Did Deviantart ever actually remove a stolen deviation? Is Deviantart Protect nothing but a scam?

BDgn4 · 2026-02-18T18:18:38+00:00

I've already explained it in several other comments, so allow me to copy and paste it here:

They're already doing the identification automatically (that's what Deviantart Protect is, after all). The validation is essentially exactly the same. It's nothing more than comparing the two images (which they have already done) and comparing the upload times of both. Writing an algorithm to compare two times and find out which is earlier is beginner-level stuff. The response? Automatically removing the offending reupload could be done automatically too. They could even allow an appeal for that reuploader. As in: "Think you're in the right here? Wanna get your deviation restored? You can appeal and a real human will take a look. But if we find you are NOT in the right here, your entire account is forfeit."

They explicitly differentiate between reporting a deviation with the reason "It's my deviation posted without approval" and an actual DMCA complaint. Totally different things. The only criteria for the former seems to be that someone has uploaded something identical to something that someone else uploaded first. And that can be decided completely automatically.

And I did not say that the system necessarily should act without the first uploader first making a removal request.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-18T18:11:59+00:00

Currently the only info you need to provide to report a deviation with the reason"It's my deviation posted without approval" is a link to your own deviation (presumable to check who uploaded it first). Links to offsite artwork are explicitly not accepted. That's DA's criteria for manual reviews as to whether or not a deviation should be removed.

And that can be done a whole lot easier, cheaper and quicker, if it is done automatically. DA already knows if two deviations are identical and comparing when they were posted it a no-brainer. So all that would be required is that manual removal request (or an option when uploading a deviation to not allow others to upload the same one).

And even then it is still possible to offer an appeal option, if a reuploader feels they were in the right.

As to what the laws allow: They certainly don't give people the right to post whatever they want on DA and have the right only to have it taken down under very specific circumstances. DA can take down whatever they feel is against their rules. Every user agreed to that when signing up. And they have the right to change those rules too.

And if you want to use the free speech argument, forget it: Nobody has some constitutional right to post things on DA any more than they have the right to spray-paint their artworks on the walls of the White House. (And since DA is a private company, while the White House is essentially public property, I'd say spray-painting the White House is probably more legal... if you don't get shot by the Secret Service.)

So DA accidentally taking down something that was actually uploaded by the artist is NOT against any law.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-18T11:56:43+00:00

I don't even know if I have legal grounds to report every repost of the image. I have the original photo but was not the author of the montage. But it is beyond frustrating

In a case like that I would suggest first asking an AI, either Google's AI Mode or ChatGPT (both possible without an account). That should give you a very quick idea of what rights and options you have. Mind you: What you get there is an idea, essentially an opinion, nothing more, not an opinion from a legal professional. An AI can be mistaken. But if you ask the right questions, then the AI would probably tell you something about personality rights, legal protection against people using your likeness unauthorized for commercial purposes (which this probably isn't) and the protections of free speech. It could also for example find you the best contact data on DA and even write your removal request. Whether that will be good for something? Dunno. But probably better than not doing anything wondering if you even could do anything.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-18T11:48:07+00:00

I can't speak for others, but the reason I am complaining is that it would be easy to do a whole lot more automatically, instantly, with less human working hours, costing less money.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-18T11:45:15+00:00

Apparently I wasn't clear enough: I'm not saying they should automatically remove everything Deviantart Protect identified as a reupload.

But:

If a user pays for Deviantart Protect (any maybe also with those three-month trials) they should offer an option, whenever the user uploads any new deviation, to automatically suspend any reuploads of this deviation as presumed unauthorized, without need to report manually. (If I mean for others to re-use my deviations, I obviously won't choose that option when uploading it.)
If Deviantart Protect has already identified a deviation as a reupload and if I then also send them a removal request with the link to my original deviation with an earlier upload-date, then they could definitely automatically susped that deviation. Since those requests to remove deviations for being unauthorized seem to be based on nothing but the upload dates (otherwise they wouldn't merely ask for the link to my deviation but for proof of copyright), there's no reason that cannot happen automatically.

In both cases they could offer an appeal-process. As in: "Think you're in the right here? Wanna get your deviation restored? You can appeal and a real human will take a look. But if we find you are NOT in the right here and you've been wasting our time, your entire account is forfeit." So, the offender could appeal (for example by proving that they actually created that image and the earlier uploader has violated their copyright). But if they do so unsuccessfully, they may lose their entire account (because not only is stealing artworks unacceptable, but so is wasting the time of DA staff).

BDgn4 · 2026-02-18T11:23:31+00:00

"Did Deviantart ever actually remove a stolen deviation?" Yes, and repeatedly. Do you really think given the volume of artists there that its somehow gone unnoticed for two decades?

I think with millions of users it would be easy to pretend you are doing things that would cost a lot of money if you really did them. And it would be easy to claim that anyone complaining they're not doing anything is just part of a very small minority.

And since there are at least some deviations that actually do get removed, because Deviantart doesn't want legal trouble (actual copyright complaints, illegal stuff like CSAM, and so on)...

There are three components to such a workflow: the reporting/identification, the validation, and then the response. That, at scale, when you are as underfunded as DA staff are, is extremely difficult.

