'Inkblots': "The Dilemma of Deviant Art"

[bobalmond]

My third column of Inkblots was posted at First Comics News regarding inkers and the social network for artists DeviantArt:
www.firstcomicsnews.com/?p=13403


Last April a fellow ink artist on the Inkwell Yahoo group mailing list The
Inkwell mentioned that his page on Deviant Art was closed down because he didn't
follow their copyright policy. When he inquired about the matter for more info
he received the following which I subsequently attached to a message and sent
off to DA myself as I was also curious since I had just literally set up a
bare-bones page there and wondered if I should bother to continue with it:


"BobAlmond, Apr 09 06:14 am (PDT):
Is this still a policy?

Your deviations were 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.

Attachments to this comment:
inkwellawards.jpg"

In addition, the following statement was attached to their email:


"Ticket #46461: inquiry on copyright policy
Hi,
Your Copyright Infringement Notice (#46461) has been received and is now in
queue awaiting review by a deviantART Customer Service Representative.

Please be aware that in order for your notice to be considered valid you must be
the copyright owner of the infringed work or their legally authorized
representative and your notice must comply with the format dictated by the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as outlined in the deviantART Copyright
Policy which is available at about.deviantart.com/policy/copyright/

If your notice does not comply with the required DMCA format you may correct
this while your support ticket is in queue awaiting review by deviantART
Customer Service.

If your notice does not comply with DMCA standards, or if you are confused about
the process, a member of deviantART Customer Service will instruct you as to
which information and statements you must provide.

To review the status of your Copyright Infringement Notice and add additional
comments or information please follow the link below:
support.deviantart.com/tickets/46461"

I received the following prompt reply that day, although the bulk of it is
slapping me for misfiling my inquiry (my bad) :

"realitysquared, Apr 09 08:21 am (PDT):
Thank you for contacting deviantART, I will be assisting you with your support
ticket.

My apologies but you have misfiled your support ticket as a 'DMCA Copyright
Infringement Notice'. Since you are not filing a claim of copyright infringement
but are instead trying to appeal actions taken by our staff in your deviantART
gallery your ticket should have been as a 'Policy Inquiry'; please try to file
your support tickets correctly so that you can receive prompt assistance from
the proper department.

There is no need for you to file a new ticket since we will simply continue
using this one but please remember this for future tickets which you may file.

The text that you quoted in your support ticket appears to be from one of our
automated notices and as such would indicate that the statements made therein
represent current deviantART policy."

I responded with:

"BobAlmond, Apr 09 08:34 am (PDT):
This was not 'my' ticket....another inker had this sent to him and had his page
wiped....he posted this text on an inker mailing list for others to see and
other inkers said that they've heard of this 'problem'' with inkers. As such, if
this is the policy, I will be canceling my DA page.
Bob Almond"

And ultimately I got this answer later that day:

"realitysquared, Apr 12 06:46 am (PDT):
You are not particularly clear in your reply, but from what you have said I
would assume that this "inker" simply took sketches and drawings that were the
work of another artist and "inked" them without first obtaining proper
permission to do so.

This practice is in violation of our copyright policy since you must obtain a
proper license to use any material which you intend to use ("ink") before you
submit it to your deviantART gallery."

Ultimately, their policy is saying that you cannot post inked art on your DA
page if it was penciled by someone else and permission was not received from
this party, which means you can't use the image as a portfolio piece on your DA
page which is commonly used for promotional reasons by the artists. But by
definition the INKERS job is to ink another artist's/penciller's drawing. And
the best way to display that skill is to compare the two side-by-side. (In
fact, when inkers inquire about doing professional work, this is why some
publishers will supply them with photocopies of pencil art so as to later review
the inked submissions.) So an inker wouldn't be allowed to post inked art OR
the art pencilled by another artist.
(Incidentally, I do not know if the ink artist was selling the inked art but my
impression is that he didn't so we won't factor that aspect into this discussion
as that's a different can of worms.)

I think most artists would agree that fledgling inkers trying to collect the
permission from pencillers is problematic at best, and not easy for established
ink artists either (not to say that inkers on DA haven't done this). I asked a
friend who is both an art collector and an attorney what he thought and he
acknowledged that Deviant Art, or it's lawyers, are clearly ignorant about the
craft and artists of inking. Now mind you, there are a LOT of inkers with a
Deviant Art page, many notable professionals. The artist who shared the above
info with me believes that someone complained and that's what set the DA hounds
on his case. So does this mean that the ink artists there are potentially one
complaint away, legitimate or not, from having their page deleted? So if you
pissed someone off online or at a show, should you be paranoid that your page
will disappear one day?

