Deliciously Deviant

On DeviantArt.com, you can be anything you want - a 3D animator, an abstract artist, even an independent filmmaker. You can be an experimental photographer, or a wannabe novelist. I mean, why not, when you can call yourself an Angelie Jolie fetishist, or even a pornographic connoisseur?

A site for anyone and everyone who'd like to show others their works of art (and maybe get some feedback on them), DeviantArt gives amateur artists a chance to strut their stuff. Some Deviants do it for profit, selling prints of their work or accepting commissions. Other Deviants do it to relax, to blow off some steam and maybe unwind after a long day at work (or school). Bottom line is, though - and as cheesy as it sounds - I think all Deviants do their art for the sheer joy of it.

It doesn't matter if nobody can tell whether that round thing on top is a head or a watermelon, or if those stick-like things underneath are limbs or the prongs of hell reaching up to pull it in. It doesn't matter if that dark red blob over there is a puddle of blood, or an accidental blot on the artist's work from when his inking pen failed him. There is, after all, always that one word no one would dare contradict - "abstract."
Of course, by making your work available to the general public, the issue of intellectual property rights arises. When uploading your work, DeviantArt gives you the option of using a Creative Commons license, which you can customize in order to allow others to use, copy and share your work while giving you credit. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization with, according to them, a "mission" to expand private rights to create public goods. By choosing to use a Creative Commons license, you end up offering some of your rights to any of the public, but only under certain conditions. If you, for instance, select a Non-Commercial license, you are allowing others to copy, display, distribute and perform your work, as well as derivative works, but only for non-commercial purposes. Once you've taken a license, you get a Commons Deed (a summary of the license), a Legal Code (the fine print necessary to ensure that the license will stand up in court), and a Digital Code (a machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify your work by its terms of use).

The thing is, if you don't know who exactly has been viewing your work, how can you be so sure your rights will be respected? You don't even know how reliable Creative Commons, as an organization, is.

Ah, well, the choice is yours, of course. As for myself, the wannabe in me has chosen to assume the risk. ;)


[end, blog no. 2; images are entitled "Belle" by Loish, taken from http://loish.deviantart.com/, and "The Ocean Above" by Nienna, taken from http://nienna09.deviantart.com/, respectively]