Why I want to spank the Internet

This is a personal message to every PSP tube/tag/sig group out there, to all the MySpace glitter queens and the LJ icon divas, to the “collectors” who never paid a cent for their collections, and every single one of you who knew better and did it anyway.

If you’re easily offended by strong language and have never stolen a piece of art off the internet this would be the place to stop reading. If you’re easily offended by strong language and fall into one of the above groups, I sincerely don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re offended or not. Keep reading, this is for you.

I love that people like my artwork. Please, look at it online all you want. Favorite it on DeviantArt, bookmark it on deli.cio.us, comment on it on Flickr. Better yet, buy a copy and hang it up on your wall where you can look at it every day… even if you put it in the bathroom, stuck to the bottom of your toilet.

But stop stealing it. Stop using it for icons or avatars (unless you’ve downloaded it from my AllAvatars.com account). Stop using it for your RP character. STOP uploading it to other galleries.

I don’t care that you love my art so much that you think cutting out the backgrounds I slaved over–and I do slave over them, I loathe backgrounds–and adding a elephant’s dungheap of bad PSP glitter on top of it is some kind of homage to my artwork. I don’t care if you think that all art should be free. I don’t care if your only talent in life is clicking the right mouse button. KNOCK IT OFF.

You say, “well you posted it online, what did you expect?”

I expect that since I label every single finished image (and a few of the not finished ones) with my copyright notice that you’re going to at least see it and think “oh, probably shouldn’t steal it.” I expect that the law means something. I expect that if you like my work that much you’d do me the common courtesy of not making it look fucking ugly with filters and glitter and bad photo effects.  I sell my work online. In order to do that, people need to be able to see it. I get jobs by posting my work in online galleries and portfolios. These sites, no matter how many amateurs use them as well, no matter how much crappy art is slung in with the phenomenal, are NOT. your personal. CLIPART galleries. You wouldn’t walk into a streetfront gallery, admire a painting on sale in the window, tuck it under your arm and walk out with it. You wouldn’t even walk into your local WalMart and shove as many cheap poster prints of black and white photos of strangers as you could fit in your coat pockets before strolling out the door.

It’s called stealing. Especially when you take it down to your trashy street-side stand or flea market booth and stick a ridiculously high price tag on it.

You say, “It’s only a hobby, I’m not making any money off of it.”

Maybe not. But neither am I. And while I hate to sound “greedy” this is my JOB. This is how I make money. It may seem like a hobby to you, but it’s not to me. This is my blood, and sweat and tears. This is my ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week, no paid vacations or sick time job.  I may not make as much at it as you do, but that’s why its so damned important to me. You can offer to pay me in “free promotion” and “exposure” until you’re blue… but last I checked those things don’t pay the bills or buy the groceries or cover my insurance. You take my art and clip off my copyright notices, take away my name, urinate purple filters and shit glitter all over it and then you have the audacity to put your own copyright notice on it and get snippy with anyone who tries to take it. Every time I see a piece of stolen artwork that’s been treated this way I want to swallow a few bottles of glitter and give the “artists” behind this vandalism the same treatment they gave the art they stole.

You say, “I did the same thing with [insert naive artist’s name here] and they didn’t mind.”

Do I look like a doormat? I feel bad for the poor sucker who waived their rights away to someone who has no respect for them in the first place. I’m not them. Some people love that whole “creative commons” crap. I’m not one of them. You’re going to have to wait for me to kick the bucket and be all mildewy and grody in my grave before anyone even thinks the phrase “public domain” in regards to my work. I respect the right of others to choose that path, however. I just personally don’t like following will-o-the-wisps into the woods.

You say, “well, I just copied it to my photobucket account so I could look at it later and show my friends.”

Here’s the thing. I have a photobucket account. It’s set to private. The reason for this is really simple. While photobucket is a great image hosting service, they’re also a PRINT service. Which means anything you post in a public account there can be turned into a print. Specifically, it can be printed by Photobucket, with all the money accrued in the transaction going BACK to photobucket. I have some problems with that. If you really, really want to come back and look at it later, BOOKMARK the page. It’s not that hard. It even uses the same right click menu as “copy” or “save image as”. Link your friends to my work instead of emailing it to them. It gives me page hits and makes me a lot less pissed off. It also keeps me from having to go collect a whole list of stolen image urls and write lengthy removal notices to various websites. These things make my shoulders cramp which pinches on the “forgiving” portion of my nervous system.

If you are old enough to be posting images of busty naked anime chicks doing nasty things with octopi to your photobucket account, or even old enough to read and understand the phrase “copyright”, you know better. In case you don’t, here’s what it means plain and simple.

Copyright – the right of the artist to tell you to knock it the fuck off if you try to reproduce, redistribute, alter, publish, or otherwise steal their hard work. Failure to comply means either we start sending politely worded notes to your ISP until they boot you off their servers or we start hiring lawyers. It really depends on how much you’ve ticked us off.

And here’s the thing: we all know each other, and we all watch each other’s backs. If you manage to get caught it won’t be a pebble in the pond, it’ll be an avalanche, and we have more than enough rocks to fill it in.

Artists of the internet, take back your rights. Take back your spines. Stand up against art thieves. Notify artists if you think you’ve found their work being used without permission. Educate the ignorant on what copyright is and what it means. Don’t be afraid to protect your work.