So about a month ago, I was trolling for deviants who steal art. That photo of a tree from the Vista wallpapers is a pet peeve of mine, and I routinely hound people who've appropriated it as their own without due permissions. Came across one during that search a month ago on the site of a 'new' deviant account. The person had it listed up as digital art, even though it had obviously been uploaded just as the wallpaper photo had been taken. Rather than report it right away, I played a little game- asked the person what 'digital' effects they'd applied to the photograph. No reply.

Curious, I bumble around their gallery, and turns out the person is a Pokemon fan- loves Absol most of all, I guess. (Whatever that is.) The remainder of this person's gallery was populated with various artwork of this character. And so I wondered to myself....if one submission was guilty of art theft, then perhaps the rest of them might be as well. Off to Google I traipsed, and sure enough, on the first two pages of an image search, nearly every one of the 'original submissions' from this person's gallery appeared. Same pixel dimensions, same size....one even had the original artists' signature still in the submitted deviation. Pathetic.

Apparently, I was not the only one to notice this problem. By the time I'd realized that the whole gallery was plagiarized from google images, a few other people had commented on this person's homepage about the issue. One even posted up the FAQ that defines what constitutes art theft. Kudos. I left a reply to that comment in support of those who try to prevent people from pulling this crap on dA. Naturally, the negative attention was not received well by the 'artist'. This person ranted and raved that we were all persecuting him/her and flaming him/her for no good reason because all the artwork was original and drawn by him/herself. Went so far as to post several journal entries about it, all swearing up and down that the artwork was original and that anyone who commented about it not being so were being spiteful and had no cause to persecute him/her.

I think that's the part that angers me the most- that this person had blatantly stolen the artwork of other people, and then when caught, wasn't responsible enough to own up to having done it. Okay, so this person was only twelve years old, according to him/her testimony. That's still old enough to know right from wrong and what constitutes theft. And if he/she didn't know, once it was explained, he/she has no excuse to hold onto lies in the hopes that it would all become quietly swept aside and ignored without consequence.

This is why I don't think that accounts on dA should be given to anyone under sixteen. I would say eighteen, but I don't think that I'd ever be able to realistically expect that to happen. But I think that the site ought to push for a minimum age limit of sixteen. I'm personally of the opinion that there's no reason for a twelve-year-old kid to have webpages in the first place, in all honesty. I know mine won't have them. There's no reason for it, and allowing it only opens to doors to all sorts of unwanted problems. But in particular, they don't belong on this site. I don't think that they have the mental maturity to contribute to what is supposed to be an artistic community. A rare few might- but I think for the sake of all our sanity, I'd rather wait until they were sixteen than to deal with hordes of people like the person I'm describing in the previous story. Things are slippery enough as it is with people who are old enough to know better.

To finish the story, however, it does have a vindicating ending. In the midst of replying to the comment about theft on this person's account, I reported what I felt was the clearest of the violations- easiest to prove as well. Got an update about it today that dA addressed the issue and pulled down all submissions from that person's gallery that violated dA regulations. (Which encompassed the whole of this person's gallery minus an avatar.) I'm glad that all of the submissions were pulled down, because this person had no business posting them in the first place. For the millionth time I shout aloud...dA is not Photobucket.


Rage more, Mary Brave, rage more.