Damn! And all I wanted to do was display my artwork. You make an EXCELLENT point. I will try to follow your advice! Thank you!

Absolute real, true and useful words!!! I agree with You!!!

Thank you Meredith for this usefull info. I agree whith you. Well Digimarc is very expensive.I think for hobbist artist like me useless.

Very interesting and useful information. They were talking on NPR about this a few days ago. I have always felt that if I put a picture on the Net I should assume that it will be copied so I only put low-rez "publicity" versions on the Web ( Renderosities 512K limit assures this!). If someone wants a good version they can talk to me.

wowwww, excellent and useful information !!! Excellent dear friend !!! Good day and hugs :)

ever hear of Digimarc? It's cool. :) http://www.digimarc.com/ and it's free in Photoshop.

Great hints Mere. Notice I didn't call it advice? Yep, I've done a lot of personal research into Copyright stuff to protect my Chira work. I've found that blazing a copyright notice across the image just destroys it and does very little to protect it from being stolen except by making it too ugly to steal. The best hint is to have an authority (like the US copyright people) archive it with a date assignment. I maintain a file with the US copyright folks regarding Chira. I send them material updates to be added to the file, to be officially notarized. Also, material, models and overlays are solid proof that the image is indeed your personal construction in that the thief can't prove he has the needed overlays, source materials, etc for complex construction of digital art. That's why my signature on my art is small and nearly invisible. I'm flattered if anyone thinks my work is even worth stealing. They can have it. Hope it helps them. Maybe helps feed their family. Except for work I intend to make money on myself, which is protected via official notarization. Being almost the only form of protection lawyers respect. If it is major money, then it might get to court. Then those construction materials can come in handy to prove it's your construction. Anyway, that's my two cents worth. Excel posting Mere. Hugs from Dave :^)

Informative and detailed information is wealth, thank you very much for sharing this Meredith!!!

In Europe where I live the law for copyright issues is that you have to prove the images are yours by showing them the original files and you have to be registered by the office of copyrights authority that's why I every single work I do the original files will be archived and stored on DVDs. Excellent information good work!!!!!!!!!

Very nicely done!! Lots of information and LOTS of places to go for help. Thank you!

in australia its the same as what awadissk said from europe, if you want to make a claim you have to be able prove you are the creator of the file, which is why i always keep the .psd files i'm working on. but down here you don't have to be registered with an office of copyrights, it's simply; if you created the work, you hold the copyright. even if you choose not to display any copyright warning on the work, you still hold copyright. great points made in here though, very useful

Great info!

Great artical

attorney Meredith, I am writing to you in regards to some legal brief papers that need to be filed.can you be of assistance?haha! sorry about missing 3 of your posts but will catch up now

as long as the 50s are not to scale, you're good to go.

Dear Meredith, thanx you very much from the bottom of my heart for digging up all this info, it's a lot to read and mull over, but this will help me and others alike ! BTW, I have deleted 3/4 of my gallery already...but I saved all the web pages first !!! plus I think my art has improved, so I'm not worried about my older stuff, which was a learning curve and good practice for me. The Chocolate (2,000lbs, about half a day's supply ration for you ?) is in the mail !!! Cheers :o(

Great advice...thanks for sharing! :)

WOW Meredith, you are so right my friend, thank you for share with us this info, you gave a great POV!!! Thanks again sweetie!!!!!

Wonderful..Thanks for sharing meredith!!

Thanks for those always so interesting and informative notice! Unbelievable how much time you always invest if you post something new here! Congratulation!!!

I had different problems. Imagine that John Ehrlichmann has stolen your art and classified it so that legal authories cannot access it. Then Scooter Libby has described to your legal advisers your actual character as will be presented in court. A wire tap is on your phone so every conversation you have with a dealer, gallery owner or middle man is recorded and provided to someone who goes to that place of business and represents that a "commercial version' of your work is now available from them. You could join a union. Or you could begin to pull lead. Leaving old creative works behind and slipping into the expensive and inaccessible life of a fugitive. Let Jupiter pull you a bit as you leave the old earth behind. Let the solar wind blow through your hair. Life is too short to be dominated by mean-spiritedness. Make some nudes and get really well acquainted. The people is as comfortable of a place as any.

I have to agree with you 100% about this. If you don't want anyone to take your work then don't display it. Other than that even so call legal action does not go to far being you are dealing with out of state out of country & not to mention the fees. After 15 years of being on the Net I have turned a blind eye. I enjoy this way to much to stress over it. It is what it is. Your research on this matter is straight on, but I expect nothing less from you :)

Hmmm, there is a lot of matter to think about! TX for useful info!

Just this week I had this happen along with many from here. I'll tell you what I did. I joined the site that was displaying my art, took the art that was posted withough permission and wrote on it that it was my art, that it was posted without permission, and gave the name and the url addy of the offender and posted the image with all that right on their site!!! Photobucket removed the entire offender's album. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." LMAO!!! I know you put your mark on your works, but do you know how really easily removed it is??? Pop into the Forum on here in the Copywright section for examples of this and for the lively discussion being conducted. As long as we upload to the www, we run the risk of images being taken without permission, changed, manipulated, and outright stolen. The cost is high to try to win judgements and all that against the unscupulous buttheads that do this practice, and we have to prove it to be out art. We can either not post, try to junk up the art with watermarking and other unsightly and unbecoming idenifiers, or we can take some action against the offenders themselves by outing them publically. Great post Meredith!

Thank you for the information my friend....!!!!

I agree with RubyT. What we should do is expose these people everywhere so they don't have anywehere else to go. Pursuing legal action is very difficult on the net because most times you can't find the culprit or he/she is in a country without copyright laws on Internet... Not to talk about how expensive it would be.

Thankyou very much for all the information you have given. If one is aware of these things happening it is better so that you don't post your best work. I think I will rely on the old saying. 'What goes round comes round' which to me means that if you do something horrible to someone it will come back and bite you 10 times worse. I think the more aware people are in some of these 'other' countries are the less it will happen.

wow that a lot of imformation.

Good advice Meredith!

You realyl should be a lawyer. Or anything else you want to be. This is amazingly detailed and a very sound solid common sense approach to a problem! Very excellent work and something every artist needs to take note of!