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DeviantartdeviantART is a web site launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Angelo Sotira and Matt Stephens. It aims at providing a central location for artists to display their creations for feedback and public exposure. It puts an emphasis on digital works as pieces of art rather than just desktop eye candy. It also hosts prose, poetry, photography, Flash exhibits, cell phone art, traditional art, wallpapers, fonts, stock photography, program related tutorials, skins for more than 105 applications and a recently added section for Artisan Crafts. deviantART's focus is placed not on merely being a place to store and retrieve art, but also on providing artists everywhere with a community in which they can interact - providing them with a plethora of interactive areas (like forums, a shoutbox, IRC and weblog-like journal features). deviantART, Inc., the proprietor of the deviantArt website, also has a print service called deviantART Prints (previously known as deviantPrints). The Prints service allows a user to sell prints of their art ranging in sizes from post-card size images, to large, 20x30 inch posters. They also have recently launched a service which allows users to print their images on a wide variety of products, ranging from mouse pads to coffee mugs to puzzles. At one point there was also a monthly online magazine known as devMAG, but this has since been discontinued. On August 7, 2004, deviantART's fourth anniversary, deviantART v4 (aka 'Fournando') was unveiled, with quite major visual modifications (introducing tabs for more modern browsers, among other things), modifications to the message center and a real-time updating flash-based chat room, dAmn (standing for deviantART Messaging Network). As of March 6, 2005, deviantART has approximately 10,686,260 deviations (art pieces) with one new deviation (piece of art) every few seconds. It also has over 1 million deviants (users), making it one of the largest communities on the internet. As of yet, their search engine is only available to members, but hopefully that will soon be modified. deviantART as a Corporation In recent years, deviantART, Inc., made its transition into a more transparent profit-driven corporation (with the newly revamped store and several other revenue-generating enterprises, including more invasive advertisements). In April 2003 deviantART, Inc. was revealed to have been a for-profit corporation from its inception (instead of having, for instance, started out as a volunteer made website such as Elfwood or GFXArtist). With the introduction of deviantART v3 on 7 August 2003, at least two features were removed for non-paying members/subscribers: 1. the ability to search through submission (dA claims it causes a massive slowdown) and 2. the ability to view artwork thumbnails in the user's message centre. There have also been minor concerns regarding deviantART Prints, due to its relatively high mark-up (50% of profit, or 90% for free users). Copyright Issue There has been controversy about deviantART, Inc.'s use of uploaded art as the license all "deviants" agree to upon signing up for website is written like other legal documents and as such uses legalese. DeviantART, Inc.'s stated policy can be found in the Help File. Another widely debated issue is stolen art--taking other people's artwork and claiming it as one's own. While deviantART, Inc.'s administrators do their best to find and remove stolen art, pieces do slip through. The site policy considers tracing of another picture to be original art (as tracing can be a major means by which artists improve), even if the picture is claimed to be a new sketch and not a copy. Publicly attacking "art thieves" is against the deviantART, Inc. corporate code of conduct and as such is grounds for banning. Other legal and ethical concerns There are some concerns about a chilling effect in the manner in which deviantART, Inc. applies its ban policies. These concerns stem in part from the presentation of deviantArt as a "Community" similar to Elfwood (see above), when in fact deviantART, Inc., is a for-profit corporation. As an example, deviantART, Inc., has a policy that the reason for a particular ban will not be given out to the general public to protect the privacy of the banned user; but in a "Community", one basic step would at least to post that reason on the webpage of the banned "Community Member", as deviantART, Inc., already modifies the way the "Community Member" ID is displayed - a modern form of the Scarlet Letter. The dichotomy existing between the "Community" deviantART is advertised and promoted as, as opposed to the absolute for-profit corporate control of the website, is egregiously exemplified by the 43-page manual giving more details on the policies for banning "Community" members (id est, customers). In a "Community", such a manual - which amounts to an unpublished extension to the terms of service - would be made available to the "Community", just as legal statutes and city ordinances can be freely found online. However, DeviantART, Inc., states that these additional, unpublished Terms cannot be made available due to their "sensitive material" contents. Artists whose work is in the realm of social or political criticism - which may ultimately include all art - are therefore unsure about what will be found offensive, as the reasons given by deviantART, Inc. in their published terms of service (the agreement that users accept when signing up for deviantART, Inc. corporate services, also located at http://help.deviantart.com/212/ ) often do not appear to apply to the work that other "Community" members are banned for. Affected artists may face the loss both of money paid to deviantART, Inc. as a subscription, as well as income from the deviantART, Inc. prints service; in addition, as deviantART has achieved the status of a "category killer", similar in market control to eBay, Inc., artists may be denied the most effective current avenue to express and promote their work. Although deviantART, Inc. states that all banned users may appeal their banning through links given when they are informed of their ban, this does not rectify the chilling effects on artists who have not been banned: the only way to find out the true terms of service is to have transgressed one of the private rules in the secret 43-page manual. External links - http://www.deviantart.com/ deviantART, Inc. home page.
- http://shop.deviantart.com/ deviantART, Inc. store.
- http://deviantmag.com/ deviantMAG. (defunct)
- http://spyed.deviantart.com/journal/609173/ History of deviantART, Inc. by Angelo Sotira.
- irc://irc.deviantart.com deviantART, Inc. IRC server. Official channel is #devart
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