I think Phantast made an excellent point. This has more to do with mindset than anything else. Many people simply don't see what they're doing as "wrong" enough to stop doing it, absent any legal or other repercussions. Yes, small fry do get caught, but without some draconian system that I don't think any of want to see, (like a permanent digital ID for anyone to do anything so it can be traced back to them,) the odds of getting caught are slim. If every ISP started banning every user who had a graphic, not their own on their site, they'd go lose half their business. I also disagree with the "degeneracy of modern society" theory. People have been stealing and plagarizing since day one. What the internet and digital media have done is make it infinitely easier. There is also a sense that things digital are not really tangible in the same way that people would view stealing a car. You make a perfect copy, the original stays in place and especially if there's no price attatched to the item, no one's out anything. Getting people to understand that you are losing something from their actions is the difficult part. It won't deter the outright thieves any more than shoplifting laws completely eliminate shoplifting but it will help with some people. I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't pursue legal and technical means of discouraging theft, only that for now, those efforts will have limited success. Education won't be a panacea either, just another tool until something better comes along. Other than that, the cold reality is that, as Phantast suggests, except to the people who create it, snatching images off the 'net is going to rank pretty low on the scale of mankind's immorality. It may sound like capitulation to evil but rather than composing largely ineffectual copyright notices and searching the web for violators, one might emphasize getting credit, ala 'If you use all or a part of one of my images, please include the following credit...'Failure to do so is a violation of my copyright...' Give people a place to submit a link to the page where they plan to post the image, a prominent email form to ask for permission, etc. Again, not a panacea, but chipping away at a large problem. This of course, isn't an option for the galleries here or if you just don't want anyone using the stuff at all.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken