StolenArt got their homepage at Neopets.com

I have apparently gotten your attention with one of my other pages. Here I will explain how you can protect your work and what are things to look for in stolen work.

There are a few things you can do to help protect your art work from being stoln. It may not protec from all theif, but will for most. These aren't all the ways you can go about protecting your work, but they are the simplest and almost everyone can use them. Other things include watermraks and similar things, but I won't get into those.

If you have found a way you protect your work and think it's a cool idea to share, please Neomail me and let me know. I'll check it out and might add it to my list.

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There are many things you can do to protect your work from being stolen. Although it's not guarantee it will make it more difficult or even defer people from taking your work.

1) Always sign your work. Don't put it over to the edge put it ON the drawing it's self. And don't put it on a solid color. It is easy to erase that way.

Example:

NO	YES

2) Another way of marking your images is by either hiding your signature in the image or doing a faded overlay of your signature. The faded overlay is hard to remove, but really messes up the image. The hidden signature is a nice way, but could be difficult for some people to do. I would suggest using the overlay when showing examples, and using the hidden for anything you plan to summit or have up on your site.

Hidden Signature	Fade Overlay

3) Make your art work known. If stolen, the thief has a better chance of getting a free trip to Iceland.

4) Check through the BC and Art Gallery each week, or whenever they are. I find at least 3 to 4 each BC just by going through Kougra's.

5) If you have the space, keep a "Wall of Shame" of your work that has been stolen. Show people you will report if your stuff is taken. Remember it's your work. You want it safe. You take care of it. Don't expect others to. *Remember if you use screenies on your Wall of Shame they will need to follow the same rules. Mark out names other than yours because it can be considered harassment.

6) If you are doing coding in CSS or HTML for User lookups, etc. put you name in the code. Not where it will show up on the page, but 'hidden' in the coding. Something like:

*Coding done by Username*

Example:

*coding done by Username*

7) Warn and report. If you find your work somewhere other than contests, and is their first time, neomail the person first about giving you credit before you have their account frozen. Could be an easy mistake like part of the coding for your adoptable was deleted when they were coding their lookup. If they refuse to give you credit contact Neopets because you did give them the chance.

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1) If it is not in a contest (BC, Spotlights, Gallery, ect.) Neomail the person. Inform them that you are the original artist of (what picture) and it is located (on this page) of their's. You are requesting that you be given proper credit or it be removed. If it is not remove then you will have to contact Neopets and inform them. That will result in the freezing of (NeoPerson's) account.

2) If it is on a contest like BC there's a link to report it on the page. Say on the report that this drawing was done by you and that this person is claiming to be their's. Include a link to where the drawing can be found showing it belongs to you. Also include any alteration that has been done to it. Because alteration usually stand out (you can see the changes) so you have more proof.

3) If you find it on a Lookup, Pet page, etc. you need to go to the Report Form (http://www.neopets.com/autoform_abuse.phtml?abuse=report) .

You will need to file out the following:

Username you are reporting: (check for none)	This is the Username of the person who has the image on their account and not giving proper credit.
Type of Abuse (what did they do?):	drop down to 'Stolen Artwork in Beauty contest or other site areas
Where did this abuse happen?	This is where the stolen graphic is located (shop, lookup, pet page, etc.)
Additional comments or more specific information may be entered here.	This is where you tell them where they can find your drawing showing it's yours and the alterations to the drawing, if any.

TNT Responds to a Stolen Art report on BC without the link to the original work. So this is apparently a must have when reporting. So make sure you include the location of where your original art piece is in your report to TNT.

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Sometimes people are unsure what is actually considered stolen. There is tons more specific rules for legal purposes, but I just going to cover the terms considered on Neopets.

There are somethings that make 'stole art' noticeable. Usually these theives think they are smart, but when you know what you are looking for you can find these things. Will also help you with a better case when you turn them in to TNT for stealing. I know most of the tricks on how to 'steal' art because of a class I had to take and our projects were how to steal other's work and pose it as our own. This made since cause once you know the tricks you know how to protect your work and how to find 'stolen art'. I would go into detailed about how they did such things, but I don't want to make thieves smarter... HA!

Original (a lot smaller)	What was stolen	What to look at

Okay this is one of the pictures in the WOS. It was stolen. The outlined is the original color. This picture had a background and wings. As you can see they tried to make it the same color, but was unsucessful. This is probably do to the theif's graphics program. Probably used MS Paint to alter the image.

What was stolen	What to look at

Okay so this is a popular stolen piece. First look at the wing. Little odd. Well of course it's backwards. Probably stolen or traced form another piece. Now look closely at the links of the wing and the lines of the Kougra. They are different. If it was originally put there by the artist they would look identical.

What was stolen	What to look at

Sometimes thieves are just too lazy (well more so than doing their own work), and make life easy to catch them. Always put your signature ON the picture. Backgrounds are so easy to erase. As you can see here the signature is still present.

Original	What was stolen	What to look at

As I said before. Backgrounds are easy to erase the name on (as you can see the one above is also missing the artist's signature). This is why you make sure you put your signature ON your work. The thief removed the artist's signature and then put his own (white box). This probably would have gone unnotice, but I had seen it before in BC and where the original artist posted it on the interent. This is why it is important to make your art known.
*whited out signature of the thief on the stolen piece and put 'Sig' where their signature was.

Something else to look for is other work. Check out their pet page. Think about it if you just made a really nice piece that is of your pet you are proud of you're going to work hard to show it off. Although many artist must shrink the image for requirements for contest they have a larger one on the pet page and they usually make it as big as they can for the contest. They also put work into the pet page, which usually includes other picture they have drawn of the pet. Now just because they have a generic pet page doesn't make them an art thief. Some people are so worried about their work being stolen they only post it in contests.

If anyone has any other ways and examples of them feel free to Neomail me about it.

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