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On Art Theft

Dragon Age Polyshipping takes art theft and plagiarism seriously. We do not under any circumstances condone plagiarism or art theft, as we believe wholeheartedly in and support the intellectual property rights of fancreators.

We wanted to take some time to address what constitutes both plagiarism and art theft, and what you can do if you believe someone mentioned @dapolyshipping in an effort to promote a fanwork which has violated your intellectual property rights. To start we'll define both plagiarism and art theft, and let you know how to proceed in addressing the issue.

Plagiarism​

We will use AO3's guidelines for plagiarism listed below:

Plagiarism is the use of someone else's words or concepts without properly attributing those words or concepts to their original source. Simply finding and replacing names, substituting synonyms, or rearranging a few words is not enough to make the work original to you. Deliberately writing a work using the same general idea as another work is not plagiarism, but citation is always appreciated.

An expanded definition can be found in the AO3 Terms of Service.

Art Theft​

If plagiarism is highly contested and disputed Art Theft is even more so. We have compiled a list of examples which we consider Art Theft.

  • Reposting someone else's art, moodboard, or fanedit.

    fic/art rec lists should link to these works, not repost them from an account that does not belong to the artist/author.

  • Removing someone's signature, watermark, or identifying symbol through cropping or editing.
  • Tracing someone's artwork as a base without permission or attribution (credit).

    this includes using something other than free stock photos or paid stock photos for which you haven't obtained a license.

  • Using someone's artwork in graphic edits (for moodboards, user avatars, emojis, etc) without permissions or attribution (credit).

What To Do​

If you become aware someone has tagged @dapolyshipping in a post with a fanwork which plagiarizes your own or which constitutes art theft, we ask that you do the following:

  • Attempt contacting the writer or artist directly to talk things out. Please do not attack or harass the other creator. Although it can be frustrating, try to approach the situation calmly, and ask for them to either remove their post or properly credit. We do not support callout posts or public confrontations.

    • If they agree to remove their post, please have them contact us to request that the post be deleted from the blog or the queue if it hasn't been reposted yet. If they are going to repost with proper credit, we are happy to replace their original post in the queue or to include it in the next month's queue if it has already been posted.

    • If you find you are blocked or the two of you are unable to come to an agreement, you still have options:

      1. Use this post with resources concerning DMCA and copyright for various social media sites. You may file a DMCA takedowns and/or abuse reports with each site where the work is hosted.

      2. Please send us the link where you first posted your work, and either:

        • a link to the one which you believe violates your intellectual property rights, or
        • a screenshot of the post.

        We will not negotiate on behalf of either fancreator, but if we do agree there has been an abuse of intellectual property rights, we will remove the work which plagiarized or stole art from our blog. We will reach out to let the fancreator know why their work was removed.