Dangerboy3D vs DeviantArt

**Dangerboy3D** · 04-18-2011, 05:43 AM

Dangerboy3D vs DeviantArt

This is a pretty interesting turn of events and I decided to post this based on the recent action where certain requested items I created were reported, and removed from my gallery within the past week. After passing communications back and forward, I am now 100% convinced that DeviantArt does not have the processes in place to properly audit their submitted content and has no interest in correcting that in the near future. For a product that generated that much revenue for them and the fact that they are based in the state of California, one would think that they should have a better policy than to simply act when something happens to be reported. If I owned a site like that, I certainly would be doing whatever to protect my back door from legal issues. Judging from the results of what occurred last week, I can clearly see that they rely on volunteer staff that are not educated enough to respond to specific inquiries. They are more geared to act in a bias manner and either appear not to be very educated on legal repercussions, or simply hope people will not bother to challenge. The following are the images they removed that started it all:

(Some items are not even here but I will add them later)

I have not been on their site much lately to see the notices, but I did record them to share here. The violation in question is quite serious and it makes me look like a pedophile artist. I believe I stated to them at one point that the models I use in my work are based on the age range of 20 and up. It's not difficult to see that judging by their appearance in the renders. Even though the characters used in the renders are fashioned to look and appear like their anime counter-parts, they are by no means actual duplicates of the fictional characters. Also to add that the majority of items removed were requested by fellow members off of DeviantArt that have considerably more knowledge on their projected age than I do. However, I am very concerned about the fairness on how their immediate administration went about the removal process. The items removed were obviously reported by someone and they refuse to divulge that information or even give me the chance to contest their decision. This has happened before and I promised I would not just site back and take it this time.

As DeviantArt happens to be located in the state of California, they are subject to several by laws that sites of their nature must abide by which is a given considering all the stipulations implemented to regulate web content. Among one of those laws that is not clearly stipulated, is the public display of pictures or art work regarding that of minors. Given their international presence and reputation DeviantArt exercises on a regular basis the uncontested removal of items they deem as a violation. They have posted in their difficult to find FAQ area the following that pertain to this sensitive area.

Art Restrictions:

Are there restrictions on artworks showing children or teenagers (fictional or otherwise)?
Works depicting fictional characters can be broken into several broad categories; artworks depicting the likeness of real children, fan art that which concerns characters presented as underage minors or children in their original context, and works depicting entirely original characters.
• Works depicting the likenesses of real children, whether painting, sketch, or otherwise, will be held to the same standards established for photographs of underage models.
• Fan art concerning characters that are considered underage minors or children in their original context are subjected to several restrictions which mirror the restrictions in place for photographic submissions and in addition may be held to the following restrictions listed here;
• Characters who are underage in their original context may not be depicted with "enhanced" breasts, buttocks, or genital areas.
• Attempts to portray a fictional underage or child character as an "adult" in order to avoid these restrictions will not be allowed under any circumstances.
• Characters which have been portrayed as a range of ages in their original media will be classified as underage or not based upon the youngest portrayal as well as their average age over the series.
• Fan art concerning characters that are considered to be adults in their original context have no restrictions in regards to nudity or other provocative themes other than those already in place governing sexual or pornographic subject matter. Please see other areas of the FAQ for details.
Any fan art submission found to depict any of this prohibited content will be removed immediately and without notice.
For artworks depicting completely original characters which appear to be minors or children placed into sexual situations or context the staff will make a individual judgment on each work based on the appearance and anatomy of the character (with allowances made for style), the perceived intention of the work, and all other available information.

In their vague communications they stated the following removals based on that violation:

Deletion Notice:

After seeing all of these I immediately when to their helpdesk section and asked the following:

Ticket #172313:

Well it's been more than 4 days and their response was to remove the following images:

Still with this concern that I needed to clear this, I decided to contact Daz3D via their abuse email. The purpose in doing so was to ask specifically if any of the base models can ever be labeled as young and if they designed it to be anything other than an adult. Immediately after I sent the email, I saw that they did indeed visit my deviant profile with their account DAZ-3D on deviantART. However they did not respond to my email and I believe that they are not going to either. Here is a sample of that email.

