images and/or changed the gradients a bit, but in the end, the images posted were stolen. Some were even the property of other deviants! This deviant took the kudos and praise which never belonged to them.

Eventually, another deviant realized that this person had stolen their images and asked the offender to remove the images from their gallery. The offending deviant complied. More people asked the deviant to remove their images as well and again, the deviant complied. In the end, it turned out that the offending deviant had uploaded hundreds of stolen images!

The deviant admitted to have taken the parameters from a mailing list for one particular fractal program. The deviant removed all of their stolen images from their gallery and acted as if what they had done was no big deal. To real fractalists, however, this was, is and should be a huge deal.

The deviant was reported as an art thief. Notes were sent to and from various angry deviants (me included) and the administrators. Proof of theft was produced. It was irrefutable proof, by the way, in the form of some of the original images which were on the websites of the original artists and in a few cases, the copyrighted parameters for some of the images. No one who knows about parameters could have failed to see that the offending deviant’s images were the property of others.

Or so you’d think.

One of the people who were incensed at the scale of the theft was directly responsible for providing all of that proof and continued to push the admins to ban this thieving deviant. Nothing was done. More notes were sent. Still nothing was done. The final straw came just recently, in a note sent to the angered deviant by one of the admins:

“The evidence offered by *LaPurr seemed to indicate that the alleged 'thief' was simply plugging in numbers and parameters into a fractal generating program which were obtained elsewhere.
This is not considered theft.”

WHAT?!? Excuse me? That’s not theft? What do they consider it to be if not outright theft? Anyone who makes fractals knows that the parameters ARE the image! The series of letters and/or numbers which constitute a parameter set will, if opened in another copy of the program, reproduce the original image exactly. But to the admins, parameters mean nothing. In their eyes, there was no theft and nothing should be done to punish the thief. This site seems to care little about theft by one of their members.

To say that I’m outraged is to put it mildly…very mildly. In my opinion, the thief should be banned for life. Period.

I wanted to make you all aware that if someone manages to get hold of the parameters for one of your images, such as the parameters available on the Ultra Fractal mailing list, they can reproduce one of your images, upload it to dA and nothing will be done to them. The parameters do not belong to you as far as dA is concerned.

I would really appreciate it if one of you who are more adept than I at the mathematics of fractals would take it upon themselves to note the help desk and explain just why parameter theft is image theft; I can’t explain it in such a way as to make non-fractalists understand.

A ripped image is a ripped image is a ripped image and the thief who stole so many fractals needs to be banned from here. Now.