BEING LAW AND TECH SAVVY

My attorneys had an IT grad visit my sites which include RedBubble and Fine Art America. In minutes they downloaded the 'protected' images, removed one line in the code through photoshop and produced a beautiful, fully printable image. Its so easy that they told ME how to do it and said using this these sites is akin to putting our art on street corner table marked 'free', any body who's taken a seminar knows how to do it. This will severely weaken our position in any lawsuit because its called 'officious intermeddling" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officious_intermeddler As artists we have to make an obvious effort to protect our images and handing out free files that any college student ( or analog dinosaur like me) can swipe doesn't fall into that category. This term means I put my work where many people can access it with a minimum of effort, in a very public place, then complain and seek damages when its taken. Like leaving the garage door up, house unlocked, advertising you'll be out of town on vacation, then coming home to a robbed house and wanting to collect insurance damages. So I've already culled many pieces from FAA and RB this morning and in the end may have only a half dozen with the notice people visit my site to see more. I do want to be paid for what's sold this month! The studio printing my s/n gicless now has comparable prices so Ill use him for low cost prints and process orders via Paypal or a shopping cart. The IIT associate said he'll develop a poison pill virus for my art (it wont work with the way FAA and RB use files since what you see is the actual file they use to print with). It can do whatever I want it to and is embedded in the files themselves and cannot be detected or removed. It can serve as a beacon so I can locate my images wherever they are used, close down the person's monitor every time they try to copy an image, freeze their screen so that they have to reboot.

This experience is a great exercise in purifying our art. Why do we paint, how to share it yet protect ourselves - and still keep the heart and spirit pure, not wrapped up in commerce? And for us illustrators and graphic artists, how to promote our work and earn a living, yet minimize damage and protect our inventory and intellectual property?