Eros Portal

Or: It’s hard to be Humble when you are an Asshole at Heart 

We lurk on many websites — that’s our job. We sift the good from the mediocre; the assholes from the decent folk. This last is not a hard job admittedly. Assholes are in no short supply on the internet, but the thing that makes our lives really easy is that they rarely  feel the need to disguise themselves there. Still and all, it does gives us a bit of a thrill when an asshole, especially one in charge of a fairly big website, throws us a bone as juicy as the one you did today. (Ed. Note: Angelo Sotira is the CEO and reputed founder of deviantART Inc. His profile lists him as being a  28 yr-old Male. This is probably significant. His deviant Art handle is spyed .) 

So without further ado, let’s get right down to it and anatomized exactly why you are an asshole of such breathtaking proportions. (Feel free to feel flattered; that isn’t a title we’d bestow on just anyone.) 

Today you roused yourself from your magisterial slumbers to fire off this missive to the Little People who make your life possible. You called it: 

SIX EASY POINTS; Why Disabling Share HURTS YOU BIG

(ALL CAPS in the original) wherein you demonstrate the proper grammar is for losers. But that’s chickenfeed. Let’s move on. Your first point: 

ONE: We (deviantART) should NOT give you (deviants submitting deviations) options regarding Share This, let alone Share Links (we don’t offer this for Links). WE WILL continue to offer Share This options. But we shouldn’t. Our sharing options should always be permitted on every deviation. Keep reading. 

Welcome, friends, to this episode of IDIOT KNOWS BEST. Herein we learn what WE (deviantART) should and should NOT allow Little People to do — or not do –  for their own good. WE (deviantART), are not Little People, hence listen up! Sharing is good! But because you Little People are benighted, we compromise our principles. BAD Little People! 

Ok, let’s look at what’s behind this — aside from the fact that assholes just can’t communicate in any other way. 

Well, actually I don’t really know what is behind this. If deviantART was run by adults, I would know what was behind this, but given that it doesn’t seem to be I can’t really say. But let’s assume, for a minute, that you, Mr. Angelo, have some adult supervision around. They would tell you that “sharing” is good because every time someone “shares” the work of a Little Person, that is a free ad for deviantART. Free is good. When said Little Person is in fact paying you to post something that can be used as an ad, that is even better. 

So sharing is very good — for deviantART. Whether it is good for the Little Person depends on the Little Person, or would if We  (deviantART) gave a shit, which we don’t. That too is good for us: it makes our lives so much easier. 

Let’s press on… 

TWO If you choose the option on deviantART to dis-able [quote, un-quote] sharing on your deviations, you’re actually encouraging copyright infringement. Please let me explain. 

Yes, do explain. Explain how locks encourage theft while you are at it. Explain how copyright infringement is a BAD THING, unless of course it makes you money. We’re waiting…. 

THREE If you post a JPG, GIF, etc. on the Internet, it can be used in a way that infringes your copyrights, or “stolen” as many of you say. By the very function of your Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox browser, anyone may easily RIGHT-CLICK and “Save to Disk,” “Save as Wallpaper,” etc. Alternatively you may easily use your operating system to SCREEN SHOT the art work on the screen. You may easily use a wide variety of applications to simulate, automate, or otherwise perform those two actions anywhere on the open Internet regardless of what anyone tells you.  

This is really rich — explaining to the poor benighted Little People the mysteries of the RIGHT CLICK. WOW! We had no idea you were so tech-savvy. Why is it that assholes always assume that these things need to be explained to a bunch of people who frequent a website whose design and operation are famously opaque? For make no mistake: deviantART is no masterpiece of design. It is an embarrassing eyesore that people put up with, because people will put up with almost anything. So yeah, anyone who can navigate deviantART is a savvier than the average surfer. 

But of course you, Mr. Angleo, may not be aware of that, as I doubt you actually use your own site. In all likelihood your have a couple of tame Little People post things for you while you drool over reruns of the Man Show and engage with your buddies in whatever activities your cranial capacity will suuport: belching contests perhaps (to keep this at a somewhat family-oriented level). 

I should also like to point out the use of scare quotes around stolen. Yes, many of us Little People say “stolen” when our work is, you know, stolen. But apparently that is of no concern to you. I’d like to see your response when whatever species of POS you drive is “stolen”. 

FOUR The Wide Majority of Internet users are conditioned to believe that sharing, pulling, linking, pointing, saving or otherwise using readily available basic computer functions like COPY or PASTE is completely OK. And honor based systems of “please don’t do that” work as well as leaving a 4 year old in a room full of cookies with the clear understanding that they shouldn’t have one.

Now we’re really getting to the meat of the matter. First you expose the painful ignorance of your membership; now you start blaming those pesky surfers. It’s really their fault — they just all believe that “stealing” is OK! Gosh dang it! Whatcha gonna do? Certainly NOT take any steps to discourage them!  Why in hell would we do that? 

Now for the best part: the comment about 4 year olds. This is incredibly revealing. First, you liken your membership to 4 year olds; this age probably seems natural for those beneath you, coming from a  person who’s intellectual, moral, and grammatical accomplishments suggest an age of about 7 or 8. 

But what you fail to understand — having been badly raised — is that leaving a 4 year old in a room full of cookies [sic] with the clear understanding that they shouldn’t have one actually works pretty well, if the child also has a clear understanding that they get their little ass paddled if they disobey! This was, once upon a time, the common practice and it worked quite well. Sore-bottomed and thus well-behaved children of reasonable intelligence grow into reasonable adults. Either you were not the former or you lack the latter. So, sorry if this is a foreign concept to you. 

