Defending Artists' Rights

Of possible interest to artists.

If you find that your work has been used on Webnovel.com without your permission, you can find the DMCA procedures here:

https://www.webnovel.com/terms_of_service

If you feel a website registered through GoDaddy.com is misusing your work, you may be able to file a complaint with them.  We say “may” because we do not know anyone who has experience making such a claim with them.  

https://www.godaddy.com/legal/agreements/trademark-copyright-infringement?®ionsite=www&marketid=en-US

If you are trying to determine where a website is registered, you can find some information here:

https://www.internic.net/whois.html

Many of our followers will be aware that the In-Character Instagram accounts for some of the characters from Miraculous Ladybug are missing some posts--reportedly due to them being falsely reported.  

Let us treat this as a valuable learning experience:

If you see artwork or fiction online that you believe is stolen, impersonating someone, etc., and it is not yours, the proper thing to do is to notify the artist(s) or rights holder(s).  Only the artist can say if their art is being misused.  Zag, Inc. has a website that has contact information listed.  If you think someone is impersonating them, let them know and let their legal team handle it.  

We had a situation similar to this once.  Volunteer D found a Tumblr account that appeared to be posting art by an artist we had communicated with many times in the past.  We did not report the account to Tumblr: we reported it to that artist so they could act on it.  

It was that artist’s sideblog that we had no idea even existed.  We all had a good laugh about it, made a note in our database, and moved on--no harm done.

On July 19, 2017, the Art-Defense Project was born.  We were going to tilt at some windmills like modern day Don Quixotes.

Two years later, we are going on indefinite hiatus.

We have not won.  We went into this knowing it was not a matter that can be “won”.  But we’ve had some good jousts, we have inspired artists to speak up for themselves, and we have convinced a few people to rethink their ways.

Why are we stopping now?  We have not had as much to do of late, and that is a good thing:  more artists are taking advantage of new tools to police content, and some of the more persistent offenders have gone to fish in other waters or just stopped.  When we have done Incident Reports, we have gotten fewer responses than in the past: many people have left Tumblr and DeviantArt, and we cannot always contact them on other platforms.  That part is not a good thing, but it is unavoidable.

Too?  We’re tired.  Volunteer enthusiasm has not been as high.  People have lives, jobs, school, other interests.   This was never intended to go on forever, just long enough to make a point and do some good.

We do feel that we have made a difference. We logged 255 Incidents, and the majority of those saw some manner of positive outcome for the artists.  

Before anyone asks: no, it is not possible for us to hand it over to a new group.  This blog, all the other accounts, the Discord Server: they are legally the responsibility of one person, and that person cannot hand them over to someone else—the liability would still fall on him.  Too, we made certain promises, such as saying that our Do-Not-Tag list would never be shared.   We can’t compel some other group to keep those promises.  If someone feels it needs to go forward, they have to start from scratch without using our name, reputation, database, or symbols.  

What we will NOT be doing:

Incident Reports.  We will not be doing public or private notification of artists for the foreseeable future.

What we will continue to do:

Post How To Report guides.

Answer queries from artists who seek our advice on how to deal with others using their content.  

Keep our Discord server open as an occasional hangout so our Volunteers can keep in touch.

Keep our accounts open, unless doing so is going to create a problem of some sort.  Policies change, some require a certain level of activity, etc.

From beginning to end, we have used “We”, because this has been the expression of the will of a community and the work of a number of volunteers.  To all our Volunteers, the regulars and the occasionally-seen, and the ones who had to move on: Thank You.   You made a difference.

Thank you to the team at @miraculousblackout on Tumblr for inspiring this. They were among the first ones to organize and stand up against this problem.  

Thank you, as always, to @jenniferbrincho for the generous donation of our icon and banner art.

On July 19, 2017, the Art Defense Project was born.  On the 19th of each month, we have posted a summary of our current activities. Changes from last month are noted in italics.

This marks the Second Anniversary of the Art-Defense Project.

