Sunday 29 September 2013

Watermarking your cards - do you?

Hiya everyone, 

As you may or may not know there are a lot of unscrupulous crafters that are not only posting and sharing unwatermarked black and white uncoloured images on pinterest/facebook etc but they are also stealing other crafters coloured in images and elements off their cards to digitally reproduce themselves.  Or they steal the piccie of your card and pass it off as their own.
 
Theft on various levels is becoming a massive problem within the crafting industry which is why it is important to watermark your creations to try and prevent your work from being stolen. 

Claire Keay from Jelly Park stamps has an offer on throughout October that for £2 she will produce a made to order watermark with all proceeds going to Breast Cancer Awareness.  It also includes instructions on how to add it to your creations.  For full details of this please see here.
 
To make it crystal clear, if you buy an image then it is for your own personal use only in accordance with that particular companies terms of use which vary from company to company.  Anybody who uploads these unwatermarked images to various sites such as pinterest etc is effectively stealing.  Any of these images that are pinned are then shared and distributed even more which makes this problem worse.  
 
Some pinterest users have 1000's of images from digi companies to stamped images such a LOTV, Tilda and Hanglar that have been stamped and scanned on.  A lot of people who are pinning these images do not realise it is a problem as they do not realise that they are sharing illegal images even further.  Images with watermarks are fine - it's the ones that can be saved and printed off that's the problem.  Stamped images that have been scanned on are not supposed to be reproduced mechanically.   
 
Just because these images are there does not make them free or fair game as it is completely against copyright to share them in this way.  A lot of people wrongly think that they are in the public domain but this is not the case.
 
I really feel for the artists involved as this is how they make their living so if people are using their images that haven't been paid for it is not fair on the honest crafters who do pay for the images.  If their income falls they may no longer be able to produce the fantastic images that we all love working with.
 
Thanks for listening - I know it's not nice but people need to be aware of what's happening!
 
 
 
  

13 comments:

  1. Thank you for the advice Paula, although I have a watermark I will get a new one from Claire because it is a good cause. Thanks again Marlene

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  2. thank you so much for sharing this, Paula. digi theft has gotten so out of hand. I'm on Claire's design team and am so happy she is creating these watermarks, and for such a great cause, too. :)

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  3. Thanks Paula just ordered mine all in a good course great offer too! x

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  4. I've ordered one too thanks for the info
    hugs
    laney

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  5. I've ordered one too thanks for the info
    hugs
    laney

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  6. That's a great post Paula x great information :)

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  7. Such a shame there are so many unscrupulous individuals who don't care what lengths they go to just so that they can gain from the hard work of the artists :-( Personally I don't pin those images which I know are at risk eg, house mouse images which haven't been made into cards etc, & only post things which I have watermarked. Unfortunately its not a foolproof method, but hopefully it means they're less use as the scoundrels will have to do some work rather than just "lift" the image

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  8. I've not watermarked anything yet, as I always figured I'm pretty new at all this, and no-one would want to steal anything I'd made anyway, lol.
    I will however get one, as it's a good cause and can start using it!

    Having a background in both film and print industries, there's little that gets my knickers in a twist as much as breach of copyright...

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  9. Well said Paula. I agree 100%. I started a Pinterest page with info from Stamping Out, to try and highlight this issue too. If we keep educating Pinterest and blog users this way, we may eventually get the message across! Fingers crossed. Hugs, Wends x

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  10. awesome post darl.... I only just joined Pinterest.... dont have a clue what to do next & haven't seen anything like that but if I do I will certainly report them.... I used to put my watermark so that my whole card wasn't covered but since finding out people are stealing other creations my watermark goes right over the project surface now... lets hope this post makes plenty of people aware darl

    love n hugz Angie xXx

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  11. Thanks for the link Paula! I have a watermark but i got one of these as they are for such a good cause!
    Hugs, Hazel xx

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  12. I agree with your views on this! Until recently, I did know know this was as big of a problem as it is...I have seen this happen on Pinterest. I do think that probably not everyone realizes it's stealing....

    Thanks for the tip on watermarks; I have just recently learned how to do this and will getting my own soon.

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