Those who have been with us throughout 2008 and longer and who regularly follow the news and site changes should remember that during the early months of 2008 the system which the community uses to report cases of theft, unacceptable content and other issues involving deviations underwent a complete overhaul and rebuild in order better serve the needs of both the community and the staff.

We like to believe that our reporting system here at deviantART represents one of the best and easiest to use systems available to an artistic community and we are proud to see that the deviantART community demonstrates such awareness for artists rights that it is used with great frequency to report cases of copyright infringement, unauthorized use and just plain old blatant theft.

It’s no secret that because our community strives so diligently in this area that the reports often become backlogged which forces the staff to attempt to handle them in an order or priority rather than a first-reported-first-handled basis.

One situation which we always wish to place at the highest priority are those cases where you are reporting theft or misuse of your own work and we have made a modification to our reporting system to help us identify these particular cases.

The reporting procedure now features an option to report Theft of MY Work as well as an option to report Art Theft (General).

The option of reporting Art Theft (General) is open to anyone to report any case of unauthorized use or theft, it doesn’t have to be your work specifically. So if you are the proactive type who wants to watch out for the rights of your friends or favorite artists or you just want to help point out violations of the deviantART copyright policy then this is the category which you have always used and which you should continue to use in the future.

On the other hand, if you have found your own being used without permission we encourage you to use the option to report Theft of MY Work. This new option will tag your report differently and will enable the staff to identify it quickly and easily for immediate review

The system which is also intuitive enough that if you report theft of your own work using this new option and your friends or other concerned artists report the theft using the (General) option then the separate reports will be combined into a higher priority case.

With these additions to our reporting system we hope that we will make it easier for artists to enforce their rights with their own works while also allowing their friends and fans to assist in them.