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Comment by blackhole | Hacker News Reader

One potentially alarming sentence in this article is "Wix will open up DeviantArt’s repository of art and creative community to the Wix platform, giving Wix’s users access to that work to use in their own site building."

Exactly what do they mean by that? Will it be opt-in? Will it only cover art that's already under Creative Commons? Will be it all Creative Commons? Does a Wix site count as commercial use? I can't imagine people would be very happy about their art suddenly being available for use elsewhere without their consent.

Hopefully, this is much ado about nothing, and Wix won't do anything terrible, but we've seen technology companies do stupid things before. At the very least, it would be nice if they elaborated on their plans regarding this.

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https://about.deviantart.com/policy/submission/

    3. License To Use Artist Materials. As and when Artist Materials are
       uploaded to the DeviantArt Site(s), Artist grants to DeviantArt a
       worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to do the following
       things during the Term:
       a) to prepare and encode Artist Materials or any part of them for
          digital or analog transmission, manipulation and exhibition in
          any format and by any means now known or not yet known or
          invented;
       b) to display, copy, reproduce, exhibit, publicly perform,
          broadcast, rebroadcast, transmit, retransmit, distribute through
          any electronic means (including analog and digital) or other
          means, and electronically or otherwise publish any or all of
          the Artist Materials, including any part of them, and to include
          them in compilations for publication, by any and all means and
          media now known or not yet known or invented ;
       c) to modify, adapt, change or otherwise alter the Artist Materials
          (e.g., change the size) and use the Artist Materials as described
          in Section 3(b); and ...

The only thing a DeviantArt user can do is to delete their content, shut their account, and leave the site.

The policies only apply for the "Term" in which a user exists and the art exists on the platform.

Royalty-free? Looks like a bad deal.

It's a classic point in most, if not all, social websites or where the content is generated by the user.

And it's usually there to protect the website for altering storing and advertising with user generated content.

It always has had the potential to be used for bad, we will see if this time actually happens.

"Royalty-free" doesn't mean they can just do what they want. It means they're not going to pay you for the things listed in the license (to which you agreed by hosting on their site.) It doesn't even say "...perpetual license." It's clearly limited to stuff you've put on their systems, while it's on their systems. You remove it, they can't use it.

I'm no lawyer, but it looks like that language grants the DeviantArt corporation rights to use submissions, which they need in order to provide basic search as well as marketing.

It would be a different thing to grant Wix users the right to take someone's work over to their own sites, I speculate that would require an extension or transfer of copy rights in addition to the quoted policy.

I'd wait and see, I'd expect that Wix won't just lay claim to all submissions without asking for permission or remunerating artists who's works are sold.

> I'd expect that Wix won't just lay claim to all submissions without asking for permission or remunerating artists who's works are sold.

If buro9's reading of the user agreement was right, those artists' work was just sold. For 35M.

Notice it says nothing of re-licensing to others. These terms seem to facilitate DeviantArt's (and presumably its owner(s)) ability to show your work to the world on their site. But does not facilitate their sub-licensing your work to others. If I were an artist and loved my DeviantArt account, I'd make sure to hold them to task if my work showed up on a Wix customer's site.

If I understand wix.com's product correctly, those customer sites run on wix.com's servers. So, one could argue that it would be wix.com that shows the images. It would not be clear-cut that this infringes on that license.

I do hope that wix.com will do the right thing, though, and limit this to images that their creators permitted to be reused and/or add a feature where wix customers can negotiate with deviantart users over pricing.

  a) We can re-encode your images, to whatever format
     we need to make the website work.
  b) We are allowed to display the pictures online.
     If something happens and the internet stops existing,
     we'll still be allowed to show people pictures where
     we go after the web. We are also allowed to display
     pictures not only by themselves but also as part of
     a gallery. E.g. in search results.
  c) We're allowed to resize, convert to grayscale, etc
     so that galleries, search results, etc, all work
     the way a modern website is expected to.

You need all those rights to be able to operate DeviantArt. You really don't want the licence to become the limiting factor when you implement a new feature on the website, so you need to be quite broad.

Sure, but you those very same terms could also be used to operate something entirely different from deviantart. Was the parent post accusingly pointing fingers or was it just dusting facts?

That Wix scenario doesn't look all that terrible by the way: imagine deviantart pivoting into some kind of racket machine publishing connections between cringeworthy "early works" and the current employers of meanwhile professional graphics artists, now that would be an evil use of the repository.

This line is pretty common in ToC's as far as I know (I'm no lawyer). It allows them to show the images on the site and in advertising. Nothing too uncommon, and most of it's needed to make the site work.

DeviantArt has been one of the better online hosting services when it comes to their handling of copyright. Buying them won't magically grant additional rights to Wix.

