This morning when I returned home at about 5 AM I started the computer to check on my mail and Deviant account just to find out that some cock-sucking ego-inflated self-indulging-wanking-bastard (pardon my French) finally reported my "Eiffel Tower by Night" and it was deleted by the DeviantART staff:



NOTE #1
"Your deviation Eiffel Tower by Night was reported for Art theft (General). The report was reviewed by a member of the Staff and action was taken, deleting the deviation and marking the report as Resolved. Additionally, the following comment was provided:
Upon review a member of staff determined that this deviation included copyrighted content used without permission. Removed as a violation of deviantART copyright policy.

This message was generated automatically."

NOTE #2
"The administrator who deleted your deviation added the following:
Deleted in response to case #354329.
The work(s) listed below have been removed by staff as a violation of the deviantART copyright policy.
Your deviantART submissions must consist entirely of your own work or valid stock resources and must not include works from copyrighted sources.

Please read our Copyright Policy and if you have any questions or believe this removal to be an error please contact the deviantART Help Desk."



Not so long ago, =elgarbo had the same surprise [link] and a few days ago, =WildRainOfIceAndFire was stupidly reported for simply putting a Self-portrait in the Emotive Portraits category [link]
I enjoyed both their replies and I advice you to read them too.
Call me a sentimental fool, but I thought we were suppose to support art here, not sabotage it by every stupid means possible.

In case you haven't already found out, it is illegal to post pictures of the Eiffel Tower taken at night, because since the French put some new lights on it, they copyrighted it's image.
So what can I say, I can't blame DeviantART for this because they were only following procedures... and you can't be mad at the French for copyrighting the image of their landmark, can you? Of course you can!!
I think =elgarbo explained it much better in his journal:
"How is it possible that the image of something can be claimed by copyright? I mean, I can understand that a photo, or an artwork, or anything like that is a work of intellectual property. But how can an image of such a creation also be protected? Seems like madness to me, but then again, I haven't got a legally technical mind."

As for reporting it as Art Theft, I hope it doesn't refer to the fact that I didn't take the picture myself. But in case anyone was stupid enough to think that, I'd advise them to check my EXIF datas and they'll find out that 95% of my gallery was shot with the same camera. And they're not great images either, why would I steal them?

Here's the emotional background, so that you'd understand why I'm so upset about this:
"Eiffel Tower by Night" was my first uploaded image to DeviantART, it was fully non-edited and it was my most succesful image so far, with a big gap over the others in means of favorites and views: [link]
Here's the edited version of it that I uploaded an year later: [link] , I beg of you to report this as well.
So anyway, I'll have to wait for a while until my next popular image will go that far. It wasn't far compared to other shots arround here that got more favorites and views than my entire gallery (no, really!) but for a small timer like me that image meant a lot and it had a sentimental value. I took it 2 weeks after buying my first digital camera and it was also my first time ever out of the country. I would have never dreamt I'd be next to the Eiffel Tower and taking a picture of it, especially a pretty-looking one. It was my first time ever using a tripod, descovering long exposure and all the rest, that's why I was shocked when it turned out alright and I couldn't wait to get home (in Romania, after 2 weeks) and see how it looked on the computer. I slept with the memory card of the Paris shots under my pillow just to be sure I could get them home and download them into the computer and watch them.

Anyway, for all of you fans of this reporting activity which is growing into a sport, remember that we're here to support photography, art and artists. I can understand reporting shots of young people fucking or shitting in each other's mouths, but if you see a harmless colourful image, just try to enjoy it and let others get the chance to do that too. It might please you more on the inside as well.

PS: I just realised it was Friday the 13th. What were the odds?