Internet art theft ... violation or flattery?

Celtic Rose, painted canvas on hand-quilted panel.

Copyright infringement. It's a risk you always take when you put your work on a website and post it on the internet for all the world to see. Now, some people will actually contact you and request use of your art for certain purposes. I've had that happen. Some people are ignorant and don't comprehend the meaning of copyright. Some people don't give a rats' butt. With the latter two, your art gets taken and used for their own whim. Most often, you don't ever even know about it. On occasion, you are told by someone who sees it, or, you stumble upon it yourself.

Happened to me this past weekend. I stumbled on one of my images with an unknown internet address while doing a Google search. A mysterious individual had used my Celtic Rose as a "card" in a comment on their friends' MySpace page. Tracing it's origins I discovered six more mystery people have it in their Photobucket accounts. Lord only knows where the Hell else it's gotten whisked off to.

Y'all, this kind of wigs me out.

I did a bit of checking on the Photobucket site to see what can be done about copyright infringement and it's a bit of a process to pursue. I do intend to follow through with the process even if it will take awhile, and it may or may not garner satisfactory results. I feel it's necessary. It's my art and I worked hard on that painting. I've posted plainly on every page of my website all artwork is copyright. It's not for anyone's use accept my own unless someone contacts me and requests use of it. My art is how I earn my living ..... how would they like for me to come take the car they use to get back and forth to work?

On the other hand, I will honestly admit there is a certain amount of flattery in that these mystery people liked it enough to put it in their Photobucket account for use on their MySpace pages, blogs or whatever. It's not a high enough resolution image to use for anything else - I set that when I uploaded the images to my own website. It also shows my signature fairly clearly in the bottom right corner. Could prompt someone to check out who "Carol Snedeker-Martinez" is, ya' know? Ta Da! Take 'em to my website ... but hopefully not to steal more art images!

Anyway, if you look at their Photobucket accounts you see immediately these people have spent some time searching the internet and are collecting other images from other artists they like. 99% of them are those aforementioned ignorant people who just don't get the meaning of copyright ... they don't think they are stealing! They really believe because it's on the internet it's fair game for them to take if they want it. Stupid, but true. They aren't being malicious, they are being stupid.

What's to be done?

For starters, I'm going to have to put copyright seals on all the art images on my website. I've seen other artists do the same and yes, I even considered it when I first built the site. Why I didn't do it then is mainly because it takes away from the image. It's hard for many people to look at the work and "see" it without that ghosted copyright seal plastered over the top of it. Even if you post clearly on the page that the final print will NOT have the copyright seal, that it is for internet security purposes only, they don't understand. Again, people are amazingly and incredibly stupid sometimes.

I had also hoped the low resolution I uploaded the images with would deter theft. No matter what software you have, no matter how much of a Photoshop Wizard you think you are, you can't make a low 72 dpi resolution image print like a high 300 dpi resolution file. The pixels simply aren't there. You can't fake it, you can't re-create them, you basically can't do anything with it other than use it on the internet. If one of those image thieving mystery people tried to print it they would only end up with a fuzzy, pixelated piece of crap.

Obviously, I was mistaken in thinking no one would steal my stuff.

Wow. What a pain in the ass.

Guess that website rebuild is closer around the corner than I thought it was going to be. Gah!

Okay then, let's take a quick breather and a pause for a cute, make you feel all warm and snuggly photo from Cute Overload ...


Ah, that's really nice.

Namaste y'all ...