I'm feeling a bit depressed and disillusioned at the moment, the reason being the sheer amount of stealing and copying of work on here. It's not always the Chad Love-Lieberman's of the world stealing art on a massive scale, it's also the constant drip drip drip of people using the internet as a way to take other people's work and pass it off as their own. I wonder to myself if these people would steal from shops or rob people in the street? Is it because it's apparently a faceless, victimless crime they feel they're able to get away with it? The internet makes it unfortunately easy for these people; they treat it as their own, personal, free stock library.

One of the things that makes me mad is making even a tiny living from art isn't easy. To become of a reasonable standard takes hours, indeed years, of devotion and practise. To then have your hard work ripped off by someone else who is just too damn lazy to put in the same amount of effort really sticks in my throat. Personally I don't know how these people can do it, sit back and get acclaim for work another artist has done. I'm proud of my work because I've worked hard. I know the thousands of rubbish sketches I've done, the times I've nearly given up, the tears of sheer frustration and the joys when I make some kind of breakthrough. Art thieves bypass all that completely. This is one reason I always try to be totally supportive of new artists who post their drawings, because I know how much effort that takes and how hard it is. I want to support that creativity.

Downright stealing is bad enough. I've seen work where the original is just photoshopped slightly, how these people think they'll get away with it is beyond me. In my eyes copying is just as bad. As artists we all learn to some extent from copying other works we admire, which is fine as long as you say that's what it is. It's the people who don't, who try to pass off that copy as their original work; it's robbing another artist of their creativity and originality. Copying doesn't just cover an out and out copy of another existing piece; some artists spend their entire careers imitating other artists. One successful artist spawns a whole load of imitators trailing in their wake. There's a difference between being inspired by an artist and simply copying their style and techniques. The problem with it is the market can become saturated with a particular type of work and people do eventually get sick of seeing it. Copied works can be flat, lack any sort of originality and the passion that inspired the original artist in the first place.

I have heard lack of knowledge of stock usage and copyright as an excuse. It is NO excuse, just because something is on the internet doesn't mean its public property. We all have to educate ourselves about it, just as well all need to report postings of stolen work. I haven't written this because I've seen my own work stolen, I've just seen too much stolen and copied from other artists I admire.  As a community these thieves are taking from us all.