Never had anything stolen, but Ive seen some of my pictures on other portals, slightly edited, and used as stock.
But I didnt do anything about it tough. They had all mentioned my name in the description.

But if I see someone that use the photo simply to promote them selfe, or try to earn money on it, I would do something about it.

Why people do it is a hard question to answere.

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''Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there!''

as it happens YES, and i only found out yesterday... i decided quite randomly to 'google' one of my 'named' jpegs from my website and found the image used as background wallpaper on an unrelated website (they hadn't bothered to change the filename), but it was very pixellated due the original jpeg (only 400pxls wide @ 20kb) being 'stretched'... i'm not sure what to do next other than email to politely ask them to remove it... i had not been aware of this malpractice before now and i'm quite furious about it... and as for dA, well i'm presuming it happens here too... why do they steal? because they can, simple... other than digital watermarks (not just a layer of text), disabling right clicks, creating very small files (which i do) or embedding images within flash for example, it's all quite futile if they can just snatch a screen shot (which has happened to me too)... i'm quite at a loss for a solution but i'm pleased you've brought the topic to our attention.

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deviantART

Happily, its never happened to me - or if it has I don't know about it.

'Stolen' isn't really the right world - The Theft Act 1968 Section 1 (in the UK) states that a person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. No one is being permanently deprived of anything, so it's not theft. Copyright infringement or unlawful use would be better terms, but admittedly they're nowhere near as snappy.

Whatever you want to call it, I figure it's essentially a compliment - someone thinks a work is good enough to rip off.

Aside from visual watermarks, there's precious little that can be done, technically at least, to prevent people from grabbing a copy of a picture. Digital signatures can be embedded into the image, creating an invisible watermark that is fairly resistant to resizing, cropping etc, but they're not much of a deterrent and aren't likely to stop people taking images in the first place. Disabling right click is more than trivial to circumvent, and Flash galleries can easily be screenshotted.


The way I see it there are three major categories:

1) Most of the incidents I've seen are peoples work being used without credit on those 'look at these cool picture' type sites. This annoys the hell out of me, because when I see a good shot I've no way of finding out more about the artist who took it.

2) Some of the incidents I've seen are people using other peoples work and passing it off as their own to gain respect.

3) A minority are people using other peoples work for financial gain.


And my best suggestions to each would be:

1) Firstly, accept that this kind of thing happens, is unlikely to stop, and quite possibly qualifies as 'fair use' in many cases anyhow. To take more control over this, deviantART could facilitate direct linking of images from other websites, blogs etc, perhaps expanding their 'Embed' code box to provide easily copyable anchored image links and other non-flash things. This would at least retain some form of credit and provide a way to find out more about the artist. The idea here is to make it easier to link to the original content than it would be to host a copy of that content elsewhere.


2) This could be a perfect community policing job - if fifty lary deviants were to decend onto a pretenders page and proceed to merrily rip the piss out of them, I reckon they'd think twice about trying to pass off work as their own again. Public ridicule can be a powerful force - the internet version of the village stocks.


3) Legal action, or at least the threat of legal action, seems to be the only recourse here. There was a instance, here not too long ago, where a deviant's (I forget the name) image was used as a book cover without his knowledge. After some legal wrangling he was compensated fairly.



I like the daviantART bit

--
"Even with my eyes wide open, I can't see a thing." -- Zatoichi

myDNStools.info

I once stole one of Goya's black paintings and renamed it "Saturn devouring Kermit the Frog"

It was a classic, but his estate took out a restraining order

Shame, really. If it had the DA watermark on it I would have known they were serious in the first place

actually I once saw someone's art get ripped off by direct link, the (not very bright) miscreant passing it off as their own, but retaining the links to the originals

The victim replaced all the stolen images with hardcore porn, making quite a pretty mess of the thief's myspace page

Organic?
Nobody has stolen my artwork, but its not like I've ever looked and its not like I know where to begin looking

not that i know of yet. *knock on wood*

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_{“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”}

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Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.
Admin *SixbySix-CLUB send us your best squares

OK, so only the first part is true. I still have it somewhere