AUGH I AM SO SORRY THIS IS LATE. ;_; Without my usual warnings I forget when newsletter time comes up. Months just fly by.

Anyhoo, this time around I'd like to talk about art thieves. The anime gallery is plagued with these jerks who take art from hard-working folks, and dupe others who don't know better into believing what they steal is actually theirs. I bet there isn't one person reading this who hasn't found theft themselves, or at least knows someone who has been a victim of theft, if it isn't themselves.

Sure, about the only sure way to prevent your work from being stolen is to not put it on the internet. But watermarking is one way of helping. Check out this old newsletter on how to watermark your work, and why it's a good idea.


The first thing if you should remember coming across an art thief is NOT to confront them! Even if you know 100% certainly you're looking at theft, you shouldn't start flaming and yelling "thief!" at them. Obviously they're going to react hostilely! You'll just get excuses, flamed back, or ignored/blocked. And if you happen to be wrong and accuse someone of being a thief, when they're not... that will end terribly. So my mantra for this is always "report and move on".

You need evidence to report theft, so note some friends privately if you need help finding originals. Don't make inflammatory journals, or start witch hunts. Flaming a thief could get you banned, too. To report a piece, look at the description box under any deviation. On the bottom right side you'll see a "report Policy Violation" button. Click on that, and give URL and a description as to how you think it's theft. The proper category in the dropdown box is "copyright violation".


This can be tricky. But there are some telltale signs I've noticed over the years that shoddy thieves give:
- inconsistant styles between deviations
- lack of proper descriptions, or unable to clearly tell you how they made the art
- no signatures or watermarks, or inconsistant signatures and/or dates from piece to piece
- low quality resolution on images (i.e., horribly compressed JPEGs)
- bland titles (i.e. "cute anime girl", "cat boy", etc.)

If you get these all together, there's a good chance you have a thief on your hands. But remember, it might not always be the case! So investigate before you do anything else.

Some people just don't read the rules on DA and don't understand that we don't allow copyrighted images. A lot of these types will whine when confronted, "But I see that kind of stuff posted all the time! Why are THEY still on DA?!" Well obviously DA does not have eyes everywhere, so a lot of theft, or what some people call "Photobucket syndrome" (just using DA as an image share) slides by. A lot of times this just stems from the person's lack of understanding English. This doesn't always mean they'll be receptive of an "it's against the rules" answer, which is why it's best to "report and move on".

I hate art thieves as much as everyone else, but as a Gallery Director, when I find theft I have to report it like everyone else. Please, do NOT report images you know that are theft as a miscategorization. This gives us a lot more work to do, since we shouldn't move images we know are stolen. We need to then hunt out the originals, and report it ourselves. So it's better to skip that step if you know you can report it.

But remember! There are always exceptions.


I hope you guys find this helpful. Together we can help keep DA nice and tidy!