Pirates and Pickpockets Prevention 101

Image Theft. Ugh. Not a very tasty thing to digest, I'm afraid. It's something that I was taught during college years (by brainwashing and subconscious tampering) to fight against and prevent at all cause. A strange kind of education, especially if what you want to do is to share your work to all human kinds through the internet, where pirates sail the oceans and pickpockets roam the streets.

So shrugging this off, at the beginning I started publishing my work with only minimum protection. None of those huge watermarks covering almost the entire area of the work, no flash animation implemented to cunningly prevent the images from being nicked, or even the innovative yet annoying 'no-right-clicking'. Which for people such as myself is like second nature, considering you can navigate through the pages by doing that.

Then came the day when I saw my own work used, by... lets say a hamster. Published without notification or even permission, and for personal profit use, I might add. Funnily, I felt the strangest kind of feeling. Like having a flock of my own hair cut off and taken away without asking. Exaggerating, am I? Well, I'm just trying to be honest. So after seeing yet another one of my work used by a much larger hamster, I decided that maybe I should just give a stronger protection to my work, not because I felt overly protective about them, but because I think that there's a lesson to be taught here.

That IT IS NOT OKAY TO STEAL.

No matter how subtle. No matter how discreet. Besides, I would've given the permission anyway, if only they had asked.

So now comes the part where I need your help, all of you wonderful and generous kind of hamsters. I was asked by an observant blogger friend if I could somehow find a way to minimize the signature watermarks that I use on all of my work. Why? Because apparently it's getting in the way of the viewing and probably  annoying to some people's eyes? Well, since inputs mean a lot to me, I've decided to come up with a couple of options. Ones that I could still use to teach those pirates and pickpockets not to go home full handed, whether for them to use as a whole artwork or even partial by cropping.

Now, which of these do you think works best? (Please click away if you need to...)

Again, thank you so much for reading this. I realize some people may feel that image theft on the internet is something which is inevitable, especially for those working in the art area. But I don't think I could ever just watch or even walk off while someone takes away something of mine without permission.

Ask. It's all they need to do.

Cheers,
Amalia oxx