Art theft by GameSpy

You know what, Im so glad they did it now. I'm hoping they do it again. Get it through your heads, if you put your damn art on the net, get ready to defend it. It's the INTERNET. I.N.T.E.R.N.E.T. INTERNET. Your work WILL be TAKEN and used. So if you see your artwork where you dont want it, tell them to take it off. Otherwise, they'll do what they feel.

Okay, first off, you are horribly wrong. People CAN'T do what they want with copyrighted material. Warez are illegal as well, but individuals don't usually get a lawsuit on their tail as the amount of people with some kind of warez on their computers are too great for slow processes like that. Instead, the lawsuits are aimed for larger sources of trouble, such as those spreading the warez out on their website, sharing it to a large scale via Kazaa, selling CD's with warez and so on.

Now, while it would take Blizzard forever to sue every single individual who uses a starcraft, warcraft or diablo avatar or graphic ofr their site, they just won't. First off, it'd be too easy to hide all the edvidence by deleting it from one's computer. Secondly, it has a free comercial meaning so Blizzard gets more sales as samples of their work spread around the web.

Does that sound just the same as a large corporations stealing the work of respected artists, most WITH copyrighted materils? In fact, having a giant like GameSpy shrink and mutilate your precious work by turning it into a small avatar won't exactly work well for promoting the artists, especially as he gets no credits for his work whatsoever. Of course, if he did get credits but hadn't granted his permission to let GameSpy used the work, they'd be in trouble anyway. They just hoped no-one would find out, but now it happened, and they'll likely try to conceal the images now, claiming it was a mistake that some one of their ignorant mods added.

ANYWAY, listen, from now on, you artist put on whatever site you put your pictures on that these pieces of art may not be used either for anything, not even avatars, may not be adjusted, may not be formatted, may not even be changed in size or editted in any way. And post that somewhere people can read it clearly and also post it on every picture. Also, do your normal artistic signature right on the face of every character picture you make. Yeah its a shame you have to do this, but do it or start browsing websites to tell them to take it off.

Ever heard about digital watermarks? Besides, over here, there are laws that prevent you from stealing other people's work, despite a lack of signature and copyright.