Topic: Removing noise and watermarks with AI

SnowWolf

Former Staff

Calimero000 said:
Artists are a weird breed.
"I made this beautiful artwork for people to admire. A masterpiece of creativity and craftsmanship. Let me slap an huge, ugly-ass watermark right on top of it."

It should be obvous that whenever someone uses an artwork for anything, they should do their very best to link back to the original source, list the artist(s), clearly state that it's not their own work if that's not already obvious. Anyone on e621 should understand that this is the most normal and reasonable thing to do (because, you know, it's the way this website works), right? RIGHT?

...

If you're going to tell me "but if the watermark is easily removable people are going to steal my art": Read again. It should be the most normal thing in the world to properly give sources. Removing watermarks/signatures from art and repost it as your own is copyright infringement. People who do that are assholes and should be (and can be) dealt with accordingly.
Slapping a watermark on your artwork is only going to stop someone from trying to steal it when the watermark is so huge that working around it is impossible. But at that point the artwork is ruined anyways.

To add some more to this...

While it SHOULD be second nature to link back, a lot of people don't. A lot of people feel like if you don't want your art stolen, you shouldn't post it on the internet. which is bullshit, but I can't change other people's minds through sheer force of will.

I know of several people who've had art was stolen and SOLD... like... they have to send off multiple "please stop selling these t-shirts, I"m the artist and I did not approve this" requests a week because of the sheer number of people who are trying to make cash off of other people's livelyhood.

Check out this girl who got her art stolen by Old Navy ... not the only case of a large company trying to push around an artist I've heard of.

And it's not even just big companies. It's enterprising individuals who steal and resell art and art prints. An artist I follow apparently has an issue this week with a theater company that commissioned a poster and got a finished piece... that had her stolen artwork front and center.

It happens all the time. A lot of people are totally unscrupulous about it. :/ I'ts not just about roleplayers, y'know?

Updated by anonymous