Art theft [mini rant with questions]

[catshem]

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

What could've made it worse is if they did some...weird photoshopping... Part of why I try to keep my face off the internet now. You just don't know what some people are capable of; be it copyright infringment or stalking. As far as I know, I've never had anything stolen from me, but then I've never been a popular artist on DA because I never had a DA account. I swear it all stems back to DA.

[Lamia of the Dark]

I have never personally had a problem with people stealing MY art, but one of my favorite artists who does 3D renders (which he posts free download links of on site) almost stopped putting his work up because porn sites were stealing his works, cropping off the watermarks, and making people pay to see them. (>_> did I mention the renders are erotic? yeah, I am an adult and I look at that stuff.)

[DollyKim]

There's a pic I took up on Photobucket, and since lost in a hard drive crash, of a face up I did for someone. Not the best angle and I no longer care except it shows up when you search for my user name. The only way I could fight back was to tag a bunch of my other stuff so it floods the search and directs people towards my account instead of the other persons.

If it makes them feel that much better to put up one derpy picture I took then I figure their lives must otherwise be miserable.

[arrowchild]

It's only happened to me once, (that I know of ). I was randomly browsing DA one day and came across a digitially altered 'painting' me in cosplay as L from Death Note. Very, very weird/disturbing/strange to see not only one of my photographs, but one of my self portrait/cosplay shots, being used by someone else without my knowledge. I contacted the person who had done it and, luckilly, they were very sweet and appologetic and very quickly credited me as the original artist. But still, it made me think twice about posting art on the internet. It doesn't stop me, clearly, lol, but it does make me think twice about it sometimes.

Unfortunately, I think, a lot of people who use other's images without permission don't see it as stealing. The idea that anything download-able is fair game is pretty prevelant...as though all images on the internet are stock art. Not cool. But it's a mind set that seems to be a common one right now.

[MitisFeles]

I never experienced directly an art theft even if I'm on Deviantart. Maybe I never noticed it or maybe I'm just a too crappy artist to get searching-for-attention teenager interest. Anyway, I experienced it indirectly every day. Lot of facebook pages use arts not minding to credit them: I saw recentely a facebook page on mythology that uses Genzoman illustration with false and badly written information, and not crediting the artist -_- "The idea that anything download-able is fair game" reported by arrowchild seems really common even to me. If I know the artist and if it is possible I report them, silently. For the rest is all Internet kickback... -____-
I took away long time ago my photos from the net, especially the ones in cosplay, for the same reasons stated by catshem: I want to avoid identity stealing and stalking issue...

[Linteia]

Let the offending party know they need to credit the artist. If your artist friend(s) don't want to act on it when it's brought to their attention there's really nothing you can do about it. For me, as long as credit is given somewhere I don't really care if people use my stuff, unless they're making money off of it. That's why I put it up online, after all.

[EAB]

One of my favorite lines from the movie "The Red Shoes" was, "Remember that it's far more disheartening to have to steal than to be stolen from."
Of course, that movie was made at a time when people still thought consciences were good things to have.

[Trethowan]

DA is sort of creepy. I took down a lot of my photos and things, and I'm even hesitant about sharing the short stories for class. I posted them for critique since they were just class assignments, but still. There are so many loser thieves out there. ha! Thankfully for me though, none of my photographs or stories are good enough to be stolen. :-p With all the talent out there, I feel my mediocrity will probably be my best protection.

[animeangel09189]

DA is sort of creepy. I took down a lot of my photos and things, and I'm even hesitant about sharing the short stories for class. I posted them for critique since they were just class assignments, but still. There are so many loser thieves out there. ha! Thankfully for me though, none of my photographs or stories are good enough to be stolen. :-p With all the talent out there, I feel my mediocrity will probably be my best protection.

I don't find DA to be that creepy and as long as your stuff isn't monster high it might be safe mediocity has nothing to do with it

[DollyKim]

I put pictures of my custom Monsters up there and don't give a crap, they're also on my blog and here. If there's a zillion Ice Princess reroots then there are. I also post pics of my sketches and doodles, one made the front page of Derp.com with one of my screen names. As I said you can spot my stuff a mile away and someone would be hard pressed to do a forgery.

Back in the old timey days artists learned by making copies of Old Masters and anything else they admired but most never passed the copies off as originals. It's integrity that has been lost to society and to heck with occupying things, todays kids need to be better people.