PLEIN AIR ARTISTS

An Online Artist's Coop for Artists who Paint on Location

Website Issues - Preventing Copyright Infringement

Has anyone else encountered a great deal of activity on their website from individuals who are strangers (foreign or domestic)? Every day my site gets about 30 hits from Venlo, Netherlands and about 10 from Staunton, VA. This has been going on for over a month. I have no contacts in either location.

A friend suggested someone could be taking photos and then duplicating the artwork. My sense is that putting a watermark in the background makes it slightly more challenging for someone to reproduce work, but it would not prevent duplication through painting. Anyone know of any way to track down exactly who might be the source of the hits? Also can anything be done if someone is infringing on your work?

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Permalink Reply by Terri Miller on February 10, 2012 at 6:15pm

In my "other life" I am a photographer, so there are a lot of my images floating around out there. Once an image posted on the internet, it is likely to roam far and wide, so you have to weigh the risk vs. reward for what you upload. Sites like Facebook strip the metadata from the image file and then make it extremely easy to share (and download!!) images. So the two things you can do are:

~ Post images at a relatively small size. 600 pixels on the longest side is adequate.

~ Watermark every image you upload ... anywhere.

If you don't know how to watermark your images, Google the phrase and you'll find a dozen different ways to do it.

We photographers have experimented with all different sorts of content for our watermarks, everything from a big © in the middle of the photo with our names below it, to our names stamped in repeating patterns across the image. Someone I know, who photographs events with lots of kids who are way too internet savvy for anyone's good, uses a watermark that says, "If you see this photo anywhere but www.XXXXXXX.com, it's been stolen!" I normally use "©www.TerriMiller.com Paintings & Photography" at about 40-50% opacity, approximately 1/3 - 1/2 the width of the image, depending on how high risk I think the image is of being pilfered. With this imprint, folks know exactly who produced the image, how to contact me, and that I do this for a living.

There have been volumes written about what to do if your copyright has been infringed. This is a good short course

http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/06/01/what-to-do-when-your-image-i...

It's written with photographers in mind, but the information is valid for artists as well.