If you have a DA account or if you submit your art work on myspace, you might have heard about all the art theft being committed on myspace.

Some myspacers are claiming DA artworks as their own. Some are even taking the time to edit out the watermarks of people's work. Now I don't consider myself as an artist, nor do I have a myspace (thank god), but I would be pissed if I saw the work that I have put up on DA on some pre-teen girl's myspace page who is claiming it as her.

I like to know what some people here at Drunkduck think about this situation.

If your against the Myspace art theft and want to do something about it, you can sign a petition here:http://www.artavengers.com/

Oh thats.. terrible

I've seen that stuff happen before. And y'know what? There ain't shit no one can do about it. Stuff like that drives me nuts, art theft in general. There's this one girl on deviantART, she just takes a screenshot from Naruto, traces it, then recolors it and calls it her own art.

Thankfully for me though, My art is in a good place, not good enough to be stolen, but good enough to keep the fans happy.

Rusty Knight
I've seen that stuff happen before. And y'know what? There ain't shit no one can do about it. Stuff like that drives me nuts, art theft in general. There's this one girl on deviantART, she just takes a screenshot from Naruto, traces it, then recolors it and calls it her own art.

Thankfully for me though, My art is in a good place, not good enough to be stolen, but good enough to keep the fans happy.

At least she traced it, there are some people on the site who just take a images that they found on google and copy/paste it in their gallery.

FanGurlZ
At least she traced it, there are some people on the site who just take a images that they found on google and copy/paste it in their gallery.

I suppose that's a step up. But still.

For that kind of thing there are actually steps you can take. :)

Especially with Myspace- look at how the music industry got them to talk terms. Now you might think you don't have the the clout of the music industry, but once the precedent is set, it's set, all you have to do is walk the broad avenue they've paved for you. ^_^

i.e. Myspace or the company behind it will take complaints about the theft of intellectual property seriously.

a way to protect it is to embedd your art into flash and disable right click.

subcultured
a way to protect it is to embedd your art into flash and disable right click.

Would that protect it from being dragged to "My Pictures"?

If a file is embedded into Flash, can you still get at the file through the source code?

On a lighter note, if anyone stealz my artz, I'll send a LOLkitty to steal there intarnetz!

I would also suggest integrating your initials or signature into the picture in a place that wouldn't be so obvious... if they didn't find and erase it you could have the MySpace people look at it. Not sure if that'd work, though.

If you put it on the Internet it CAN be stolen.

If you don't want to take that risk, either lower the resolution/size or don't put it out there.

subcultured
a way to protect it is to embedd your art into flash and disable right click.

This works, as most MySpacers don't have the intelligence to use the 'Print Screen' key. :D

subcultured
a way to protect it is to embedd your art into flash and disable right click.

Go to tools, page info, media, then scroll through the list for the .swf or whatever file you may think is protected. Also keep in mind a print screen key can take a screen shot.

marine

subcultured
a way to protect it is to embedd your art into flash and disable right click.

Go to tools, page info, media, then scroll through the list for the .swf or whatever file you may think is protected. Also keep in mind a print screen key can take a screen shot.

This works, as most MySpacers don't have the intelligence to use the 'Print Screen' key. :D

Loonehart
I would also suggest integrating your initials or signature into the picture in a place that wouldn't be so obvious... if they didn't find and erase it you could have the MySpace people look at it. Not sure if that'd work, though.

It *should* work. The only problem is when the guy on the other side has a dull idea on editing pictures. Though, true, it would be very hard to erase a signature which is "in" the picture.

I've actually had this happen a few times. This is one of the reasons I do all my work by hand before any digital-ness comes into play: hard-copies of the original artwork. At least if you have stuff up on DA, there's a little more protection as you've got the date and time you uploaded to the site recorded and displayed plain-as-day there on the page. As for myspace...I've found that a simple, "Stop stealing my shit or I'm coming AFTER you" works wonders (but I'm prone to using threats of voilence to solve a lot of problems). I also go through the trouble of ghetto-copyrighting any artwork(or anything I post on-line, really) I put up on myspace (mail a copy of it to yourself first-class mail with a description of the art on the envelope. Don't OPEN the envelope until/unless you wind up in a legal dispute. It's essentially like having the USPS saying, "Yeah...this is his, so back off" it's a cheap loophole that holds up in court and saves you a little $)

This happened to me and Dr. Cloud once. Funny day that was. Poor bastard didn't realize what was coming to him.

Something I do for almost all my images nowadays is do the Copyright embedding. This way if an image is downloaded, altered, reuploaded, etc, your copyright is on the file. It's a little bit more hard core than the watermarking and very few people know how to change it. Or at least the ones who are stupid enough to steal art.

warren
If you put it on the Internet it CAN be stolen.

If you don't want to take that risk, either lower the resolution/size or don't put it out there.

This is my view as well.

It would suck, but then again if I saw someone actually saying they made something that I made a part of me would feel good knowing they thought so highly of my work to claim it as something they are proud of making.

I agree that this is a problem, but I actually look at it a little differently:

For one, whoever steals my artwork is getting a shitty, low resolution copy. Not good enough to resell.

Second, I know that they cannot reproduce the work that I do, so even if they do claim it as their own, there is no way for them to sell themselves because they would never be able to reproduce the work for a client.

Third, I do have all the originals. It's kinda hard to argue with that.

Stealing art is pretty sad, but I don't worry about it too much (unless they were to actually get a hold of a high resolution copy of one of my pieces and were selling prints, then there would be a problem, but I keep a pretty tight hold on my high res images, heh).

Just my two cents.

Personally, I could care less if someone took my crap.

They'll be screwed over when some "fan" comes by and asks them to draw them some fanwork.

I hate myspace with a passion. What is its purpose anyways?! ><

And art thevies aways get caught. Someone at some point will notice that one person postes the art faster than the other. And people will notice, people will figure out that a dumber than shit 12 year old can't be possibly drawing these things.

I used to be a moderator on a DA chat. The biggest pain we had was identifying art thiefs. It actually nearly took all the fun out of going onto DA and chatting with other people.

crazyninny
I hate myspace with a passion. What is its purpose anyways?! ><

To make new friends potential Befriender! To make new friends.

;)