UPDATES FROM $realitysquared : Stock and Brush issues.

Once again we’re here with an update from CEA and this week I’d like to clarify a couple of issues which have come to our attention since the last update.

The first thing I’d like to talk about is the use of stock photography. As anyone who has gone shopping around for stock can tell you there are a very good number of sites which offer stock for sale, in fact it would probably be accurate to say that the number of sites selling stock photographs outweigh the number of legitimate sites offering stock for free.

The stock sites which allow photographers and artists to offer their material for sale are typically “Rights Managed” and offer a variety of licenses. The stock is shown in thumbnail form and sometimes in lower resolutions and is almost always watermarked. When you pay for the stock you acquire a watermark-free high resolution copy of the stock and a license to use that stock item; if you know how Creative Commons works it’s similar only there is money exchanging hands.

Now a problem has come to my attention involving these particular rights managed stock sites where the stock items are offered for sale.

It appears that a bit of misinformation is circulating. This new bit of misinformation says that supposedly the thumbnails or low resolution watermarked display copies of rights managed stock items are “free for use” simply due to the fact that you can see them and often download them.

This belief is incorrect. A rights managed or licensed stock item is a product for sale and nothing about it is being given away. If you are one of those people who believe that the thumbnails and watermarked copies are free for your use I’m afraid that you are sadly mistaken. A product for sale is a product for sale and if you find yourself trying to figure out ways to use that product without having to pay the cost then be aware that you are on the wrong side of things here and the CEA department is going to view your resulting submission as something to be deleted.

Now this problem is also having very disastrous fallout as well.

In the last week we have been forced to remove hundreds of brush sets which were “created” by simply snatching thumbnails from rights managed stock photos and artwork and quickly and automatically converting it to a brush- it’s about as simply as a single button press in most graphics programs nowadays.

To further highlight how little effort went into the creation of some of these brushes some of the sets showed clear signs of where the watermark or copyright mark had been cropped out, covered up or otherwise erased. This has caused us to receive numerous complaints from stock community websites where the original work is offered for sale; these stock artists view every download of these stolen brushes as profit lost to them and they are very correct on that point.

The problem is compounded when these brushes, which should never have been made, are downloaded and used by you in one of your submissions. The complaints that we receive concerning the brushes often extend to complaining about every use of the brushes the victimized stock artist can find which means that because of these so-called brush “artists” who decided to cut some corners and rub out some watermarks you have a very good chance of one of your submissions being deleted through no fault of your own simply because you used their brush set.

While there is little you can do to detect this sort of brush fraud I’d like to ask that if you become aware of a situation like this please report it as soon as possible. The faster we can remove such fraudulent brush sets the fewer innocent artists will be caught in the fallout simply because they used a brush set they assumed was original.



UPDATES FROM $damphyr : Calling out Vs Reporting

Occasionally, a user will find a gallery filled with theft, be it official art, their friend's art, or even naughty photographs, which were uploaded days if not months ago. Users are often angry that this kind of theft is allowed to remain on the site and will rant and rave on the thief's front page about how unfair it is that they are allowed to steal like this. Theft galleries such as this usually have their submissions and user page covered in comments from other users demanding they remove the stolen art while calling them all sorts of colorful names.

So why do galleries such as this, which contain mostly if not entirely stolen artwork, stay up so long?

The reason is simple; most of the time, people get so caught up in yelling "thief!" that they forget to do the one thing they should: Report the theft to the staff.

deviantART is a very big site with millions of submissions and more coming in every second. As busy as the staff keeps, we cannot be everywhere at once, and we rely heavily on the eyes of every-day users to help us find and remove violations. Unfortunately, screaming "thief!" in all caps on someone's user page will not alert the staff that there is a problem, where as pressing the Report Violation button and giving evidence by linking to the original image will.

So next time you see a gallery filled with stolen art and a lynch mob demanding the user remove the submissions, do the original artist and the staff a favor: Avoid the drama and just press the report button. I guarantee things will go much more quickly and smoothly!


Further reading:
FAQ #155: How do I report a submission which I think breaks the rules?
FAQ #192: What evidence is required when we report stolen material?
FAQ #302: Why did I receive some sort of administrative action when someone else did not?