FIVE SHARE THIS. SHARE LINKS. The topic of a recent debate. In this crazy world described in items ONE through FOUR, SHARE functions are the only sanity you have. With these, a link back to you and credit to you is guaranteed. Methods for displaying the images are controlled by deviantART, and the display methods showcase the art with respect. Fade effects and transitions to present the work, even borders and copyright notices exist. You should be so lucky that people use Share This and Share Links. Because pursuant to item FOUR, people can otherwise take your work and paste it on Facebook by force, and forget to give you credit or otherwise. deviantART’s SHARE systems encourage proper linking and crediting of your work. USE THEM. 

Yes, it is a crazy world. I knew this guy who lived in San Francisco, near downtown. Every morning, he got up, rousted the homeless drug addicts out of his car, tried to avoid the puddles of piss, and drove to work. He said they were pretty polite about it — as long as he didn’t lock his car. When he locked his car, they broke the windows, trashed his seats, shit on things. So he stopped locking his car. (Maybe by now he’s stopped locking his apartment too; I don’t know.)

This is exactly what you did: Hey, you wanna steal that little person’s work? Don’t get mad and cut-n-paste! Here’s a button! Except you didn’t unlock your car — you unlocked only the Little People’s cars. But hey USE THEM. We’re back to IDIOT KNOWS BEST here. You, Little Person, want to share — you want credit — you want, want, want… to make deviantART money! Because if they just “stole” your stuff, how could it be an effective ad for deviantART?! Those links encourage proper linking and crediting of… deviantART! USE THEM! 

SIX deviantART is working with time on solutions to help you track down where your art work is, and methods to police your work on the Internet. We are a solid ally on this matter; we are aware of this matter; we are concerned about this matter; we are dedicated to the best possible resolution for this matter. And in the meantime, we are practical and leveraging all that we know to craft features that protect your interests as best as possible. SHARE features are an option that you can turn ON or OFF only because you demand options. And because our members believe that by turning Sharing features OFF, their work cannot be shared. This is NOT TRUE. You SHOULD ABSOLUTELY USE THE SHARE FUNCTIONS if you care about “protecting” your work. Disabling this function does nothing to deter theft, in fact it encourages unauthorized uses by virtue of item FOUR stated above.

This is IDIOT KNOWS BEST in pseudo-benign pseudo-paternal mode. The best way to keep stuff from being “stolen” is to well, just give it away. Because, as we have seen, the real meaning of “stolen” is “stealing” an opportunity for deviantArt to get a free ad. 

Note also the reinforcement of the Little People are Stupid meme — your members (who are dumber than the Day is long) believe that by turning Sharing features OFF, their work cannot be shared. Really? That must be why we’ve read so much bitching on exactly that point — not. You would not of course know that because finding that out would involve, you know, reading. 

And, oh yeah, Little People are demanding. Goddamn Little People. First they post all their stuff here so We (deviantArt) can make money off it, then they actually pay us subscription fees to post their stuff here, and then they want options! Goddamn LITTLE PEOPLE!  Don’t they know their place? Don’t they know what’s good for us?! That is, them?                        

Thank you for reading these six points. I know this topic is scary, and that it causes many of you much distress. I’ve seen throughout the years many of our members lose sleep, and fight hard to stop people from doing things with their work they didn’t intend for them to do. The very act of artistic expression is perhaps the most beautiful thing that human beings perform, I treasure this act and respect not only the emotion that goes in to it, but the difficulty of sharing this emotion and its result with others.  

Ooooh, the poor wittle 4 year olds is scared. They is distwessed. But art is bee-you-tea-full and we wespects it. We tweasure it, and we will call it George. 

Of course, not so much the Little People if they keep making FUCKING demands! 

As for fighting and loosing sleep: thank you, Mr. Angelo, for your faux concern, but maybe we’d have to fight less and lose less sleep if deviantArt would put a few rudimentary things in place to make “stealing” our stuff not quite so easy. Or respect us enough to give us those pesky options. 

But that wouldn’t suit deviantArt at all would it? 

I expect a lot of emotion to result from this post, it is a sore topic for all. And it is easy to predict a lot of contention on the subject. We all have our hearts in the right place here, I know this for sure. And our views are not far apart, they are very close with aims to the same end goals; our protection. This is and will be an ongoing topic of debate, so lets collectively handle it with grace. At the end of the day we must recognize that we are a community of artists dealing with simple to complex challenges of existence. But we have one another to have these discussions, and that is something we did not have even a decade ago on quite this scale. So using this platform, lets all learn a huge amount about this topic, right here, right now. Go. 

We can and will change these matters and bring them to the right place with time and with patience.

So, all kidding aside, this last bit is just a load of horseshit. Shall I point out the obvious here?

Why not: since you knew all this and predicted all this, why in hell didn’t you just include a disable option when you launched this new feature? Do that and no angst, no controversy, no need to write such a revealing letter. All so simple. 

They say criminals often have a need to get caught. I think you have a need to show what an asshole you are. In this Crazy World, I almost have to believe you did this just so you could stir up a lot of shit which would give you an excuse to write this letter to show everyone that you are indeed, and on deviantArt at least, the Asshole in Charge. 

Mission Accomplished. Well done. Now go home. 

To the remaining members of deviantArt, I ask the same question I asked the guy who had to roust the bums out of his car every morning: Why the Hell do you live in this Neighborhood?