I took down about a third of my deviations due to a friend of mine having roughly her entire gallery of photomanipulations deleted for 'policy violations', namely using copyrighted material in her photomanips. Which, on one level, I can understand, because no one wants a lawsuit blah blah blah. And I completely do expect that art on deviantART is sacrosanct, ie no one is going to steal art from someone else's gallery to claim as their own. But I do have some issues with someone's art being deleted because the main subject of a photomanip was an image of a famous person, taken from magazine scans/fan sites/etc. I'm sure people would disagree with me, and feel free to do so- but this is my opinion and I feel strongly enough about it to say something. It's all well and good to say, "You aren't supposed to use pictures that aren't yours/aren't free stock in a photomanip you post to deviantART." The thing is:

1.) not all of us have photography equipment enough, and time enough, to have a shoot with a model every time we want to do a little light photomanip. And some of us aren't full time artists, and as a hobbyist at this myself I can't justify the time or expense of taking my own photography. Besides the fact that I wouldn't know how. I know, "that's what the stock section is for." Right, except when I see a picture of someone famous and feel inspired to manipulate it, the pose and expression and quality are things that put me in that kind of mood, and it's nearly impossible to find something of similar quality in the stock section. So sue me for saying it, but a lot of stock is kind of afterthought photography. I don't blame the photographers for that, I don't expect them to put as much time as they would into a finished product into some stock series- but that's why I'd rather use something, say, from a magazine scan sometimes.

2.) The argument that it's against the rules to manipulate someone else's art without written permission from the artist is great- when you know who the artist is or are in any way claiming dominion over that art. Half the time I have no way of finding out what magazine the shot was even taken from, let alone which photographer in particular took the shot, and I'm sure if I managed to find and contact said photographer to ask permission to photomanipulate the image as a -hobby- for -fun- they'd probably write me off as a lunatic. And I wouldn't blame them.

3.) The likelihood of said photographer ever finding the particular image in my gallery and getting upset at my using it are nil. Non subscribers can't even use the search feature, and unless someone who saw the pic knew the photographer personally and knew that they had taken the original shot and told them, there's little to no way of them finding out. And somehow I doubt magazine photographers who shoot pictures of Liv Tyler are subscribers to deviantART- they're too busy, um, shooting pictures for magazines.

There is such a thing as 'educational purposes' in copyright law, and frankly, that's what I (and my friends) are using those images for. I'm learning how to use photoshop, and I happen to use some other people's photography to experiment on. I find it disappointing that the staff here can't see the difference between usurping art in a way that violates copyright and simply using a pic that's been listed on thousands of fansites without credit to the photographer as the basis of an educational artistic expression.