June 1, 2010

How to Stop Theft


“Stealing things is a glorious occupation, particularly in the art world.” - Malcolm Mclaren


Sadly, this is very true.  I know so many artists that have been the victims of theft.  This also branches out to idea theft.  To my knowledge, no one has directly stolen my photos.  I have been the victim of idea/word theft going on 5 years (one individual in particular - I will save her the embarrassment and not post some of our photos side by side).  This is serious to artists.  We work hard, and then someone can take our images/ideas without giving any credit.

There are a few people that give credit back to the original artist, but many do not.  In the case of SunnyMarry, her thief refused to credit her for an idea even when it was blatantly obvious.





The worst is when someone actually steals images and claims them as their own.  Some of my Flickr friends, Danielle Tunstall and Annie Manning, know what this is like.  Danielle has found her photos on other sites, and Annie has had problems with both Flickr and Orkut.



Honestly, there's no way of stopping thieves.  There are steps we can take in making theft a bit more difficult, though.  I have found a way to disable the right-click on some of my photos.  Here's what I do on my blog:



delete these HTML elements



Here are some other useful links:


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