That said, I will treat DA as a special case in the future. I’ll just focus on featuring non-DA designers and artists, and if I find something on DA that I really want to share with others, I’ll make sure its terms of use allows for usage outside of DA, or I will ask.

Thanks for the support.

I did not mean to imply that these works are free for any purpose. This is a blog. In part, I starting cataloging these resources for myself. I am a member of DeviantART, and if I wanted to use those resources for something I was creating there, I would have the links with previews handy here. I just chose to share my blog publicly. What about when somebody links to a DeviantART resource to their Delicious account? If they don’t have their Delicious account restricted to private usage, are they guilty of redistributing or compiling material off DeviantART since all of that data is public and searchable?

I do appreciate your comments and advice, though. I did not take into account the insular nature of the DeviantART community. There are a quite a few designers out there who regularly give stuff away on their sites and their blogs in order to draw more traffic to their sites. I tried to treat the artists of DeviantART the same way, but that was apparently a mistake. After today, I’ll give greater consideration to whom and what I link to. Thanks again.

Firstly, each stock/resource provider has their own set of rules – DA does not govern over the way resources are provided and leave that entirely up to the stockist. Most of the time those rules include no redistribution *outside of DA* in compilations of any kind. Your site does constitute a compilation and obviously, this site is not part of DA.

Secondly, many of the stockers require specific permission for their work to be used commercially for anything. 80% of them don’t. 90% say commercial work through DA *only*.

Thirdly, a lot of the stock resources have been created from OTHER stock resources with certain permissions. Linking to them outside DA nullifies some of those specific permissions.

To bring it all down to brass tacks, DA isn’t your average website when it comes to stock and resources. Obviously the stockers cannot really control who accesses their work and how but they do get peeved when their stuff is put up somewhere without their knowledge and in a place where it is implied, as it is on your site, that these resources are free to the general internet public for whatever purpose – especially commercial.

Probably the best way you can overcome this is to create an account on DA if you haven’t already, suss out the rules of the stock/resource usage for the person you’d like to feature and note that person to ask for their permission to post on your website after you explain who you are and what you’re about. It’s a common courtesy that I can say with confidence that many, if not all, will appreciate and you’d probably get a good response to.

All of the above is very specific to the resource and stock culture of DA which is quite different from any other site I’ve been a member of.

Hope that helps in your endeavours. I can see you’re not doing anything technically wrong, it certainly doesn’t bother me but naturally, not everyone is as laid back as I am. LOL
Cheers.