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Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

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Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#121

Post by imperialdrive »

neom wrote: post #8

From 2001-2007 I worked on helping build the community at dA. Had such an interesting and unique childhood and teenage years due to deviantART (and IRC). I owe everyone from that time a huge thank you for helping me become who I am today. It lost all it's magic (for me) when Scott and Eric Kolb left. Angelo is an absolutely amazing guy and I really really admire him but it was pretty sad to watch the community die. F…

I can definitely say good things about Chris - I remember standing in front of the many racks of servers in LA doing hands-on maintenance with him guiding me over the roar of the fans via phone... I've done lots since then and I'm still impressed at the efficiency they had in both hardware/software for their huge site load and minimal render times. Chris is a very knowledgeable, skilled guy. Angelo was genuine and had a good thing going... also hosted some great dinners and loved to talk shop/tech/nerd out. I really hope this turns out well for all.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#122

Post by jrockway »

lmm wrote: post #83
scrollaway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound right. dA is the original source for a lot of the work being sold. I'm not familiar enough with the community to know if they're being used as a black market but I know for certain that lots of artists use it as a sales gallery.

> That doesn't sound right. dA is the original source for a lot of the work being sold. Right, but a lot of what's sold there is "fanart" that uses copyrighted characters etc.

I'm not convinced that there has been sufficient litigation to show that fanart is actually copyright infringement. As I understand it, there's a district split on the issue and the Supreme Court hasn't said anything. The cases are also very old, mostly predating the concept of fanart.

Most cases these days are predicated on whether or not something is fair use, but don't explore whether or not copyright was infringed in the first place.

All in all, it's good for money to be poured in here, because it means the defense will have adequate legal resources to set the right precedent.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#123

Post by usrusr »

pdpi wrote: post #113
buro9 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#124

Post by JoshTriplett »

blackhole wrote: post #10

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 i…

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

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#125

Post by neom »

clydethefrog wrote: post #77
neom wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wix and squarespace and godaddy are the new "wordpress site". I ran into a "Squarespace developer" here in Manhattan few weeks back.

Why? It seems like Wordpress still offers the perfect balance between usability and flexibility. At least that was my conclusion after doing research for an association that was looking to host their own website. Wix options seemed to be very static while Wordpress has a plugin for everything. And it's free while you had to pay for "social media plugins" in Wix.

You're a few degrees more technical than their target demo I'd imagine. For my sister getting her jewellery business going, she was going to pay a local guy $1,250 to stand up a digitalocean droplet and build a custom site for her, I told her about squarespace and shopify - that was that.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#126

Post by neom »

kepano wrote: post #53
neom wrote: post #8

From 2001-2007 I worked on helping build the community at dA. Had such an interesting and unique childhood and teenage years due to deviantART (and IRC). I owe everyone from that time a huge thank you for helping me become who I am today. It lost all it's magic (for me) when Scott and Eric Kolb left. Angelo is an absolutely amazing guy and I really really admire him but it was pretty sad to watch the community die. F…

I was there from 2000-2006 and feel the exact same. I grew up on deviantART. All my friends were there. It opened my eyes to many forms of creativity and I may have never become a designer or entrepreneur without it. At the risk of embarrassing myself, here's what I was up to from ages 15-20: http://a-t-o-m-i-c.deviantart.com/

I know who you are. I used Impulse for a long time. Kudos on that. I've had three accounts, the first one when dA launched, but then when I became an admin I created http://johnedgar.deviantart.com and deleted the old one, and then when I started working on other aspects of the community I created http://neom.deviantart.com.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#127

Post by neom »

imperialdrive wrote: post #121
neom wrote: post #8

From 2001-2007 I worked on helping build the community at dA. Had such an interesting and unique childhood and teenage years due to deviantART (and IRC). I owe everyone from that time a huge thank you for helping me become who I am today. It lost all it's magic (for me) when Scott and Eric Kolb left. Angelo is an absolutely amazing guy and I really really admire him but it was pretty sad to watch the community die. F…

I can definitely say good things about Chris - I remember standing in front of the many racks of servers in LA doing hands-on maintenance with him guiding me over the roar of the fans via phone... I've done lots since then and I'm still impressed at the efficiency they had in both hardware/software for their huge site load and minimal render times. Chris is a very knowledgeable, skilled guy. Angelo was genuine and ha…

Was it you that caused the fire? ;)

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#128

Post by skrowl »

kepano wrote: post #53
neom wrote: post #8

From 2001-2007 I worked on helping build the community at dA. Had such an interesting and unique childhood and teenage years due to deviantART (and IRC). I owe everyone from that time a huge thank you for helping me become who I am today. It lost all it's magic (for me) when Scott and Eric Kolb left. Angelo is an absolutely amazing guy and I really really admire him but it was pretty sad to watch the community die. F…

I was there from 2000-2006 and feel the exact same. I grew up on deviantART. All my friends were there. It opened my eyes to many forms of creativity and I may have never become a designer or entrepreneur without it. At the risk of embarrassing myself, here's what I was up to from ages 15-20: http://a-t-o-m-i-c.deviantart.com/

> It opened my eyes to many forms of creativity

It's OK to admit you're a furry. I'm proud to be a furry.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#129

Post by netule »

kepano wrote: post #53
neom wrote: post #8

From 2001-2007 I worked on helping build the community at dA. Had such an interesting and unique childhood and teenage years due to deviantART (and IRC). I owe everyone from that time a huge thank you for helping me become who I am today. It lost all it's magic (for me) when Scott and Eric Kolb left. Angelo is an absolutely amazing guy and I really really admire him but it was pretty sad to watch the community die. F…

I was there from 2000-2006 and feel the exact same. I grew up on deviantART. All my friends were there. It opened my eyes to many forms of creativity and I may have never become a designer or entrepreneur without it. At the risk of embarrassing myself, here's what I was up to from ages 15-20: http://a-t-o-m-i-c.deviantart.com/

Same here. I loved the community in the early 2000s. I actually met my wife on DeviantArt in 2002 and been happily married for 12 years now. My life would have been very different without that community. My wife and I both left the community pretty soon afterwards, though. It just changed too much after the switch in leadership.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#130

Post by slavik81 »

debt wrote: post #111
blackhole wrote: post #10

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 i…

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.
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