Due to I disagreeociation with my non-profit organization The Inkwell Awards (which
I did tip off in my first message), I quit my DA page.
But this dilemma has gnawed at me as the practice seemed unfair to me. The
Inkwell Awards, the single advocacy for inking and its artists, exist in part
due to misinformation and confusion like this. And allowing that practice to
continue without addressing it seemed regrettable to me. If there's no evidence
of sales being made on the page with this scenario, I see no good reason why the
images cannot be used in a manner of displaying one's portfolio work to obtain
work. And should there be an issue of some sort, Deviant Art should probably
investigate the evidence before nuking the time and effort that the artist made
in that community. Let's see if common sense can eventually prevail.

----------------
The third annual Inkwell Awards voting ballot is now posted online and
accessible at their website at www.inkwellawards.com The winners will be
announced at the live awards ceremony sponsored by Wizard Entertainment and
taking place at Wizardworld: New England (Boston) at the Hynes Convention Center
on the weekend of October 15-17
(http://www.wizardworld.com/home-newengland.html). DeviantArt inkers are
proudly welcomed!

[bobalmond]

And here's the sequel:
www.firstcomicsnews.com/?p=13874

A couple of weeks back I wrote an Inkblots article “The Dilemma of Deviant Art” informing the ink artist community that they may want to simply be aware of the strict policies concerning copyright at Deviant Art (DA) and it’s repercussions for not obtaining a “proper license” to use material from another artist (the pencillers, in this example) before posting it on their site. This led to further discussion on The Inkwell Yahoo Mailing List Group where I’d first discovered about the artist who’s DA page had been deleted due to said violation of their policy and he further contributed to the discussion thread. The next day David Brothers of Comics Alliance posted a follow-up article “Deviant Art versus Comic Book ‘Inkers’. Wait, What?“ with reader responses emphasizing the limitations in the policy in regards to, not just inkers, but all collaborative measures such as jam pieces/remixing and colorists portfolio samples. This article was mostly duplicated at Comics Related “Is Deviant Art Anti-inker”? and I replied to a blog response on the matter at Dwight Williams’ ‘On the DEWline’.
A few days later fan-favorite artist Tim Townsend addressed the matter on his DA journal “LISTEN UP! (regarding the DA/ anti-inker thing)”
in order to calm the community, reporting that there’s been a bit of an uproar with inkers in arms against what seemed to be an anti-inker mindset at DA when there shouldn’t be (no surprise, though, why that happened when you read the titles of those previous-mentioned articles, ha!) He agreed that the admin’ who replied to my original inquiry “chose his words poorly and has little to no understanding of what inking is” and he relayed that a spokesperson at the site’s administration department said “that the admin’ involved has been away for the last week and will address the matter head-on upon his return”.
I wasn’t aware of the controversy but I think it’s great that artists are talking about this. While there hasn’t been an official response from DA at this time as far as I know, I want to reemphasize that as the founder and director of the Inkwell Awards, the sole inking non-profit advocacy who’s mission is to promote and educate about the oft-misunderstood craft of inking and to recognize it’s ink artists, my reaction to hearing the DA admin’s policy response was one of surprise (as I’d recently started a DA page of my own, now subsequently cancelled by me), and my goal was to simply and responsibly inform the community. I did so after confirming with an informed friend that I wasn’t doing any harm with posting my article. Never did I imply that DA was against inkers or that this was a universal DA ‘inker-cide’. I wasn’t suggesting a boycott, either, so much as give a plain heads-up to members and potential members to consider and choose their own options. I have learned over the years from artist friends and associates that DA is a wonderful, dedicated, and beneficial art community, which is why I originally joined. But in my opinion as an ink artist of over eighteen years is that this admin’ was indeed misinformed if not seemingly ignorant of the craft and that the presented policy, as is, would only lead to other occasional page wipes, something I still find to be severe without any investigation of the ‘offender’ for benefit of the doubt considering the circumstances. Unlike pencil art that can be conceived without a script, unless the entire art is by one artist, inking (and coloring, etc.) is a collaborative process where one is reliant on the work of another artist to display one’s own skill in that craft. This is how inkers display their portfolios with samples of pencils and inks side-by-side. Each artist of an overall work has an equal claim to it as long as the artists are credited. (the artist originally penalized was not selling the work as ‘his own’ as prints, or whatnot, so that scenario wasn’t a factor and he always credited the pencillers.)
So for what it’s worth, I think DA needs to tweak their policy with an addendum so that artists can properly acknowledge the other artists who contributed to a piece (for an inker, the penciller; for the colorist, the penciller and the inker unless one and the same). As long as the inker who wasn’t part of the original art process (such as subsequent blueline/vellum/lightbox versions) doesn’t try to sell the work on DA without authorization from the original artists and s’he’s credited the work properly, I think that they should be able to display their work on DA. Should crediting be wrong or non-existant or there’s unauthorized selling of said work, then I could see some discipline being activated (although in my humble opinion I think that the heavens shouldn’t fall on them for just one offense, but that might just be me). This would limit any knee-jerk reactions to a lone complaint that might appear on occasion and may not ultimately even be valid. And wouldn’t that make this venue better and stronger in the long run? I think there’s a great opportunity here but it’s DA’s ball now so I’m curious to see where they run with it next.