I never thought I’d have to make a post like this. I just assumed that if someone liked my stuff enough that they wanted to display it, they would simply drop me a quick message and ask. Guess I was naive to think that. So, this is my post letting every person who visits my site know that it is NOT cool to take my content without my permission. It is NOT okay to upload my work to other sites without citing me as the creator or giving me any credit. I have been trying to get the content of mine that I can find removed by site admins but it has been a slow process.
To anyone who has done this, I hope you get what is coming to you. You seriously need to be a better person. Instead of using your time stealing the work of others, why don’t you put that energy into becoming an artist yourself? You should be ashamed.
I don’t make money off my art for the most part. I have a very small merch store that I might see $5-$10 a month from. It isn’t about the money for me. It is about sharing my work with people. I can’t share my work as myself if there are people out there distributing and posting it without my name attached to it. Seriously, I’m a reasonably nice guy. If you love something on my site, reach out and let’s work something out. But seeing my stuff scattered around the internet has been hard. It is hard to look at a website and see that a piece I put hours into years and years ago has been uploaded by a stranger without my name and viewed and downloaded thousands of times. You aren’t helping me “get my name out there” when you take my work and don’t mention my name.
I appreciate that people like my stuff. Seriously, that shit is cool as hell to me. That’s what I want! But I don’t want people to like my stuff without realizing that an actual person is making it. Society is too quick to just consume without thinking about how that content happened.
So, long story short here: stop stealing my work. Stop uploading my art to free download sites. If you want a piece of my artwork so bad, contact me directly and let’s talk about some options.
To those of you who look through my site and would never even consider doing some of the things I’ve mentioned, you rock. Thank you for being awesome and following me on this journey. I’m sorry that some shitty people have ruined something that was supposed to be fun. I’ve had to take steps to make my work more secure now and unfortunately that will make viewing stuff a tad more difficult. This sucks and truly bums me out. I plan on continuing to upload content but I’m trying to be smarter about it so that these leeches at least have a harder time stealing from me.
Sorry for the rant, and thank you for your support and love while I deal with this new reality.
Steven-
