"Royalty-free describes (typically graphics such as stock photography and icons, but also sound such as music loop samples) that may be used for profit, without paying royalties."

- Wikipedia

That's true, and it's not any sort of early April fools joke. The art is gone, the scraps are gone, even the favs are gone!!! (that doesn't mean I don't like them anymore, it's just annoying to have people like "wow you have a nice gallery (...) oh, sorry I didn't realize it was your favorites)

I wasn't going to submit but I ckecked the new submission agreement and WHAT THE HECK?

"6. Unless otherwise agreed between Artist and deviantART in a writing from deviantART, the license granted to deviantART under this Agreement is royalty-free."

what the fuck? now you must pay them otherwise they practically OWN your work?

really, even if I may have misread it, I think they say they claim Royalty-Free right at least 3 times... and none of them seems to be 100% clear. How can one rely on a submission agreement that is totally devoid of clarity and straight-forwardness?


like:
"a) Artist has the full right and power to enter into and perform this Agreement and to grant deviantART all rights to use the Artist Materials as contemplated in this Agreement, including, without limitation, the license grants in Sections 3, 4 and 5,"

???????????????????????????????????????????????

this is not me suddendly bitching about the agreement...

the 9 things I hate the most about DA (because unfortunately I coudn't find 1 more):

1 - Submission Agreement: Well I've said it alreay, and I know the administration will at a certain point try to explain what everything means in an obscure journal entry of one of the admins. If they've got nothing to hide, why don't they make the damn thing easier to understand? Regardless, the amount of times they say "Royalty free" when reffering to the site's rights doesn't make me feel comfortable at all.

2 - Daily Top Favorites: The true showdown of lack of respect. Any art community decent enough would have this crap removed or fully reformulated. There was a time it would show interesting new artists, when DA wasn't much of a fav-fest as it is today, now it's only good for showing the same overhyped artists over and over again.

3 - Prints: Something I totally fail to understand is why in hell do so many people sell prints here... Really, ripping off the printing costs plus 50% of liquid profit, and yet have a setup fee... FOR A PRINT-ON-DEMAND SERVICE? Damn, I can understand why when publishing a book or cd the artist will get around 10-15% profit because the publisher will have to go through mass-production, translation, advertisement, transportation. But the prints means you will just leave the thing there and they'll wait to be bought and THEN they'll print and sell.. It's totally not worth the money they ask for. Heck, I could easily set up a CafePress store and pay no setup fee, yet rip 100% profit above base cost (and one day I still might), why should I sell anything here?

4 - Site structure: A lot has changed since I first visited this place. At that time they would show up a lot of recent deviations, it was a good place to see different artists, but now the recent reviations went from 12 to only 5, and yet favorite prints got added. Then also there used to be favorites when browsing each category, now there's top-selling prints?

5 - Daily Deviations: This thing should be renamed to "Deviations picked by biased admins". I can count on my fingers the times I checked and there wasn't any naked or half-naked women photo in it, at the sametime I can count on my fingers there was sci-fi art, original 3d works, and many other things that are constantly overlooked in this place. Yet not mentioning they don't seem to take a look at the user they're spotlighting, as they often give DDs to popular artists over and over or give DDs to people who do not care, like "Deviation comments: 20". If they cared about making this a spotlight for a variety of artists it would be good, but it seems the concept is completely absent.

6 - People: There are, and it seems da cares none, heckbucketloads of people like "oooh I'm popular so I'm gonna stomp my fans". I'm sick of people who receive a lot of praise yet treat all their fans like bitches, and make a load of personal rules like they own this place. And it seems that there is a bunch of IQ-lacking people around as well. Basically they simply submit to that, because they want to be friends with "P0puL4hr 4rt157" and when someone shows up who's actually interested in this person's work the guy in question does not care, because he wants to be "P0puL4hr" and he can't mix with such "lowlings"...

7 - Numbers: To begin with, there shoudn't be any AT ALL. Even though I think it's fun to be random at times to say "aahh ____ pageviews" I really hate to see things like "Wow ___ pageviews! you must be a great artist!". Damn I've seen a lot of people with 100k+ who cant draw anything besides cheap anime chibis or sonic characters and also people with 20k- you'd look and say "I wish I was that skilled". Like the DTFs, a DECENT art site would have this shoved off a long time ago.

8 - Search function: "Due to overwhelming demand, the search function is disabled for the time being" Was that some sort of retarded joke? The thing got down for like, over an year and a half!!! And you know why? Because it helps to see overlooked artists. And that's not what they want. All they want is to spotlight popular artists so they can make money from their prints. If they actually cared about it they would have it back in 1,2 month tops, AND they would at least have the decency to allow filter by category.

9 - Spotlight programs: Really, where are they? Many sites around hold the equalyzing of users as a major concern, while DA does only a few programs that are very shy and hardly even supported by the admins. IT could have been fixed with Daily Deviations, but the only admin that seems concerned with the subject is ^neoikeia, the rest being pervs who like to DD nude girls.

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Seriously, if you're reading this because this journal popped up in your message center, I have nothing against you. Actually you guys were the only reason I didn't leave at least 1 year ago. I feel bad to let you down but I really can't take it anymore.

When I joined this place I saw lots of artists becoming friends with each other, interaction and such... now all that I see is a capitalist cesspool of ass-kissing... I'm still around but not here anymore. All my stuff got transferred to my sheezyart account if you want to look (except stuff so ugly I really didn't want to keep).

What I see in DeviantArt today is an loathsome arrogant giant destined to its self-destruction, just like ICQ... It all starts when other similar services get better in all aspects except userbase. and SheezyArt is CERTAINLY better thant DA in both speed and features. Heck, they even allow music while DA hardly allows flash animations!

I bet some day there will be sites that will see no problem with huge movies and downloadable games, and also cheaper print services. That day Deviantart will die and I'll be having a nice grin on my face. And I'll help to speed up the process with most pleasure.....

It sads me also to be leaving elfwood... I think that place is an awesome art site, specially in the community aspect... I just don't have the patience to keep up with it...

I'll still hang around for a while and keep checking what some of you are doing, don't know how long, but simply abandoning you all of sudden is somethind I woudn't do.

For now I need to browse around SA and see how many of you are there... if you are, please tell me!

All in all, any of you who have stopped by and payed attention, you have been awesome. But's it's time to move on. Art is to be shown in art galleries. Leave the capitalist communities to the mercenaries.

now, good bye guys!!!
and BURN IN HELL Deviantart!!!