You remember that post about the homestuck t-shirt design contest collaborating with hot topic? And how Hot Topic are the biggest art thieves? This is recent. As you can see above, I stumbled upon Hot Topic’s website and they are selling a very popular fan art put on a t-shirt, and did not ask permission from the original artist (rismo).
This shows Hot Topic still continues their art thievery. Hot Topic are still taking art from artists without their permission. This is disrespectful and appalling.
EXCEPT YOU DID GIVE THEM YOUR PERMISSION.
BY AGREEING TO TERMS AND CONDITIONS ON DEVIANT ART.
THEY SOLD IT TO A THIRD PARTY ROYALTY-FREE.
woah oops deleting my deviantart account
*instantly puts logo on my best pictures*
Oh for frick’s sake… ._.
I trusted you deviantart.
Fine print is so fascinating – – –
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW? THIS IS THE BIGGEST LOAD OF GOD DAMN FUCKING BULLSHIT I’VE EVER SEEN.
FUCK THIS SITE. SRSLY CONSIDERING DELETING MY ENTIRE ACCOUNT ON PRINCIPLE ALONE
…wOW.
This is basically why companies like Hasbro can get away with art theft, like the whole fanart theft thing that happened last year
This is horrifying and why it’s so damn important not to just gloss over the Terms of Agreement.
This alone makes me feel that people are better off going to another website. Deviantart is the biggest art website that I can think of, but if getting a DA account means agreeing to people selling your hard work without your permission and royalty-free, you have to wonder if it’s really worth it.
I think this needs to be spread.
Say what? Oh no. OH NO.
From line 5:
advertising of the Artist Materials, as described in this Agreement, during the Term.5. Limitation Of Rights The rights and licenses granted to deviantART under sections 3 and 4 of this Agreement require deviantART to obtain Artist consent before deviantART makes any commercial agreement with anyone else to separately buy, license, re-sell or re-publish or commercially use any Artist Materials not in association with deviantART but as an individual work of art or as a group of works from a single Artist in isolation from any other works. No additional consent is required for any other licensed uses under this Agreement of Artist Materials either as part of the deviantART Site(s) or in connection with the distribution of content groups from the deviantART Site(s) and/or for uses of the Artist Materials made at the discretion of a visitor to the deviantART Site(s) or other users under agreements with deviantART. deviantART will contact Artist in writing about any individual commercial uses of Artist Materials instigated by deviantART.
6. Payment Unless otherwise agreed between Artist and deviantART in a writing from deviantART, the license
Seems to me if they didn’t ask you, maybe Hot Topic didn’t ask them. All arguments aside, anything posted online can be used by anyone for any purpose, legal or not. DA’s legals are pretty serious, but I wouldn’t climb on them too quickly. If it was as cut and dried as ‘we own your stuff and can sell it with no profit to you’ there wouldn’t be a DeviantArt website for much longer.