Attached Link: Editions by Frederick photography studio

Wayne,

I understand where you are coming from and I am sorry to hear about the theft of your books. The theft of intellectual property has hurt many industries and has bred a culture of "entitlement" that has permeated our society. Many people equate having anything on the net, visual, written, audio or whatever, as being free for the taking. You are quite right that this will result in artists and authors of all sorts simply no longer wanting to produce work.

I run a professional photography studio and do not make my living only from selling my photo art nor do I shoot weddings. Publishing my work on the net here, elsewhere and on my own web site is a necessary evil in order for me to promote my business. But I am not going to make it easy for the work to be taken. Watermarking the image makes it less palatable for those who might want to use it elsewhere, and keeping the resolution low limits its usability in any case. This is not something that could help authors of books, though.

I see a great wealth of talent in these galleries and I know that many of the works took the artists a great deal of time to create. It is so sad to see them post their work at a high res with no watermark for nothing other than an "Awesome image, dude!" comment as payment. But if all artists were to pay attention and not give away their work, then perhaps they would find that prints or other reproductions of it would become more valued.

I have sold many art prints of my work for hundreds of dollars each. One canvas sold for $15,000. I would have sold nothing if I had given the files away.

• My 2 cents.