This journal has been edited to remove everything but the links and explanations. The hatred on this site is getting out of hand, and I do not want to think that I might have had something to do with that.

Oh, what a wonderful place archive.org is. The Wayback Machine can be an inexhaustible source of entertainment.

Looky what I found - MY BAD on this Submission Agreement, WORRY NOT! by $spyed, on Nov 06, 2000, in Devious News

You should read it. It's a riot. (This is here only because it struck me as funny and ironic, not because it "proves" anything)

~lightstream - this is, I suppose, a fair explanation of why the agreement got there, but it still doesn't change the fact that the agreement was written in terms that left DA with the ability to sell artist's work to third parties for modification and commercial usage without any compensation or credit given to the artist. This may be a standard practice in the music business, I don't know, but the tone and intention of that original agreement makes me worry about who or what corporate entity is behind (owns) this site and what their ultimate intentions are.

$spyed - lightstream: it's not a conspiracy... the "corporate entity" is like, me, or something. I incorrectly instructed a lawyer, by not properly informing him to split the agreements in to two different agreements.

Now, just for fun (as in mild amusement - this post is here for entertainment purposes only), let's compare a few isms, from then and now, from that particular article and a few other places.

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "°jark and I have worked together on deviantART from day 1. A little bit after the first year, we were joined by $mccann who created the Sonique MP3 player back in 1998."
then: (Jan. 21, 2001) "I really want to apologize to the entire community, to Jark and to Matteo for this submission agreement situation."

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "That is how much I believe in this community. I have dedicated my life to it."
then: (Nov. 6, 2000) "I threw the agreement in Jark's direction and then disappeared for the weekend and left the guys to deal with all the crazyness that was spawned as a result of the agreement."

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "I was the first person to work on deviantART full time in 2002..."
then: (Feb. 17, 2002) °attila said, "Not only do I work on deviantART.com full-time, but I am also a full-time college student." and $spyed said, "I run two companies besides helping run deviantART."
then: (June 9, 2002) "Our dreams as staff are to work on deviantART full time, my task is to make that possible..." - [link]

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "I personally hand built and "installed" deviantART's first 35 servers."
then: (Feb. 17, 2002) "My main efforts on deviantART have to do with a new venture called DA Prints which I'm running point on. I also help with the implementation of new ideas and encourage planning for the future, to combat the negative effects of rapid growth which we are seeing in our wonderful community. Basically I focus a lot on making sure make sure we scale in a healthy manner. I deal with our lawyers, writing up contracts, accounting, our corporate responsibilities and odds and ends here and there where necessary."

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "In the early days, deviantART.com was running just fine without any revenue, because $mccann was sending $gazillion checks out of his pocket every month to pay for the server costs."
then: (Oct. 8, 2000) °matteo said "Jark will be adding banner ads to DeviantArt soon and I want to do this news post in order to explain what this means. It's simple, we need to pay for our hosting, marketing, etc so that this site can remian (sic) up." - [link]

now: "As costs got steeper, along came the subscription and print programs, which were embraced with open arms by the community."
then: [link]

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "The other two co-founders..."
then: (Aug. 17, 2000) - [link] - the Contact page, featuring only °jark and °matteo
then: (March 31, 2001) - [link] - the Contact page again, with °jark, °matteo, °arc, $MikeyLove, °tack and °attila and listing their functions and titles - °jark and °matteo are named as co-founders, and $spyed isn't named at all.
then: (Nov. 8, 2001) - [link] - °jark and °matteo as co-founders - other staff listed are: °arc, °tack, °attila, `dj-designs, $jsenn, and $MikeyLove.
then: (June 9, 2002) - [link]
°matteo (Matt Stephens): Senior Vice President, deviantART Inc., Co-Founder
°jark (Scott Jarkoff): President, deviantART Inc., Co-Founder
$spyed (Angelo Sotira): CEO, deviantART Inc.

Through all this time, though, $spyed did have a $ in front of his name, and he did post news... at least, according to this [link] he did. Now, only two of those articles survive in the belly of the Wayback Machine - this one [link] and this one [link] .

[link]
[link] - second article from the bottom.

You'll see something else there too. A news article by °matteo - [link] - which you will also see here - [link] Look very, very closely - identical news posts made at the exact same moment, that recieved the exact same comments from the exact same people.

DMusic mirrored deviantART's news posts, at least at the beginning. It stands to reason that deviantART did the same with DMusic, at least after a fashion. Those articles appeared in $spyed's activity list on his userpage, but they never appeared on the front page of deviantART.

My theory? (Theory only - not fact. From this point on, everything you read is purely conjecture.) Yes, $spyed had a $ in front of his name from the very beginning, but it wasn't from deviantART - [link]

Have you ever wondered how it is that $spyed and °jark managed to join deviantART two weeks before it existed?

From their DMusic userpages:

jark
Type: DMember
Member Since: Jul 15, 2000

spyed
Type: Admin
Member Since: Jul 15, 2000

Another deviantPuzzle solved. That's the day they joined DMusic. °jark and $spyed's "Member Since" dates on deviantART are coming from DMusic's database. If that kind of member information is being shared, then why wouldn't their symbols?

Oh, and check out °jark's last post on his DMusic userpage - [link] - made some much needed adjustments to the HTML here at deviantART... Here at deviantART? In a post on DMusic? Crossposting much? And if the posts crossed over, then why wouldn't the symbols?

No, $spyed didn't co-found deviantART. $spyed founded DMusic. It wasn't until DMusic didn't perform the way $spyed wanted it to that his ever-present $ (from DMusic) suddenly came to mean that he'd been one of deviantART's founding fathers.

Latest Update

It appears that devDeepThroat might have decided to feed us some more of that paper trail Englebert was talking about - [link]

This one doesn't seem to have come from Englebert, though.