All Incidents are now Closed.  There will be another post regarding this within the hour.   As of July 19, 2019, we have:

255 Incidents in our system (An “Incident” is an account where at some point we had concern that theft or misuse might be taking place.  Not every incident will have a public Incident Report: some are handled privately or we find that a report is unnecessary.)  +2

0 Active Incidents (We do regular follow-ups on these: ideally every two weeks, in practice according to the time and energy our volunteers have.) -2

0 Inactive Incidents (We check in on these once a month.) No Change

0 Incidents in our Verify Queue (We will contact a sampling of artists, see if they are OK with how the account is handling things, then decide from that what to do.) No Change

0 Incidents in our Ready Queue (These will become either a private or public Incident Report once claimed by one or more Volunteers.) No Change

255 Closed Incidents (Closed for reasons ranging from “No problems here, closing” to “We did all we can do here” and of course “Account terminated.”)  +4

0 Incidents marked “HOLD”. (Special cases.) No Change 0 Incidents kept in our “NSFW” area, Inactive. (These are included in the above counts.  Our Volunteers who are Minors do not deal with these.) No Change

Our Social Media Presence:

art-defense.tumblr.com

art-defense.deviantart.com

twitter.com/art_defense

instagram.com/art_defense

wattpad.com/user/art-defense

If you find your artwork for sale on this site, you will have to email them with a DMCA notice.  Instructions on how to do so are found here:

https://fineartamerica.com/termsofuse.html

You may find that someone is sharing your work in a public DropBox folder and then publishing the link. 

To report on DropBox, go to

On July 19, 2017, the Art Defense Project was born.  On the 19th of each month, we post a summary of our current activities. Changes from last month are noted in italics.

Mostly quiet, with some Incidents being closed due to lack of activity. As of June 19, 2019, we have:

253 Incidents in our system (An “Incident” is an account where at some point we had concern that theft or misuse might be taking place.  Not every incident will have a public Incident Report: some are handled privately or we find that a report is unnecessary.)  +1

2 Active Incidents (We do regular follow-ups on these: ideally every two weeks, in practice according to the time and energy our volunteers have.) +2

0 Inactive Incidents (We check in on these once a month.) -7

0 Incidents in our Verify Queue (We will contact a sampling of artists, see if they are OK with how the account is handling things, then decide from that what to do.) No Change

0 Incidents in our Ready Queue (These will become either a private or public Incident Report once claimed by one or more Volunteers.) -2

251 Closed Incidents (Closed for reasons ranging from “No problems here, closing” to “We did all we can do here” and of course “Account terminated.”)  +8

0 Incidents marked “HOLD”. (Special cases.) No Change 0 Incidents kept in our “NSFW” area, Inactive. (These are included in the above counts.  Our Volunteers who are Minors do not deal with these.) -2

Our Social Media Presence:

art-defense.tumblr.com

art-defense.deviantart.com

twitter.com/art_defense

instagram.com/art_defense

wattpad.com/user/art-defense

On July 19, 2017, the Art Defense Project was born.  On the 19th of each month, we post a summary of our current activities. Changes from last month are noted in italics.

We've had a moderately busy month, though most of our work is still with small-scale stuff where "handle privately" is the rule, rather than having to notify a large number of artists via tagging in a post.  This is a good thing. As of May 19, 2019, we have:

252 Incidents in our system (An “Incident” is an account where at some point we had concern that theft or misuse might be taking place.  Not every incident will have a public Incident Report: some are handled privately or we find that a report is unnecessary.)  +4

0 Active Incidents (We do regular follow-ups on these: ideally every two weeks, in practice according to the time and energy our volunteers have.) -2

7 Inactive Incidents (We check in on these once a month.) +3  

0 Incidents in our Verify Queue (We will contact a sampling of artists, see if they are OK with how the account is handling things, then decide from that what to do.) No Change

2 Incidents in our Ready Queue (These will become either a private or public Incident Report once claimed by one or more Volunteers.) +2

243 Closed Incidents (Closed for reasons ranging from “No problems here, closing” to “We did all we can do here” and of course “Account terminated.”)  +1

0 Incidents marked “HOLD”. (Special cases.) No Change 2 Incidents kept in our “NSFW” area, Inactive. (These are included in the above counts.  Our Volunteers who are Minors do not deal with these.) No Change

Our Social Media Presence:

art-defense.tumblr.com

art-defense.deviantart.com

twitter.com/art_defense

instagram.com/art_defense

wattpad.com/user/art-defense