ABOUT DEVIANTART’S TOS
Look, I’m not a lawyer, but I do know some stuff about contracts and copyright, and I encourage other artists to read up on it because it’s important. People have been freaking out about dA’s ToS every 6 months or so for as long as I can remember and I highly doubt deviantART sold someone’s work (and to do so would be illegal). Its way more likely that some designer at Hot Topic snagged the image and no one bothered to check it was theirs. DeviantART does NOT have the rights to sell your work. Here’s why:
“Artist at all times retains all right, title and interest in and to the Artist Materials provided by Artist hereunder (including, without limitation, the copyrights in and to the Artist Materials), subject to the non-exclusive rights in the licenses granted to deviantART under this Agreement.”
This is important. You retain your copyright to the work you post on dA, other than the non-exclusive (meaning, they are not the only people who have these rights and they can be given to others) rights you grant them.
These rights are laid out in Section 3. License To Use Artist Materials. DeviantART has the right to display your work through digital means, which it needs to, well, show your work on the web and mobile. They have a right to edit it, which they need to make thumbnails, put watermarks on if you choose, etc. They can also use it for dA-specific advertising, like posting it on their tumblr. That’s it. They can sublicense those rights. However, this does NOT include physical media (like a shirt) or commercial use, and regardless section 5 reads:
“Limitation Of Rights The rights and licenses granted to deviantART under sections 3 and 4 of this Agreement require deviantART to obtain Artist consent before deviantART makes any commercial agreement with anyone else to separately buy, license, re-sell or re-publish or commercially use any Artist Materials not in association with deviantART but as an individual work of art or as a group of works from a single Artist in isolation from any other works.”
They NEED YOUR PERMISSION to give your work to anyone else. Period.
So yes, one part says you grant them a royalty-free license. To have your work on their website. Nothing else. I’m not saying dA is a perfect website, but there’s no need to rush out and delete your gallery just based on their terms of service.
