Well, I have restrained myself from writing various journals for a reason - you don't get to see my user info until after you've scrolled a bit. But from this point forward, it doesn't really matter to me anymore.

A little background on myself - As of writing this, I am a 4th year Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) bachelor's of science student with a Digital Arts minor. Intentions are to graduate by June of 2008. My future plans are to hopefully get into a career that I will enjoy, what that will be I haven't figured out yet/still. And eventually go to grad school. I am currently involved in researching MMOs, Guild Wars specifically, and would find writing a gaming PhD thesis that gets accepted for a PhD degree most interesting.

Aside from the technical grind of staring at code, studying late into the night, and figuring out various theories, I tend to need an outlet. Sometimes it's in the form of playing games (the most convenient), sometimes watching anime (the next most convenient), other times writing or drawing (based on muse). After hesitating for a bit, I finally joined DA. That was a few years ago - this is my second account (the first is no longer updated, much like this one shall be).

This DA account was an experiment in seeing how much visibility an anonymous next-to-/below-average artist would get. I have been disappointed, thinking maybe Serenity would be the "big break" but no one seemed to like it, and my attitude has eventually turned apathetic. That's the essence of my results. I don't have time to participate in the community activities, nor do I have the interest, but I have always understood DA as a community site and have not had many problems with other users.

DA has become the common ground where I can post a piece of work and link to it from various places (ie blog, IM, etc.). I post lengthy comments because of my IB Art class in high school where we had mini critiques of our work. I have to say it bothers me when other artists put smiley faces or just a few words about their very fine artwork - I'm interested in your method, or its meaning, please share your thoughts!

But that is irrelevant. Recently I posted an image that was a project for a digital arts class. My intention was to post the remaining four images throughout this week, and I even did my best to compose and keep track of each stock image I used. Apparently that was not enough, as Portal (now deleted) infringed on copyright and was automatically removed. I still have the six +fav notes and the two comments I received.

So why do I not fight against it? First off, it's an automated message that's outdated. Unless I missed the Copyright Violation Inquiry selection in the inquiry page late last night, it's an outdated message. For those who have never seen the message, here it is:


Your deviation was removed due to violation of one of the following policies:

An administrator has removed your deviation as being a violation of copyright.

Your submissions may not contain material or images which were not created entirely through your own effort; this means that you cannot simply collect photographs, artworks and other images, writings or scans from printed books/magazines and submit them to your account. You are not allowed to submit “reworked”, “edited” or otherwise “modified” material which you obtained from other sources.

This behavior is known as plagiarism, copyright infringement, or by the slang term of "ripping" and is an illegal behavior. Your submissions and all the material within it must have been created entirely by your own hand and through your own effort.

If you continue to violate our copyright policy your account may be suspended for a period of time or banned.

If you feel this removal was in error, or have questions regarding it, then please visit the deviantART Help Desk in order to submit a Copyright Violation Inquiry. Be certain to include the above link and title of your deviation in your inquiry for a prompt response.

Please do not reply to this note as it is an automated process and will not be answered and please do not bring these issues into the Forums or other areas of deviantART.


Now, I could have sworn I put this piece in Photo Manipulation -> Fantasy. And yet, the description of this message says, in essence, I cannot manipulate photos and upload it to DA. Although, I have seen it happen. Haven't you?

So why me? Well, after pondering about it last night, I realized maybe I missed crediting an artist. I don't know how other artists do their photo manips, this was my first time. I did my best to document each and every image I took. In the end, I had some images that were not used so I went through my list to find the source/user and removed it. It is possible I may have accidentally removed someone.

But back to DA being a community site. If I had forgotten to credit someone or multiple someones (it could happen), and if some kind user were to point out that I had missed someone and gave me a link, I would not mind editing my comments and sending a note. I would be rather grateful as I am only human and not an automated machine, as society is increasing leaning towards.

I was also fairly certain that all of the images I used were stock and clearly labeled as so. I mentioned "other sources" in my comments as a kind of fall-back in case I did miss someone. It is also possible that I missed crediting a stock website. When you have a large amount of images that you gathered, used only a few, it gets confusing who to credit for sure, as I've mentioned above. But, well, DA is strict for a reason and that impedes on my willingness to share my creative products.

I should not be so discouraged from my first foray in submitting a photo manip, but I do not want another disturbing message (which completely ruined my night) waiting for me because I did something wrong according to an admin. I should inquire as to what happened that I deserved this letter, but there are inherent system problems that I do not agree with and would much rather leave than continue to deal with the constant fear.

Out of respect for the various stock providers with various rules on this and that, I will not be posting the remainder of my projects from my digital arts class on photobucket/other image site for the public to view. I would have loved to share these images, while not as impressive as the first one, they still consumed a bit of time and effort that I wanted to share them. It disappoints me that I must refrain from doing so on into the future.

BTW, if you are interested in getting +favs and a little bit of visibility, you can try your hand at photo manips. Be sure that you have time to send notes to everyone you got stocks from - that was the most daunting part for me and what pretty much kept me from uploading for a while. And when I did spend time doing that, it got deleted anyway. Go figure.

So if you managed to read this so far, grats. It is a rather lengthy post and to come to a conclusion, since DA still does not support complete closing of accounts, I have decided rather than delete every single piece I've uploaded, I just won't be contributing my pieces to share here. I am still working out a method where I can use my own server (and a bit of CompSci geekiness) to post my own work with descriptions that's fully customizable for myself.

I would like to thank for her support in various stages that this account (and myself) has been through. As well as the kind user, , who commented instead of just hitting the +fav button (and not saying a thing) because that's what was promised. And the random user, , who caught the image before it's removal, although it's entirely possible she provided one of the stock images on another account. Hard to tell, right?

Well then, as we gamers will say: Happy Hunting.