So I haven't been actively using DA in awhile and my subscription finally ran out. So like, when in the hell did DA start putting browsing restrictions on non-subscriber accounts? What the hell man?!?

I don't know about anyone else, but for casual users like me who more or less use the site as a tool for exhibiting drawings this really sucks. I guess I'll have to put on my bitch rant hat for a second, but I always thought one of the credos of this site was that it was more about promoting art than about commerce, but if I'm going to be forced to pay for a subscription in order to even view my entire gallery than everything is not kosher in DA land.

I'm not against the idea of having a scaled pay for features service, but at the heart of the service there should be some things that began free and stay free. The ability to browse through galleries shouldn't be a pay feature. That's holding the content hostage, and in order to unlock the content you have to make a payment to DA, a portion of which the artists will never see even though it's their content, not DA's. In my case, my own content.

Make access to the forums a pay service. Hell, seeing large size images would be acceptable over locking my gallery. Why boast on the front page about the bazillion deviations available if you have to pay to see them. To step aside and play super stupid geek quoter for a second, this feels a lot like Lando on Cloud City after he struck a deal with Darth Vader. I guess this is what I get for agreeing to terms of service that include a clause letting DA alter the terms of service at will. Pray they don't alter it any further and all that junk.

I'll be honest, I'm a pretty laid back guy and I'm really not prone to paranoid reactions to change and such. I've been on DA for going on 4 1/2 years now and I've never "deleted my gallery", "left and came back", etc. All of the changes along the way have always seemed to either make sound business sense for the site, or haven't effected the service in such a way as to offset the amazing benefit of having a free online gallery service, which I'm beginning to think was a gift horse whose mouth I stuck my head in like the proverbial mixed metaphor ostrich for way too long.

I guess at the end of the day this is a terms of service that I'm no longer comfortable with, so I'm done here.

If anyone has any interest in my silly drawings or whatever you can always reach me via my website, [link]. This is Shawn signing off...