STOP SELLING FANART VIA
THE PRINT SYSTEM.
IT'S A VIOLATION OF DEVIANTART'S
COPYRIGHT POLICY.
IT CAN ALSO GET THEM SUED.
AND IT'S ANNOYING.
STOP IT.
THE PRINT SYSTEM.
IT'S A VIOLATION OF DEVIANTART'S
COPYRIGHT POLICY.
IT CAN ALSO GET THEM SUED.
AND IT'S ANNOYING.
STOP IT.
Seriously, there's been an enormous uptick in this lately, particularly in the Inuyasha fandom. My inbox is being flooded with fanart being sold as prints because of all the Inuyasha groups I'm a member or co-admin of. Stop it! If you didn't know it's a ToS violation then that's fine, but remove the print option when you're informed of that ToS violation. Don't whine about it, don't bitch about it, don't cry about everybody else doing it and not getting caught (as if that's supposed to make it okay for some reason...?), don't cuss out the person who notified you of the violation. Just. Remove. The Option. The person informing you of the violation is being nice to you instead of just reporting you and letting the admins bitch at you.
DeviantART makes a profit off of every print or item that is sold through the print system. It is figured into the base price of the print. If you sell copyrighted material through the print system, deviantART automatically makes money off of the sale of that copyrighted material. It can get them sued by the copyright owners. That is no bueno.
Now before you say "WTF, people sell fanart at conventions all the time!!", yes. They do. Conventions are a gray area, though, because licensing companies generally don't care. They don't care because 1) the artwork is only available for an extremely limited time (3-4 days at most), 2) the artwork is only available to a relatively small audience in comparison to, like, Earth, 3) they consider it a little bit of free advertising within the realm of the convention-goers, and 4) the profits made off of that artwork are miniscule in comparison to -- pardon the unintentional pun -- the Big Picture. When that same artwork is sold through DeviantART's print system, though, it is available to the entire world. It is available to the entire world 24/7/365. That's a hell of a lot of difference.
These are the two FAQ's that are directly related to this:
FAQ #743: Can I sell fan art as prints?
:faq827:
Read them. Please. And if you see anyone else doing this, please link them to those two FAQ's (by typing : faq 743: and 827 respectively). Most of the time it's a case of the deviant not being aware of the policy against it. More often than not, though, they ignore you entirely or bitch at you or block you for telling them they're doing something wrong. Please don't be one of those people. Just do it. Please.
