This Poor Horse Should be Dead by Now

I hate to beat horses; whether they're alive, or dead. I know nobody wants to rehash the argument over intellectual property rights, but there are always people out there who abuse the rights of copyright holders, and feel justified in doing so. I don't want to hear from those who believe that they can do whatever they want with anything they find on the Internet because [insert justification here]. Unless you have express permission, or an image has been explicitly entered into the public domain, you may not repost another person's intellectual property (IP).

"What is the harm?", you ask. "You're not selling the image*, or impacting sales of the image", you say. I'm afraid there is more to it, than that. Some of us are selling our work, some of us use it to advertise our web-sites or services we offer, and some of us just post our work because we want others to see it and we want credit for it. Speaking for myself, I do all of the above. Sometimes there are people in my images who don't want their likeness published in places like Facebook where their family or employer might see them. In that case, I don't even dare to put their image on the Internet, because someone will ignore my copyright and repost the image, possibly without any attribution or watermark, and before long, that image will be all over Tumblr, Facebook, etc.

There can be any number of reasons why a person may want to have the final say in where his/her creations are displayed, and how. You don't have to agree, or even know about their reasons. Every piece of original artwork, including but not limited to drawings, photographs, stories, and poems, are copyrighted by default by the person who created it. You need the express permission of the creator to repost, edit, or use that artwork in a derivative work.

DeviantArt makes it easy for you to collect artwork you like, simply by favoriting. That leaves control with the artist, you aren't claiming the art as your own, and you're telling the artist that you like their work. It's a win for everyone.

Just because you don't see any harm in abusing someone's IP rights does not mean there is no harm.

*the word image could be construed to mean any photograph, drawing, written work, or any original creation.