Why I Left DeviantArt

Let me first say that I've been a DA member for a few years and have had reasonable success in generating a buzz for my artwork there and feel that it is a great community and resource for artists of various mediums both traditional and digital. It really is like no other place online. With that said I recently deactivated my account there for a few reasons that to me were important. Firstly the art theft thing. I realize that when you publish any piece of artwork online you are taking a risk, but in most cases the benefit outweighs the risk. When I first started uploading work to DA I never had to refuse permission for downloads but when I started seeing various pieces of my artwork on other profiles, either cropped or recolored, etc and signed by someone else, I had to start refusing download permission on all of my pieces. I didn't like this, and not because the thefts upset me, but because I feel that the key to being a good artist is simply TRYING. I didn't like not being able to share my artwork with people who simply wanted to download it for inspiration. Simply grabbing various pieces of artwork from various artists and photo-shopping them up, and then claiming them as your own is just silly and forces artists to withhold their work from good people with no ill intention to protect themselves from the ones who have ulterior motives. One great comic book artist named David Finch had to nix his whole website due to this very same phenomenon. Which to me was very sad as he was a true inspiration and remains to be for many people who would love to see new work from him posted online, but as he stated on his now closed website, too many people were stealing his work and claiming it to be their own. To what end? Who knows. I guess they figure getting attention in the short term is better than working for years at their craft and really becoming great. The next reason I decided to walk away from DA was that I kept seeing their contests pop up and even entered one, which really isn't my bag, but I did it. I just kept noticing that most of the winners or finalists over there were either borderline or outright plagiarists. In contest after contest there were many many outraged people who were all asking the same question of DA. If I produce a composition from scratch and this guy just tweaks and bashes photos how can you choose his work over mine? This is the rub. In all of these cases DA defended it's position and actually endorsed the plagiarism. To me you can't on one hand state that you are trying to further the arts while on the other hand awarding and endorsing plagiarism in any degree or form. It was rather distasteful for me to look at pieces that I knew good people spent a week on, lose to someone who pushed a couple of buttons , ran a few filters, etc and in 45 minutes produced, voila! A winner.... Sites like CG hub will actually disqualify you from their jams and contests for the same actions that DA endorses in their contests. In my opinion CGHUB has it right as the point of competitions is to test your skills, against your peers, in a manner that it outside your comfort zone-which is usually the point of competing against others! Lastly I decided that in order to really focus on my craft I had to pare down my online presence' as I simply was finding that I was spending too much time administrating them, answering emails, etc. This was a personal choice and really a matter of time management and had very little to do with DA other than me having to make a decision about which online arenas were productive for me to be involved in and which weren't. Of course the above reasons were a factor in this decision but not the only factor when weighing both the pros and cons associated with DA membership. At present I really need to focus on work and anything that I find is a detractor must be weeded out. I am a bit down that I feel that I cannot share my work on DA anymore and maybe down the road I'll take another crack at it, but for now I'm cool with where I'm at with the whole thing and feel I made the right decision. D