deviantART now allows the submission of traced works into its fanart galleries.

Here is the most recent article on the issue:
News: Break It Down Easy- Tracing Edition.

A journal by another staff member: [url=http://realitysquared.deviantart.com/journal/23034064/]The Policy on Copyright

And of course, the article that started it all: Issues on Copying

As well as a very Interesting Comment

The most obvious problem here is that deviantART is now breaking the law.
The following quote is taken from the United States Copyright Office website:

Quote:

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following: • To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords; • To prepare derivative works based upon the work; • To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; • To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works; • To display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and • In the case of sound recordings,* to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission. In addition, certain authors of works of visual art have the rights of attribution and integrity as described in section 106A of the 1976 Copyright Act. For further information, see Circular 40, Copyright Registration for Works of the Visual Arts. It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 121 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights. In some cases, these limitations are specified exemptions from copyright liability. One major limitation is the doctrine of “fair use,” which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act. In other instances, the limitation takes the form of a “compulsory license” under which certain limited uses of copyrighted works are permitted upon payment of specified royalties and compliance with statutory conditions. For further information about the limitations of any of these rights, consult the copyright law or write to the Copyright Office.

Basically, in order for any person to do anything stated in the bullets, the person MUST have permission from the original artist.

DeviantART justifies their breach of the law in the following way:

Quote:

Although the rights given to a copyright owner are extensive and include the exclusive right to permit others to make copies of the work, copyright owners are not required to use those rights and are also not required to police or attempt to stop infringements of the copyright by others. The copyright itself survives and the copyright owner can engage in selective policing without essentially any reduction in the level of protection they can later claim if they need to. This is unlike trademarks and patent laws. When you consider that a copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 50 or 70 years after his or her death, it is impossible to imagine a copyright owner of a popular work suing everybody who might be involved in infringement. There is, in fact, a rational expectation that only meaningful infringements, ones that result in a significant economic harm, will be pursued by copyright owners. For example, there is a concept called “de minimis” infringement applied by Courts to deny relief to a copyright owner essentially on the “no harm, no foul” premise. There are many circumstances where copyright owners freely and openly encourage and support the use of their works by others. Stock images are frequently dedicated for open use in non-commercial applications. Fan art is also one of these situations.

Just because the original artist cannot keep up with the astounding amount of offenses against them does not mean that the law doesn't hold. Under their reasoning, stealing would be alright as long as the person you're stealing from didn't notice, or didn't have time to sue you for it, or didn't notice and therefore could not sue you for them, even though an offense has clearly been made.

Also: Not every image is a stock image. It cannot, therefore, be assumed that they are.

Quote:

Some deviants and others provide allowance for their artwork to be used within Creative Commons Licensing, which they indicate within the deviation description. Artists who are misled and confused into believing that our tracing policy permits anyone to take any image on deviantART and simply trace it without permission should be assured that we will always remove this when requested by the artist of the original image, and you should use the appropriate reporting tools to bring it to our attention, so we can remove it.

So basically, deviantART is breaking the law, and saying that the artist MUST track down anyone who is using their image without permission because of lax on part of the staff members?

Even those who support the staff members have found themselves at a loss for words of defense.

Please keep in mind that I am NOT stating that tracing is not art. I am saying that tracing and submitting a work without the permission of the user is against the law.

Tracing a work and submitting it without the artist not having said "no" is not permission. It just means they don't know.

Now I will have to go and edit all of the images in my gallery so that they clearly state that it is NOT permissible to, in any way, reproduce any of the images in my gallery. I feel like my rights have been violated, because the only way for me to know that the law will be enforced in deviantART is if I hunt down anyone who dares to trace works without permission.

I know that the internet is vast, and that it is difficult to do this, but the fact that deviantART has now loosened their policy in the way they did does not make things any better.

Your opinions? Is deviantART right? Wrong? How?

I forgot to add this earlier, so I shall do so now, in case anyone sees fit to mention it. There is such thing as a "Fair Use" law in the copyright laws. DeviantART is using this law to justify their actions. HOWEVER: This law states that while a person can indeed trace/copy/reproduce an image for their own personal use, they are NOT allowed to publish it in a public space as their own work. The exceptions to this are things such as the creative common laws, where the artist GIVES permission (usually with payment) for their work to be used outside of their own gallery.