Art theft [mini rant with questions]

[animeangel09189]

I personally have never had art stolen thankfully but I know others have the question is why is it always the monster high group on facebook? Every other picture you see on there is taken from DA or flickr but mostly DA people on there treat DA like photo bucket and just take and "share" what pictures they want I'm getting sick of it and the whole "I got it from google" or "I got it from deviant art" makes it even worse

So how should I handle this? just ignore when I see pictures I know are from DA but can't get to the artist to tell them? or what?

Facebook needs better rules and the worst part is you would think if the kids are smart enough to be on there they would be smart enough to know stealing is wrong but noooo >>

thoughts on this?

[Greyhaunt]

You can't stop it - it's the curse of the internet and basically inevitable. What you can do is report the theft to the artist if you know who it is and are able to contact them, then it is up to the artist to take action if they wish to. Generally speaking unless the thief is claiming the person's art as their own or trying to make a profit out of it there isn't much that can or will be done beyond a cease and desist.

On the other hand, if someone is claiming the art as their own then the artist can do what I did when it happened to me. First I emailed the little bastard (he was a 15 yr old in England) and told him stealing wasn't very nice (only I used harsher words). I didn't have to notify the board where he'd posted them, since they were the ones who told me, but I traced the internet service provider where he was housing the images and informed them of the copyright violations. He learned a valuable lesson and got into a bit of trouble on it.

[Evelien]

It also happens on the Moxie Teenz Facebook page... people posting photos of other people's dolls claiming they're theirs. Generally it's just silly twelve-year-olds who don't have a clue...

[Greyhaunt]

Facebook needs better rules and the worst part is you would think if the kids are smart enough to be on there they would be smart enough to know stealing is wrong but noooo >>

Facebook doesn't require brains to use - that is why it is so popular. Anything on the internet requiring more than a kindergarden level of education generally doesn't fare well. As for kids - all they care about is being popular and/or having something someone else doesn't have. If they have to lie to make it seem real, then that's what they'll do. One can only hope grow out of it before they become dangerous.

[Evelien]

As for kids - all they care about is being popular and/or having something someone else doesn't have. If they have to lie to make it seem real, then that's what they'll do.

Plus they feel very safe, posting relatively anonymously behind their computers. They think they're untouchable

[DollyKim]

Had a guy on the CHUD forum claiming my Phantom of the Paradise doll was his, as well as the spiffy girly dollhouse in the background. I changed the picture he had hotlinked to doll cops calling him on it.

Otherwise you need to tag or watermark your pics or hope your dolls and stuff are so "you" that people can recognize your stuff a mile away. But it's still gonna happen. I find a lot of my pics hot linked by link dump virus websites and porn hubs just to get people to click. I pretty much ignore it figuring arguing with it is like feeding trolls.

[animeangel09189]

My one friend on DA has her own watermark so people know its her work and people just crop it out and such I feel bad for her sometimes the art I find I know who's it is and it even has a DA watermark and the signature on it still

[SetsunaKou]

It's happened to me MANY times, and I have to say, it was really frightening when it was actually me in costume that the person was claiming! She was claiming to be me. ^^;; It was a really, REALLY, funny feeling, strange and odd, to see your room, your face, your costume, being stated as another person entirely! It's kind of scary! I had to contact the moderators/site owners about those couple of times that's occurred.

It's a terrible shame and so WEIRD, that anyone would want to claim something is their art when they didn't create it. WHY? Why would you do that? What's the point? To what purpose? And when people ask them about it, what DO they say?! It's just crazy and so illogical to me!

[OkamiKodomo]

I had a piece that was jacked from my DA; a digital art picture of a glowing, abstract butterfly, that someone used on their blog, and for their user icon. Unfortunately, said blog was in Portuguese, so I had no idea what it was for or about, but they most certainly did not have permission to go using my art to decorate it with. A ctrl+f search for my penname/internet alias turned up zilch so I could only assumed that credit was not given. Luckily, this blog was hosted through Google's blogspot, and they take copyright infringement fairly seriously. I sent them a DMCA notice, and they took down my pictures. That same night, I found someone had shared that same picture on a forum, in a thread about "thought provoking and/or beautiful images" but they credited me with the work, so I left them alone. Had they been making a profit from it, then I would've made a fuss, but all I really ask is that you credit me for the work, yanno?

Of course the irony behind that picture was that it was a practice piece I made some six years ago, to familiarize myself with Photoshop's somewhat limited vector tools.

[Evelien]

It's happened to me MANY times, and I have to say, it was really frightening when it was actually me in costume that the person was claiming! She was claiming to be me. ^^;; It was a really, REALLY, funny feeling, strange and odd, to see your room, your face, your costume, being stated as another person entirely! It's kind of scary! I had to contact the moderators/site owners about those couple of times that's occurred.

It's a terrible shame and so WEIRD, that anyone would want to claim something is their art when they didn't create it. WHY? Why would you do that? What's the point? To what purpose? And when people ask them about it, what DO they say?! It's just crazy and so illogical to me!

... That IS creepy O.o