Daz3D:

Hello,Please forgive me for contacting you directly but I didn't know if opening a ticket for this was appropriate. It's in regards to a legal question on the base models for Aiko 3, and Aiko 4. First off I am a 3D hobby artist that has enjoyed your products since 2000 when I was first introduced to Poser 3. I have since then made a name for myself on several art communities with the exception of Daz3D because I am not a professional artist. However, I do post my work frequently on DeviantArt where I do mostly requested Anime Characters, Erotic/Pin-up, Humor, and Celebrity look-a-likes that you can see from my profile link: Dangerboy3D on deviantART. The majority of the products I use are all based on the Daz3d's famous Aiko 3, and Aiko 4 base models. My question is about the intended age that these base models portray or were designed on. I may not be saying that properly but what I am looking for specifically, is the A3 and A4 base models designed and built to portray an adult, a child, or a teenager. I know for a fact that any base model can be modified to look like anything but I have a doubt that it was intended for the base model to look anything other than an adult. The reason for my question. In the past week, several of my art works (5 to 10) have been taken down by volunteer DeviantArt administrators on the claim of a violation. My concern is the violation itself which involves the nude or sexual art portraying an "under-aged" character. Out of embarrassment, this makes me look like a pedophile. I am no expert on Japanese anime or know the actual age of the characters community members/friends request to see. I am not concerned about the items they decided was inappropriate for their community, but more for the that violation. If the pictures were that offensive then I would have expected to be banned and possibly charges files. However, I am challenging them at the moment because I know these models are not designed to look like children or young adults. In my personal opinion, I do not believe that their claim is valid and I have asked them for their procedure on how they came to their determination. What I would like from Daz3D is a basic acknowledgment that the A3 and A4 base models are not designed to portray an adolescent. My intention is not start a conflict of any kind but to simply state a fact to their volunteer staff.

Now I asked myself why they were all the sudden picking on me and it was obvious. Some trolls off of their site was reporting the images and the volunteer admins were simply removing them and not even bothering to confront me. For a moment there I thought they kicked me out of the helpdesk as well because I asked for an update. My request was very simple and as a born Houstonian and ex-veteran, I was simply exercising my rights. I am sure that they are not aware or honor the 6th amendment to the Constitution of The United States... "the right to confront one's accuser". Did I honestly believe they would address me even with premium member status... nope. You have to have something called a backbone to be able to deal with the complex issues. Anyway I went and did my own research on their site and these were the results:

Live on DeviantArt:

With this in mind, I strongly believe that DeviantArt does not have the proper mechanisms in place to monitor or audit the examples I found above and I feel they can really make use some official help to assist them. So I went to a bunch of sites and forwarded all the links above including mine for a comparison. After asking around to several investigative sites, I am guessing that a willing team of auditors might be interested in taking a close look at their procedures within the next couple of months. I would hate to think of what the price tag will be on that. Perhaps it might have been easier for them to respond to my questions rather than me having to inquire with zero tolerance 3rd party organization.

**Kaiju** · 04-18-2011, 06:37 AM

Yeah, I've had similiar issues too. Back in the day devianTART had a policy that said as "long as the character LOOKED like an adult, the material should be okay" and after a few deleted deviations, I inquired about "what is a proper adult" and I never received a response, and a week later it was all of sudden "IF THE CHARACTER LOOKS LIKE AN UNDERAGE CHARACTER IT IS" I'm paraphrasing of course, but damn thats how dA acts like. And then you have the moral guardians who run the show and get offended at even a girl tied to a traintracks scene as "underage bondage/pornography!" and objectification of women...

. I still use dA because A. Thats the only place where I can get my art out to a consistant audience. B. Only way to get feedback. and C. I have many friends on dA. Other than that, dA pretty much blows. You cant get much say without premium membership and even then, unless you know one of the admins (If they are to be even called such) you have no sway in terms of fighting policy violations, only thing I can really say for you to do is Email the "admins" directly and then since their lazy tyrants, they will probably ban you for inconviencing them. (These are the same guys who banned someone for saying the "I'm 12 years old and what is this?" meme(for being UNDERAGED

)

devianTART is easy to use though, and If we can borrow a few their system's style of browsing, commenting, and favoriting Art, maybe we can actually get more people here... since we are quite lenient on whats MATURE content, lol.

**Dangerboy3D** · 04-18-2011, 12:14 PM

To be honest I was actually invited to join DA in 2009 by some friends I had on Naruto Forums. At the time I really only posted my stuff on their Temari Fanclub and Kunoichi Fanclub threads which is where I met a Gaara and Temari-Chan. Never really though much about DA then but I met so many friend's on there as well. Just like this site, it's ran with volunteer staff. The difference is that this site is not hosted in the State of California, and I know for a fact that internet rules are very strict there. Even though you would have to be a member and allow adult images to see some of the examples I posted, they cannot claim that they have absolute control by any means. In reality there is no site that can have absolute control over all their member actions. However, some of the examples have been online even before I became a member. The examples I posted are based on a simple keyword search, so can you imagine if I really spent some time on looking deeper. These people are making way too much money to play ignorant and that's what an official force will certainly concentrating on. I did try to get informal resolution from them and their response was sort of a slap in the face. Then again, even Daz3D should have acknowledged that the base models were intended to be adults and respond to my note. Seems like none of these people have any balls or backbone to simply just state the obvious.

