How to Locate Your Plagerized Art, Music, and Writing Online.

Some people will take and use your work, but labor under the impression that if an artist is credited, its all right. This is a relative issue. For instance your image reproduced as a low res thumbnail on a private Myspace or Facebook page, and which includes your name and maybe link, is a minor issue. Personally, I don't mind and even appreciate the advertisement. Others, however, include your name if they think it will sell the pirated image. My own pirated art has been displayed on photo sharing sites under several women's names, but retained my last name tucked away in a long list of keywords and tags. Recently,AllPosters began selling a famous fantasy artist's posters and using her name as the selling point. Yet I know for a fact, from talking with her, this artist doesn't receive a dime because the actual printing is done in China, which doesn't honor copyright or patents. The company marketing them is based in Canada -there's a 7 year wait before this case gets into court in Canada, and meanwhile the thief can market the art and retain the profits. AllPosters buys from this supplier in a drop - ship arrangement, meaning that they forward the invoice to the Canadian company for fulfillment, but process the payment and billing.

Most of the time, people who suspect or know what they are doing is questionable will remove your name and also the copyright watermark (easily accomplished by removing one line of code), cropping it off, or disguising it. So how to find your material? I suggest a sweep every few months. Its not a big deal, just routine maintenance, and can be done late at night or while watching a movie. The following link takes you to a site explaining how to do a search for pirated creative material. The paragraph outlining how to conduct an efficient search for your art once your name and watermark is removed is about midway down the article.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stopping-internet-plagiarism/1-how-to-find-plagiarism/