How many of you equine manippers has had their art ripped and posted on sites such as Horseland, Ponybox, or Howrse? *raises hand*. Lately the ripping has increased, and day after day I see familiar manipulations posted on Sim Games with the credits cut off.

You may wonder, how can you protect your art? This is my point for posting this article.

What you can do to protect your hard work from ripping:

1. Put your name in the middle of the manip, corner credit can be easily cropped.
2. Don't make your manipulations available for download on dA.
3. Add a fullview watermark to all your artwork.
4. Create an "undercover" account on several horse sim games to keep an eye out for your art.

To protect yourself and others from ripping, always report suspicions to the game, the suspected rippers, or the confirmed true creator themselves. Action will be taken if the work is reported in time. If you want to confront the ripper, take screenshots of their page with the stolen manipulations on them before confronting them. This way if they remove the stolen images, and you report them, they could counter-report and say you are lying. Then it is your word against theirs, with no true proof of the ripping.

I hope in some way this article can assist my fellow manippers and keep the art rippers at bay.