Posting on DA will continue and as you stated, the viewing audience is vast and international. Exposure is really all they are worth. From now on I will be posting with a legal disclaimer in my image descriptions. I am a little pissed at their chicken-shit actions but I'd hate to leave all my friends there. Who knows, they might even ban me after all the colorful things I have to say about them. Fairness is not something I really expect.

Don't think some of their featured would help us much here. We get a ton of traffic but the anime theme seems to be a real gamble. Anime appears to be associated with free downloads too and that's something we could not get a handle on. We got the manga and the videos, but that still didn't do much. Lots of people see all of our images but they still don't participate in our small community... Well other than just lurking. Maybe we should have just did the downloads and screw the others but it's late in the game for that. Still post your ideas and the Halo group will see what they can do... I know they are gonna ask me for help anyway.

GL · 04-18-2011, 09:37 PM

Well, the questions is - how do we know if the character "looks" underage.... some people say that I, for example, look like I'm 16 (when I cut my hair short and shave, lol)... I'm in fact 25, looool.... such perception-based approach is just pathetic... but what can we do about it?

**Dangerboy3D** · 04-19-2011, 01:49 AM

Originally Posted by Sabaku no Gaara

Well, the questions is - how do we know if the character "looks" underage.... some people say that I, for example, look like I'm 16 (when I cut my hair short and shave, lol)... I'm in fact 25, looool.... such perception-based approach is just pathetic... but what can we do about it?

Well your boyish good looks would only be at question when you are going to a club and need to produce ID. In this case the only way to actually know the age of a character is to look it up on a Wiki or something like that. Still how would one determine base on just that date. For example, the posted date for Hinata in 2007 as opposed to now. Like you would think she has grown since then but you cannot tell unless the publisher posts her actual age. To be honest I don't think anyone knows the actual age of the character. I don't see how a judgment can be passed without proof or at lease due-diligence from the accusing party. I would imagine that if you are being accused of something that evidence of your infraction would be an important factor in the accusation. For example, if I am going to accuse Gaara of being a woman hogger with the exception of the obvious posts, I would actually include those posts in my accusation to support my claim against Gaara. If you make an accusation without even a shred of proof then you are just blowing chunks out of your butt. That could be the actual problem with the DA Admins... too much chunk build-up in their ass. I am going to continue to post on DA but never any nudity from now on. I'll stick to real galleries like our home here for that.

I am going to do some product evaluations on certain base models and see if I can get some feedback from folks to guess their actual age.... Not sure when but it's on a list of things I'd like to do.

GL · 04-19-2011, 11:01 PM

I think this is retarded at the very base of it. It's not even a real person, it's a drawing that has been animated (and in some cases, has not been)... although, in Japan in doesn't actually prevent people from officially marrying anime characters, but Japanese are quite... well, that's besides the point (and I have nothing against Japanese, especially now...)
So, unless it is explicitly understood that the characters are underage (either by their look or actual disclosure of their age) it is simply stupid and unwarranted to assume their age. And even when it comes to looks. There are a lot of anime characters who look like they're teenagers, and yet, they are adults. And just the opposite is true. Some characters look like adults, but are actually teenagers (example, Kuwabara from Yu-Yu-Hakusho. I don't watch the anime or read the manga, I have just seen a couple of episodes in my teenage days). Either or, it's ridiculous to pinpoint like that... not even talking about the actual timing, as you mentioned. Unless you say so, it's not clear at all from what time period you're drawing the character.
I believe that you've had addressed your case. The Court therefore finds the Admins of DA to be inexperienced paranoid assholes who like to make themselves feel better by enforcing the rules of their own making. Case closed. Additional comments and propositions welcome.
Presiding, the Honorable Women hog... I mean, judge Gaara, lol. Yeah... the judge...

**Dangerboy3D** · 04-20-2011, 01:17 AM

Hahah.. Judge Woman Hog!.... That sounds about right.

