Online Art Theft: Some Simple Ways to Help Protect Your Work
Online thieves always find tricks to by-pass the following methods. But, after using some of these techniques, you can certainly feel much safer about promoting and marketing art online, and feel confident that most likely your art will not be taken.
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Use right-click protection
As you know, it is so easy at most websites to just right-click, copy and paste. This function can be disabled with some javascript code. Also, some sites offer this feature to their members.
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Watermarking your artworks
There are many online gallery sites and image services that offer watermarking services right on the site. You may avail of these or choose to watermark all your artworks with Photoshop or a similar software.
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Using flash for your art image
After converting images to flash, it is impossible to just copy and paste.
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Cutting the image into pieces with a photo editor
Placing all the pieces on your website or blog, and making them appear as one will certainly deter most from going through the trouble of piecing them back together. -
Cloaking the artwork
If you have some knowledge of html and css, you can place a transparent gif right on top of the artwork. That way, when someone tries to copy and paste, they simply download a transparent image file.
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Place your name, website name, or copyright notice on your art
Some artists do not like doing this because they think it interferes with the composition.
But if used sparingly, the artwork will look presentable. Artists may want to have three copies of their artworks:- One that has a copyright notice or name.
- Another that has a low resolution, for displaying in places where you are more confident about, such as a blog.
- The original best quality image for uploading to places where artists make their work available for prints.
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Have small, low resolution images
Some online gallery websites already have this feature built in. They automatically create a lower resolution image to be displayed on the website, and only make the high quality one available for printing purposes.