It’s funny how my stance on Copyright has changed so much in such a little time. Less than a year ago, I was pretty gung-ho about it…don’t post my shit anywhere or I’ll bring the legal wrath of Copyrights upon thy ass…nowadays…?
Not so much. Tho it’s still there.
I still very firmly believe that folks posting shit all willy-nilly are killing the industry…I’m just not as frustrated about it all as I used to be. So, let’s outline my current stance on my images, posting them to social sites like FetLife, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, etc…and how you can HELP me if you’re going to do so.
The stuff that pisses me off. I like it when my stuff gets posted in places like the above…BUT. PLEASE…if you find a work of mine out there (Google Images, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, whatever) and it DOESN’T HAVE THE WATERMARK ON IT SIGNIFYING THAT IT’S FOR EITHER STACIESNOWBOUND.COM OR TUCSONTIED.COM…please…PLEASE DON’T RE-POST IT!!! I can’t stress this enough…”damaged” copies of my work do me absolutely no good when re-posted and are an altering of my stuff that I didn’t approve of or want to happen…it’s like a Ferrari with missing sparkplugs. 🙁
So, what constitutes a “damaged” image then? Well…there’s the ones that get degraded from multiple postings and look like shit. This happened on Tumblr recently…and I can’t help but imagine what people thought of me and my work when they saw the degraded almost beyond recognition crap that was posted. If you’re posting them to say, “Hey, I love this…check it out!”, people see the crapness of the pic and judge me…NOT COOL. 🙁 Then there’s the removal of the watermark thing…people use that little “©2012 TucsonTied.com” or “©StacieSnowBound.com” to find me on the net and possibly even join my site when they see and like the work. Removal of the watermark denies me that traffic…and, for all intents and purposes, takes money out of my pocket and food out of my mouth…if that’s saying you “love” my work…it’s doing it with a sword in my gut. 🙁 Just don’t do it, k?
And while we’re touching on the “just don’t do it” factor…stay the fcuk away from torrent sites, K? There’s viruses, keyloggers, trojans and other shit like that to worry about…not to mention those are being policed up the ass (Megaupload, and the arrest of the Pirate Bay founder, maybe?). And then there’s the whole…”I love your work” concept…it you truly DO love my work and sites, support them with a monthly membership…and that goes for ANY site/artist who’s work you love. Just join up and stay for a month…deny yourself 4 latte’s…it won’t kill ya, believe me…and you’ll be helping us starving artists too. 🙂 Joining doesn’t mean you’ve been concrete locked in (tho I’d like you to stay for a while, that’s for sure)…you can cancel out at any time and still keep the benefits of a monthly membership. 🙂
So, what can you do to help me by posting my stuff on social sites? Like I’ve said…my stance is a lot more relaxed than it was before…just post the samples that I’ve already posted. Name the model in the pic in your caption when you upload…and also put a link back to my site in there as well. This’ll drive traffic back to me and help me immensely in the never ending battle of getting members/people to see my work. 🙂 Something like this…
Drea Morgan looked so HOT in this pic from TucsonTied! http://www.tucsontied.com/
Was that so hard? 😛 It’ll do me a WORLD of good in getting traffic up…and even if I get only one or two sales out of it…it’ll help me immensely! Videos…eh, that’s a different ball park, and I hate sites like YouTube, DailyMotion and others that re-post my shit and give me headaches trying to have it removed. Just don’t do it, K? 🙂
Tolstoy