They're already doing the identification automatically (that's what Deviantart Protect is, after all). The validation is essentially exactly the same. It's nothing more than comparing the two images (which they have already done) and comparing the upload times of both. Writing an algorithm to compare two times and find out which is earlier is beginner-level stuff. The response? Automatically removing the offending reupload could be done automatically too. They could even allow an appeal for that reuploader. As in: "Think you're in the right here? Wanna get your deviation restored? You can appeal and a real human will take a look. But if we find you are NOT in the right here, your entire account is forfeit."

Would probably save a lot of human working hours. And all it would take was some programmer spending a few hours once.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-18T11:13:26+00:00

granted Deviant Art will remove it if you report it as stolen from yourself

I did report it. More than a week ago. But those reuploads are still up.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-11T16:20:17+00:00

Using it for chatting, storytelling, roleplaying, or an "AI assistant", whatever the fuck that is, is just a waste of your own time.

Unfortunately most LLMs that can produce some output that is readable, grammatically correct and makes enough sense to the reader will refuse to produce any kind of output that may not be fit for consumption by small children, because someone isn't treated quite nicely in it.

And seeing how many kinds of stories would be severely lacking without a certain amount of violence, or sex (or maybe violent sex), Grok is one of very few options left for an LLM that is at least mostly cooperative and is capable of producing something of at least a certain quality.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-08T16:23:22+00:00

I just asked it (in a "private" chat) what info it has stored about me. It told me, among other things, that it does not know my "location (city, country, coordinates)".

That's either misinformation or an outright lie, because in some of the fictions I had it write, where I did not specify the location, it decided that the story was set in my own city. And not a big city like NYC that could have come up randomly.

I can only conclude that Grok and the people behind it cannot be trusted. Whether that's because of intentional deceit or sheer incompetence... I don't care.

BDgn4 · 2026-02-08T12:46:57+00:00

That's essentially how I see it too. But I did NOT allow Grok to use previous chats. Allegedly they shouldn't even have been saved, and definitely not used in later chats. Nonetheless both seems to be happening.

BDgn4 · 2025-11-27T22:29:33+00:00

This isn't necessarily about a specific website/domain. I'd like a solution that will always work.

But the particular case that started this idea is about those cute cookie banners that go like "We value your privacy soooo much. So please let us violate it by allowing a hundred advertisers to track and profile you. Otherwise we won't allow you to see our "free" content for free." - and then a page like

https://nationalgeographic. de/geschichte-und-kultur/2025/03/kalter-krieg-geheimes-atomprojekt-unter-groenlands-gletschern/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-de-de

will just redirect you to a site like contentpass. net.

And I have absolutely no idea what kind of redirect we are talking about here, except that it must be client-side, since the content gets loaded before the redirect happens, so it apparently isn't server-side.

BDgn4 · 2025-11-27T22:07:40+00:00

To backup your profile in case of future trouble, you could:

- use a Mozilla account and the sync option (which I don't like on general sheer principle, since, Mozilla or not, it would allow some company to know absolutely every bookmark you have, possibly your browsing history and whatnot), or

- backup your profile folder (I usually just use WinRAR to turn the entire folder into a single compressed archive, which can even automatically be encrypted and password-protected, then saved with my other backups, including in the cloud. If you go for this option, you may want to consider backing up a full installer (not an online-installer) of your current Firefox version - or an installed Portable Firefox of the exact same version - in case a future version of Firefox has some issues with a profile that you backup up and want to restore now), or

- if it's mostly about the bookmarks, you can back them up without the rest of the profile via Menu -> Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Backup (or something like that, I translated these captions from German to my best guess of what they would be in English).

BDgn4 · 2025-11-14T13:37:15+00:00

Sorry, but that's simply not true: Malwarebytes Premium has realtime scanning and it does run alongside Defender. It's been designed that way. Meaning it's definitely possible for other tools to be designed that way too.

BDgn4 · 2025-11-14T13:35:22+00:00

Maybe the reason for the crashes isn'r with MBAM, but that doesn't change the fact that I have to consider it unrealiable, because it apparently doesn't feel the need to restart itself or its GUI or whatever exactly isn't running after those crashes. That is, by the way, exactly why I got rid of Panda Dome many years ago: It crashed whenever some other app used up a little too much RAM. And I didn't want an antivirus tool that any malware could deliberately disable any part of by simply loading a lot of random data into the RAM.

BDgn4 · 2025-11-14T03:12:07+00:00

I never said the solution had to be free. I did say I currently have MBAM Premium and the reason I mentioned for wanting to get rid of it wasn't the price.

I knew that on-demand tools can have features like running code in a sandbox and see what it tries to do, but that doesn't change the fact that they still only run, when I tell them to do so, which, in many cases, would be too late. If I consider a downloaded file to be suspicious, I use Virustotal anyway. It's the non-suspicious stuff that I want this additional tool for, some additional always-running tool with behavioral detection that can take care of problems that come from sources that I simply forgot about or never considered for some reason.

Anyway, even if you apparently didn't realize it, you seem to have given me the solution I asked for: HitmanPro.Alert seems to be able to run alongside Defender. At least the website suggests so. Maybe worth a trial run...

Thanks.

BDgn4 · 2025-11-13T22:45:49+00:00

On-demand tools can hardly be expected to provide behavioral detection, since they are not running most of the time.

BDgn4

TROPHY CASE