Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art and Writing

How do I prevent kleptos from stealing my images, ideas and soul?! (Part 4)

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

So you've put your art, your writing, your ideas, your soul out there on your web site. And five minutes later a woman in Tampa downloads your pictures, prints them out, and sends her new cards to her friends.

Of course this happens, although I have nothing against Tampa. I remember a rather humorous incident where, at an art fair, a woman approached me and gushed about how she loved my art work and how, just a few days ago, she downloaded and printed out my web site images and framed them.

"They look great on my wall!" she said, oblivious to what she was telling me.

"Of course they look good on your wall," I said. "The originals that I make my living selling usually end up on someone's wall."

She didn't take the hint.

I've seen some artists use a little bit of Java script that prevents the web site user from using the right-click option to copy, paste and print. However, that's a simple work-around fix that is easily...worked around. There are more ways to copy and paste than with a right click. Some websites truly do have a more sophisticated option for preventing all kinds of copy methods but if you're an artist or writer without a professional creating your web site, and are instead doing it on your own, you may not have the knowledge for this kind of coding.

The bad news? If you put it on the web, people will "borrow" it. For visual artists, however, you can at least put a faint watermark in the middle of your web images that say "(c) Your Name, www.yoursite.com" so that even people with Photoshop won't want to waste time trying to get your watermark out. Even if the image is downloaded, the true creator always travels with it and it certainly doesn't make such a nice wall-hanging with a watermark in the middle.

The other thing to remember for images on the web is to keep them around 72 dpi, and no larger than 96 dpi. Once you start hitting 100 dpi, your web page will load very slowly, for one thing. The other issue, which we're talking about, is that at 72 dpi the resulting printouts from your art are very limited and can't be enlarged.

For writers, well, I honestly don't know what you can do to protect your writing. With a simple CTRL P, anyone can print out a web page and get your words. Your best bet is to make sure every web page has a copyright notice and your name. This is important for visual artists as well. I even have my own copyright page which, I admit, is a bit obnoxious. However, I take copyrights seriously and so I have a serious copyright page.

Any other suggestions out there?