As many of you know, I am employed as a Social Media Manager (See Online Community Manager at Wikipedia) for Carousel Gardens and do graphic design, web, and logo work in addition.  Yesterday I approached an artist’s representative about incorporating a piece of his artwork in a logo that I am currently designing. 

He said, “Sure.” 

I replied, “Thanks.  I will make sure it is small enough that it can’t be reproduced and stolen and…”

He interrupted laughing and said, “Clearly I’m not worried about that, or I would make a better effort to protect the artwork on the website.  I figure if someone can figure out how to steal it and make a million bucks, I’ll steal it back and make the second million.”

Folks, to put it in perspective, I am talking about an internationally-known artist whose work on canvas, paper and bronze is very well editioned and supports more than one generation of his family.

So my question is, why are artists so paranoid that we’re watermarking tiny digital images of our work online? 

If you’re a stock photographer–I get it.  Corporations using your images for logos and not paying–I get it.  But otherwise folks, let’s all loosen up.  Can’t we all just remember that theft–regardless of how wrong–is still a back-handed compliment?

The ones that really kill me are the images you right-click and they say “This image protected.”  Really?  I have yet to find an image protected from my PRT SCRN key.  Maybe what we should be doing is encouraging people to cut and paste our work so their audience is prompted to say, “Wow!  Who did that?”  

Optimism, folks…catch the wave.