Photographs Don't Yearn To Be Free

Today's pro photographers find that keeping track of the "assets" in today's far-flung networld is a challenge.

Some image theft perpetrators rip (short for rip-off in last century's parlance) and represent the work as their original. Some alter it, and those are split between those who claim it as their own and those who do it in tribute. Some of the latter actually ask permission first. Some market it, without permission and some without attribution and those make me crazy especially if it's bad work.

For instance, there's Marlena D. Gee, who applied cheesy Photoshop filters and sold my stuff for years on eBay, Yahoo, Cafe Press and other art sites. But she's going to jail, we hope, for interstate fraud, which is what happens when you fraudulently open new accounts with other peoples' credit info so you can continue to hawk your stolen inventory.

Usually it's the Chinese factory artists we have to watch out for, many of those "pieces" are identifiable through their foreshortened muzzles and indistinct rider features. We have the Equine Arts Protection League to share information about art thieves, some of the artists have been burned by entering into agreement for Marlena to sell their works, only to have her violate the terms of their contract.

Another place for budding and accomplished artists is DeviantART, where my user name is stealersweep. Horses are a very popular subject; the unicorn is one of the better rips done there, and only found because the artist linked to it, in tribute, and my original received 715 hits in a month. The pencil drawing, on the other hand, took a gorgeous horse and made him ugly, but see, it has a copyright mark.

A new tool for photographers to trace their work is Tineye.com, still in beta, and by invitation, though I didn't have much of a delay between my request and acceptance. It uses algorithms to search based on image characteristics, and even has a toggle so I don't have to bother to overlay them in Photoshop to see if they match. Here's some examples, Tineye helped me find the black stallion and the rearing stallion shots.