First of all, I've let this issue rise too far without addressing it. And deviants continue to come to me asking for my perspective on this. When Orphaned Works popped up as a topic of discussion again a little while back we checked immediately with our lawyers and it was determined by them that this wasn't something we should be seriously concerned with. So my view has been to let the pieces fall where they may knowing that $lolly and $Moonbeam13 have made numerous attempts to explain the situation to deviants one by one.

deviantART takes very seriously the rights of artists and the protection of their work. We have every interest in making you aware of things you should be concerned with and if there is a threat that we perceive we will not mince words in making you aware. If something was of the level of concern some believe this Orphaned Works situation to be, we'd probably take the header of deviantART, place a red bolded link in it and require everyone to read it and take action.

But alas, that's not the case here.

Please, please, educate yourself. I see many posts on this subject that are full of fear. And fear is contagious, so it is spreading. These posts are in some instances just plain foolish and uninformed. I don't know if it is that people just enjoy the drama or what.

Officially, Daniel ( $realitysquared ) has reviewed and responded to this situation on behalf of deviantART with a very informative Journal entry that you should all read.

Orphan Works Act of 2008 - READ THIS! BE INFORMED!



p.s. That aside, thank you for all of your awesome feedback on Sleek beta testing, and I hope you have enjoyed watching us hard at work fixing the many bugs that are being reported. We continue to do so, so keep checking in on progress! See you on #seniors

Beta Launch of v6 is now available to Subscribers / Beta testers. To turn on the hotness for an hour, check out this link: [link]

To view reported bugs and report bugs: [link]

Have fun

-- A

p.s. If you haven't done so yet, stop by $lolly's user page and wish him a happy birthday! Happy Birthday Richard!!!!!

(Hot off the Presses: CHECK OUT v6 SLEEK SCREEN SHOTS)

So my awesome girlfriend =JaninaZ booked a guest star role on Stargate Atlantis where she kicks ass and chews bubble gum. Now I know what you're thinking about being out of gum, and while she quite effectively kills a bajillion creatures with her P90 machine gun, she somehow manages not to run out and continues blowing rock star bubbles.



Anyway on Tuesday, $pachunka $mccann and I went down to hang out on set. Here are some photos from the shoot.



I have to say, WOW! What a fantastic group of people.... just everybody on set, behind cameras or running the joint just were absolutely wonderful. Full of generosity and sincere hospitality ... I've spent a lot of time on movie sets, tv show sets, etc. throughout the years living in Hollywood and this cast of characters (real life and scripted) were about as charming as it can possibly get. Maybe it's because we were in Vancouver.



Anyway, many thanks to Joseph Mallozzi who is the Exec Producer and a wonderful guy for taking care of Janina while shooting and allowing $mccann $pachunka and I to come down and annoy everyone on set; and especially for managing what seems to me like such a solid ship over at Stargate Atlantis. Mad props! Can't wait to see the episode!! (You can go over to Joseph's blog for even more photos, videos of Janina shooting a P90, etc.)




A couple shots of the set:

On the call at the moment with the engineering team, we have weekly monday meetings.

I figured I'd blog a bit while on it...

SLEEK, aka dA v6

Ready for beta launch later this week, many of the various bugs we had with it are resolved or being resolved. Engineers feel almost ready to show this off... ie6 compatibility is up to par, app bar menu still requires some modification.

Look forward to some final mocks which I will submit over the next few days. Interested in visual feedback, even though the magic of v6 is actual use flow which is hard to "feel" when viewing a mock up.


Message Center

Missed beta launch by a week or so, systems are set to scale but importing ran in to a hurdle. If you can believe it, we're importing over 4 billion rows from the old message center in to the new one..

Visually, it works very well. But more impressive is the back end systems being deployed for message center which will resolve a slew of bugs and issues we have with our current message center. I'm sure all of you are quite familiar with those

The new system is like quartz!


misc updates

iPhone interface nearing completion, about two weeks away from full beta.
Moderation system completely launched.
Art Block Frame implementation begins next week (we hope)
deviantWEAR Phase II tech spec drafting begins today!

-- A

So Mashable which is a blog for techies, VC's and a hub for web2.0 junkies asked me some srs bsns questions and I gave some srs bsns answers.

I actually sound so srs bsns in this thing it made me laugh when I listened to it. But I guess this is just a part of my personality, I just wonder where it comes from sometimes.

So click here for the story and click here for the MP3 directly especially if you want to hear me describe art work as "content" and other awesome buzz words like "monetize" and, junk.

Next time I go on Mashable I'm bringing my personality!

-- A