Image Theft: The Pathetic Excuses

But they shouldn't have it on the Internet ....

Some artists get their clients from the Internet. Their online portfolios are critical to attracting attention and getting work in order to pay their bills. If you want to use this excuse, then don't cry to the police if someone steals your car. After all, you shouldn't have parked it in a public area if you didn't want it stolen.

But they won't find out ....

Stealing is stealing. "Thou Shalt Not Steal" is echoed in a number of religions. Not religious? "What goes around, comes around." Probably the stupidest thing I've seen are all the sites with stolen images who then scream, "You can't take these images and claim they're yours!" Guess what, when you steal images, you encourage others to do so.

But I'm not making any money on it ....

And the kids who steal cars simply to joy ride in them are fine, upstanding members of the community. I'll be glad to let them know your car is available for their enjoyment. Oh, and those grafitti artists who tagged your fence last week shouldn't be punished because they didn't make any money by defacing your wall. And, hey, it did get your house extra attention, so be happy. In fact, you should reimburse them for the spray paint they used.

But I just want to make pretty pictures ....

There are tons of tutorials out there to help you improve your skill. Stealing images says that you're a no-talent hack who is incapable of learning. There are a *lot* of helpful communities out there filled with people who love to help others discover the artist within them. The time you waste tracking down images to steal is time that could have been used to improve your own skill.
 

Image Theft: How It Hurts an Artist Monitarily

Why buy the artwork if it's passed around for free?

Oh, but I'm just doing them a favor by giving them publicity when I pass around their images....

Riiigggghhhttt .... And the guy who stole that Lamborgini off the dealer's lot is giving the company lots of free publicity by driving it around town. Heck, why not give away every Lamborgini? After all, that'll give the company tons of publicity so everyone buys their cars.

Oh, wait a minute. If everyone got a hold of a Lamborgini, who'd need to pay for one?

Exclusivity

Some artists sign contracts stating that an image belongs to the purchaser and no copies of it may be created. The artist is given license to display the image as part of their portfolio, but that's it.

Someone snags the image from the artist's online portfolio and starts sending it all over the place. Now the original purchaser has a widely distributed image, lowering the value of the work they'd purchased. The artist might face a lawsuit from the purchaser and have to prove that the image was not resold to someone else. Not only will they have legal fees to deal with, but they'll most likely lose that client as well, so that's a loss of future income on top of all the current expenses.

Image Theft: How It Hurts on a Personal Level

If you can't understand the monetary losses artists suffer from having their pictures hacked up and redistributed, maybe this will make sense to you:

You have 2 cute kids, and you post their picture on your web site for your family to see how they've grown.

Someone wanders by and sees the kids, thinking, "What a cute picture" and grabs the picture, posting this photo of *your kids* on their site, adding a cutesy frame around it and their signature. Now your kids appear to belong to someone else. Wouldn't that upset you, having someone else claim to be the parents of your kids? Now your kids' picture gets passed around the Net as people ooh and aww over how cute they are. (Don't you feel flattered?)

One of the people who gets the photo from a mailing list decides that the kids would look better if they were a little older, and manipulates the picture so the kids look more mature, taking care to put them in a different setting and airbrushing some more skin into the picture to make them look "more fashionable." Feeling a little creeped out, yet? The airbrushed version is now being passed around along with the framed version and the original photo you'd taken.

Someone else decides they like the more mature faces (which are still very recognizable as *your* kids) and takes the image to the next "logical" step - putting those faces on the bodies of porn stars, perhaps using actual porn shots. Now your kids are being passed around the Net naked, maybe even shown engaging in sex. How do you like snagging and iamge manipulation now? But ... these are your kids! Shouldn't you be able to post a picture of your kids without worrying about people defacing the picture? Don't copyright and ethics mean anything? Yes, that's how artists feel, too. Those are pictures of their kids, their creations being passed around and defaced.
 

Image Theft: How It Can Hurt You

Lawsuits

Guess what? Some artists are successfully suing copyright violators. Okay, your chances are low for being hit by a lawsuit, but artists are getting fed up with being ripped off and they're banding together to look out for each other. There are groups out there that know each other's work and will send alerts on copyright violations. Some companies are particularly emphatic about enforcing their copyrights and have agents whose entire job is to find copyright violators and shut them down, preferrably with legal damages.

Loss of Business

I know one copyright violator who had an online business as well as a separate site filled with stolen images. The artists who were ripped off complained to the thief's ISP. Gee, all the sites were shut down, not just the one with all the stolen artwork. And then the thief had the nerve to complain how unfair it was that their livelihood was damaged because their business was shut down!

Hello! You're stealing from other people then complaining when you're caught? That's like a car thief complaining that they income was hurt when the police shut down their chop shop, which was in the back of their car painting business.

Loss of Reputation

I've known a few people who built up reputations as artists who were then discovered to be petty image thieves. All their admirers started deriding them, some even more vocally than the artists who'd been ripped off. Some of the thieves were selling artwork as well. Guess what? They had to pay back their clients and couldn't get new ones. Sure, it's possible that one of them could have set up shop somewhere else under a new name, but it'll take them years to build up enough of a reputation to get the name recognition to get a stream of good-paying, steady clients. And that's assuming they aren't recognized by a former victim. It does happen.

Real life can have a funny way of colliding into the Online world. Even if your real world job has nothing to do with the Internet, you might find out that your manager (or the person you're interviewing with for a job) has a friend whose artwork you ripped off, or perhaps you ripped them off directly without realizing it. While that alone might not destroy your employment prospects, companies take a dim view of employees who break the law. If you're willing to steal other people's art work, what reassurance do they have that you're honest in any other way?
 

For More Information on Copyright

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I made it to the end of the Internet today. Boy was that last boss tough to beat!

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