Posted

Apr 24th 2009

Mood

Annoyed

I tell ya, I'm to the point where art thieves are getting back into my sights for ellimination. I'm getting sick of seeing people harvesting images of other people's art on the internet and then going to sites like Zazzle and Cafe Press and selling them like that's perfectly fine to do. Being pretty familiar with a wide variety of fantasy art, I always check those kinds of categories for thievery. There are so many artists with very distinct styles and well-known pieces in sci-fi and fantasy genre art that you can learn to spot them pretty quickly.

I love Zazzle for the fact that they have a "Report Violation" button right on the item page where you can let them know the image is stolen and provide them with a link to the image on the real owner's site. They are pretty good about pulling those violations within a day or so. On Cafe Press, it's a bit more complex to have things pulled and, thus, takes quite a bit more time. Not only that, but they will ONLY remove items if the violation is reported by the actual owner. That means all you can do is report it to the owner and hope they are serious enough about their work to report it and have it taken down. In comparison, though, I tend to see a lot less theft on Cafe Press than I do at Zazzle. A lot of artists have legitimate stores on CP, so it's a little harder to steal even from lesser known people.

Unfortunately, there are a great many artists who aren't nearly aggressive enough about protecting their work. With Orphaned Work legislation rearing its ugly head every couple of years, it's becoming more and more important that we take art thievery seriously and show that we aren't going to put up with it. Even current copyright law has provisions that can allow a thief to claim ownership of intellectual property if it can be proven that the real owner is lax in protecting their work. For example, not watermarking your image in any way can be an indicator in court that you are not really protecting your works. Evidence of allowing thieves to continue to use stolen works can also be a bad thing for the real owner.

Really, if we work together and report art theft wherever we see it, we can shrink this issue down to a more manageable beastie. Myself, if someone saw my work being stolen, I would want them to contact me and tell me. I do the same for other artists as much as possible. IF every artist did this, the problem would soon start to be reduced as the thieves realized we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.


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You! Yes YOU! Get your shiny self over to the shops and see what's new!

The Art of Jolie E. Bonnette @ Zazzle
The Art of Jolie E. Bonnette @ Cafe Press
The Fantastic World of Badhead Gadroon @ Zazzle
The Fantastic World of Badhead Gadroon @ Cafe Press