Based on the Submission Policy on DeviantArt's site, the essence of the agreement seems to be that as long as the work continues to be on DeviantArt, any DeviantArt site can use it royalty-free under a non-exclusive licence. The artist (or other submitter) is free to remove the work from DeviantArt at any time, and with some provisions about orderly handling the work is then no longer available for use on DeviantArt sites under those terms. The copyright and related legal rights in each work remain with the artist throughout (or with whoever else had them before, but they're not automatically transferred to DeviantArt).

Whether the acquisition means sites run by Wix now count as successors and therefore enjoy the royalty-free rights regarding uploaded works is one for the lawyers, but even if it that is the case, it seems that anyone who objects can simply delete their work from DeviantArt and in doing so withdraw the consent required to use the work on any other sites as well. That being the case, it would seem unwise for Wix to try to pull a fast one here, and a more collaborative approach would seem to be in everyone's interests including Wix's.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Deleting things on DA doesn't always do what you would expect, and it surely sounds like Wix thinks they are going to offer work for free.

For me it means enough, i just deactivated/deleted my deviant art account.

This unclearness, plus their in my humble opinion, horribly annoying youtube ad campaign, did not make me ponder about deleting my account for a second.

I hope you deleted your artwork first. If you simply close your account, your work will still show up in searches.

they explicitly mentioned all my stuff will get deleted.

have you checked?

yes all is gone, there is a 30 day grace period which they don't clearly communicate.

Since you can monetize your artwork already on DA I hope this will be as simple and straightforward as opting into it much like you would with prints. And maybe letting someone search any Creative Commons licensed art with that as opt-out.

Appears these are all the current agreements on their website:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:https://about.deviantar...

Well... if this[^1] is still the DA licence (entry is from 2011), this won't be limited to CC and potentially concerns all art published on DA.

[^1]: http://jon-rista.deviantart.com/journal/Very-Concerning-Devi...

You cannot unilaterally change the license on someone else's work. A lot of images on DeviantArt are under very restrictive licenses.

I'm assuming they will present an option for artists to allow their work to be used on Wix sites in exchange for royalties, with the middleman taking a percentage of said royalties.

There's also a lot of CC licensed stuff that might already be allowing use for such purposes with the authors not expecting any return from it.

Well that depends on the terms the uploader agreed to. The license displayed for works is, as I understand it, the license that applies to visitors/viewers not necessarily for deviantArt itself.

This line is in the current TOS:

> DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights in your works or other materials posted by you to DeviantArt (Your Content).

Here's the rest of it:

> 4. Copyright

> DeviantArt is, unless otherwise stated, the owner of all copyright and data rights in the Service and its contents. Individuals who have posted works to DeviantArt are either the copyright owners of the component parts of that work or are posting the work under license from a copyright owner or his or her agent or otherwise as permitted by law. You may not reproduce, distribute, publicly display or perform, or prepare derivative works based on any of the Content including any such works without the express, written consent of DeviantArt or the appropriate owner of copyright in such works. DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights in your works or other materials posted by you to DeviantArt (Your Content). You agree not to distribute any part of the Service other than Your Content in any medium other than as permitted in these Terms of Service or by use of functions on the Service provided by us. You agree not to alter or modify any part of the Service unless expressly permitted to do so by us or by use of functions on the Service provided by us.

> This line is in the current TOS: > > DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights [to your content]

But there might be a clause in there where they claim sufficiently unrestricted license to use that content in any way they chose. Not having copyright does not mean that they don't have license to use the content or let their users do the same.

Read around in the comments. The DeviantArt EULA gives them a blanket license. The artist may also provide a very restricted license to the public.

The license is already granted, to DeviantArt.

Sounds like they'll let people build websites ala Wix but using their images from DA. Seems fine.

Especially concerning given a purchase by a company that doesn't respect Open Source licenses.

I had the same reaction.

I could totally see them taking all the CC licenses and open it up as a stock image repository. This could go two ways.

One, they open it up and its a total free for all, and as a Wix user, I can just go take someone's images and use them on my site royality free, which is downright scary.

Two, they take control of all the work that's under CC, involve the artists and offer them a percentage of the profit to use their art for their websites. Or cut out the artists entirely, which I could also see happening. You have huge opportunity to drive a ton of revenue from the stuff that's already on DA.

> One, they open it up and its a total free for all, and as a Wix user, I can just go take someone's images and use them on my site royality free, which is downright scary.

Why is that scary? It's the point of CC licence. All they'll have to do on the using site is add an attribution (for ex CC-BY-SA).

It's the intention of CC to allow gratis usage and sharing.

It means artists will start making money from the art they've put on DeviantArt instead of it just being a "repository".

That's already how DeviantArt works. You can buy prints and stuff. The money from the sale is split between DA and the artist.

Wider HN community could probably have rounded up 36M to keep DA being DA.

Imagine if they would charge for this and share with the artist.

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