Alright, first let me start by wishing you all Happy Holidays and many blessings for the coming year.

Now on to the topic of this article: Art Theft and Making Certain It Is Theft. Yes, there is a difference and though some may not agree with me, it is one of the things that I have come across in my endless research concerning copyright violations.

First off, if the piece is just downloaded and then uploaded to another site without giving you - the artist - credit, yes it is theft. And those sites that allow this should be more strict regarding the uploading of content and the like. However, all some sites require is that person tick a little box saying that he or she has the right to the work that is being uploaded. Not that it would be easy for sites like Photobucket or any other to confirm that the person does in fact have the right to that piece or pieces.

Second, there's the non-thief. The one who just downloads art for his or her own personal pleasure. Believe it or not that person is guilty of copyright infringement. This was discussed on some program or other that I was watching. Or maybe it was sent to me in a link via a friend on DA, I don't exactly remember.

Next, we have copying, which is not a copyright infringement, as it is how art teachers teach their students and it is how many of us learned our trade in the first place. Come on, you remember copying Garfield or the Peanuts, or some other item that had been done by someone else right?

Finally, there is taking a piece of another artist and changing it. As long as the change is readily visible, it is not copyright infringement. Such artists as Andy Warhol did it with a lot of his artwork. He took pieces created by others and changed them. Therefore he was not guilty of infringing on anyone's copyright. This does not mean that if someone takes a piece of your work and removes your watermark that it has been changed, this person is infringing on your copyright.

The digital realms make it difficult to protect our art from being stolen and claimed by others. Now you could print out copies of your digital pieces but they wouldn't stand up in court. You can save them in any number of file formats -- all still iffy as far as standing up in court in a copyright case.

Protecting digital art and coming to some sort of reasonable punishment for those who steal digital work is still a long way off. Some of us may never see it happen in our lifetime. For now, all we can do is what we have been doing: adding watermarks, not making stuff available for download -- but even this doesn't work, as all a person needs to do is right-click on the image and they can save it to their computer, making smaller files, and so on.

This will probably end up being a battle like the one that still rages over the issue of the death penalty - it will continue to go on and on and on, because no matter what conclusion is reached everyone will not happy. Truth be known, you can not please everyone so why try?

To those who ask before using a piece or downloading a piece, we thank you. To those who steal art -- your day will come -- we will find the stolen works and do what we have to do to get it removed from your account and your account removed from whatever site you have posted the stolen work on.