Dealing With Content Thieves
February 26, 2009, 8:29 pm
At the most recent seminar I did at the Contra Costa Library, a number of members from a local writing guild showed up to learn as much as they could about promoting their work online. After the class, I had a fascinating conversation with them in regards to their concerns about putting their art online. Specifically – how do you prevent people from stealing it?
The short answer: you don’t. If someone wants to steal your content bad enough, they will find a way no matter how hard you lock it down. Thus, if you don’t want your content stolen, don’t put it online, not for sale and not for free. Of course, keeping your work offline is like burying your head in the sand – how else will unknown artists build their name if they can’t take advantage of digital distribution?
Perhaps you should look at this “thievery” another way. Rather than get upset that someone broke your digital rights management or posted an image of your artwork on their site without permission or sent a copy of your eBook to their friends, you should find a way to turn that into a marketing opportunity for you. Place your web site URL on images in an area that doesn’t obfuscate your art but is difficult to crop out without detracting from the piece itself. Make sure your name and homepage URL appear in the footer or header of every page of your eBook. Place your website information in the ID tags of your music MP3s. Distribute your content with enough information so that folks who do find it through “unofficial” channels can get to your official site if they like what they see.
Better yet, go a step further and actually give some of your work away, if you can. Get your fans involved by walking them through your creative process. Make them a part of the process and give them a sense of ownership. After all, why are you creating commercially available art if not to excite your fans? Once you share your process in a meaningful way, you stop creating solely art and start creating an experience. The creation at the end can become a souvenir of the journey, something your committed fans would be glad to purchase.
The bottom line is that the people who are most likely to buy your work will buy it anyway. Those who would steal it would never have given you a dime to start with. I’m not suggesting you don’t try to protect your work – our outdated copyright laws actually require you to take reasonable measures to protect your work if you want to continue claiming the copyright – but there are other ways to market and make money from your work aside from the end product. Shifting your focus like this could mean the difference between wild success and struggling to find an audience while spending your spare time fighting potential fans.
Here are a few artists on the web who have taken aspects this model and run with it with great success:
Jonathan Coulton – Musician
http://www.jonathancoulton.com
Coulton gained early fame on the web for his rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” and the new anthem for programmer geeks everywhere “Code Monkey“. Both were part of a project where he created one “Thing a Week” for a year, blogged about each creation and gave it away for free. They’re still available through his site for a small fee, along with other related CDs and merchandise.
Chris “Coop” Cooper – Painter, Illustrator
http://www.coopstuff.com
http://positiveapeindex.blogspot.com/
Well known for his hot-rod culture inspired art and scantily clad she-devils. Regularly updates his blog with progress on new paintings and occasionally posts timelapse videos of the work in progress.
Greg Dean – Online Comic Artist
http://www.reallifecomics.com
http://qik.com/saguself
In addition to maintaining a blog, fan site and podcast, Dean has started streaming live video as he works on the latest comic. He creates his daily comic using Adobe Illustrator and anyone interested in seeing how he accomplishes his work can get an inside view of the process. The finished product typically goes live on his site the next day.
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