Art Thieves, and why stealing art hurts

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GrunkleLogic

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Original poster
Disclaimer: This didn't happen on Iwaku, but I thought this would provide people the insight as to why stealing art is harmful in many ways.


So, let's start this show off by stating what started this in the first place:

I write some fanfictions (this one I got permission by the author to do this), and come up with some pretty unique ideas. Well, I entred myself into this roleplay with this story arch that my character sailed across an ocean to get to the mainland because his tribe was wiped out and the island was taken over or destroyed. When I create a character like this, I go deep into who this person is, what they are, what they are doing, etc. I spent months working on this story, and you know what I found out?

Someone copied my story and created it into their own. Mirroring it and then tweeking theirs to seem like their character had it worse off. It got to the point where I moved my character from that island to a different one, and suddenly they dropped their new storyline and went back to the one they had before reading mine. They claimed to have theirs 100% original, and everyone knew it was horsehockey. They liked my story, so instead of saying, 'Hey, I really enjoyed your story and am inspired by it' they decided, 'How can I make this story mine?'

And it's been stolen a second time by someone else. Not on that site, but a different one. So now I have decided to take all of my work off of any site and it'll only be shared to people whom I know I can trust not to steal.


This is a huge problem in the art community; someone posts their piece and instead of just admiring the work people steal it.

For many people art is how they express themselves, view themselves and how they handle themselves. For some people, their art is the only thing that helps them. And when they share it, they want to show others what they are feeling and have a trust that if you enjoy the piece, you'll give them credit.
Some people need their art to survive. They worked hard on it, and seeing their work just copy and pasted by someone who doesn't care that that art isn't theirs, or that they refuse to credit them, it's hard. People gotta eat and quite frankly just because someone posts it publicly doesn't give you the right to take it.

My art was stolen so many times that I have removed it from public view. There are very few people I trust to read it. (I'm a writer, not a visual artist, not in the picture sense). I have had to remove my art because people won't stop taking it. It's not flattery to me, it's insulting. Someone shouldn't be afraid to post their work just because people won't stop taking from it.

I know that there is such thing as inspired by, but it should not be:

-Word for word with names/dates changed
-Traced over and/or recoloured

Stop.Stealing.
 
I get that. I've had it happen to me loads of times before, though never on here. It was mainly when i was designing graphics and such on wattpad. When i first started out it wasn't a big thing but in the past year or so, this thing of stealing art and plagiarism is spreading like the plague and it is so. freaking. annoying.

I totally get how you feel though. I've even had friends who had their stories stolen and uploaded to other websites where they pass it off as their own and i truly can't understand what would possess a person to do something like that when such things never end well.