Yes the characters that are produced in various Japanese series would be very difficult for an individual to determine age, especially if they are not familiar with the particular anime or character of. Is the DeviantArt staff experts? I have a doubt. The entire scenario goes back to a factor of why this place was built if you recall. I think a lot of folks have experienced unfairness in one form or another with other sites. I believe that if the staff here were faced with a similar situation, that we would not simply act without at least posing a question. If any of the members posted a questionable or disturbing picture online, I would imagine that someone would notify them and then leave it to the member to either adjust or remove the image themselves. Well that's just my take on it. This case was pretty simple actually and the DeviantArt admins do not appear to care about much. They receive a complaint from a hater/troll and just remove the image with a notice. If there was ever a real infraction, they may have just banned the account. Still they should have responded and as of now, I can no longer log into the helpdesk system to check for a response to my initial inquiry. I wonder if they will do the same to an investigator from a government agency?

I called a contact with the RCMP who did my security screening a couple of years back. He's suppose to get me in contact with their internet offences group that can possibly review my images. I expect some feedback from them on their determination of if the images are indeed classified as underage nudity.

GL · 04-20-2011, 02:23 AM

You sound determined, Rob... what if they say that the images are fine? How are you going to fight DA then?

**Dangerboy3D** · 04-20-2011, 02:48 AM

Not going to fight with them. There is nothing to gain. According to him, I should have a legal disclaimer attached to the images stating the source and intended projection. He also added that the legal system for Canada is not a anal as in California. They are zero tolerance as well but sites like that have to provide justification on their actions, which falls under consumer service laws. As a paid premium member, there should be outline policies entitled especially since it falls under ecommerce agreements. I did also mention disclosure to him which he agreed that even anonymous reports should be posted if action was already taken. It's the same 6th amendment stuff where you have the right to know your accuser. As action was taken DeviantArt was in direct disregard of that. He feels that sites like this loosely manage their record keeping which could cause them some serious issues if there was ever an investigation. No real point to fight anyone to be honest. I do however fully intend to be rudely sarcastic.

The question is still there of how the heck does someone really determine age based on a fictional character. Like the accusers must have had to present some sort of proof before they actually pulled those images... Or are they simply that ignorant just to act and not question the validity of the accusation?

GL · 04-20-2011, 09:09 PM

The latter is usually the case...

**Halo-Admin** · 04-25-2011, 03:35 AM

Not sure if anyone noticed but the last link from DB's examples off of their site is totally illegal: http://th07.deviantart.net/fs71/150/...23-d3b4gih.jpg

Underage Porn on DA:

I can see that the user is banned but this is still viewable from google images. That means that even though DeviantArt banned the user, they are still hosting the illegal image on their file server FS71. If I were a net-cop, I would only be seeing dollar signs right now. I mean linking images is one thing but the actual hosting of them is what I am seeing here. I may not be so smart with legal stuff but this one is certainly bad and if they do not know it's there, then that's even worst. I would be asking how much more underage porn are they hosting that they don't know about?

GL · 04-25-2011, 11:52 PM

So true... I wish some legal authorities got on the case...

**Dangerboy3D** · 04-26-2011, 01:16 AM

Originally Posted by Sabaku no Gaara

So true... I wish some legal authorities got on the case...

They probably are, considering we have identified it and have been talking about it. Everything we post here appears on google within a hour to 2 hours which is scary fast. If they did come under investigation then we will never know and chances are that they have enough capital to buy their way out of it. We on the other hand are not exactly clear of something like this. Yes there is closed access from our adult sections but we really should have disclaimers clearly visible on the site. Mostly with minors involved because if any of them are browsing, they would have a clear understanding in case they manage to come across some anime nudes. Content advisory is not a huge thing to implement but how to integrate will be tricky.

DeviantArt does not have a lot to worry about. A site like that produces considerable revenue to get away with whatever. Even if they are hosting images of questionable nature, they will be able to weave their way around law enforcement... Well that's my bet anyway. I've seen it done too many times from both the US and Canadian corporate world. Even if fines are implemented, they are minimal at best. It's not like they are a torrent site or something of their immediate focus. They were even bold enough to kill my support login from the site because I kept on requesting an answer to the unassigned issue. It's a good thing I kept a copy of it as proof that I did attempt some method of informal resolution. ticket72313

Oh well.. If they were to ever ban me for talkin smack about them, I'd just get another account and start all over. Like I really give a shit. I would still like to honestly know who or how they can 100% identify an illustration as under-aged nudity. Especially if they or the accusers are not the actual producers of the characters in question.

GL · 04-26-2011, 09:23 PM

The last point is the key here. Now, I suppose we should talk about our site then and about the said disclaimer. I can go a try to make a temporary add-on to our forum and gallery rules thing, but we need something more efficient.

GL · 04-26-2011, 10:07 PM

http://forum.animexhibit.com/forum/l...disclamer.html

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