"So You Wannabe A Webdesigner?", Part II

When someone has been discovered stealing graphics (yours or mine) there is a natural outpouring of empathic indignation in the graphics communities.  It's nice to share commiseration over injustice.  There are also many suggestions about how to protect oneself from copyright crimes.  That's useful.  In my most recent case, many kind people asked what I plan to do about naughty boys who scoop my work and try to turn it into a business for themselves.  Not much. 

Why don't I do more against people who steal my hard work? 

I have always resisted taking action against copyright violators . . . beyond my usual stern email.  I'm such a razor mouth, getting an angry email from me surely is harsh punishment.  But writing confrontational email also draws on my overactive adrenal system and leaves me feeling weak and emptyheaded.  Then I have to ask just who is really being punished by the confrontations I might send? One or two emails is about my limit, because each one that is ignored or which brings an indignant response stimulates more adrenal activity, followed by the inevitable, unavoidable adreanal crash, further empty-headedness . . . and loss of creative verve.  I feel meaner and meaner and tireder and tireder with every confrontation. 

Pirates rarely, if ever, behave gracefully when confronted. They either (1) unreachable in the first place, (2) never return comminiques objecting to their copyright violation, (3) respond like a cornered wolverine and indignantly give bizarre justifications, (3) take their entire site down in the dark of the night, only to pop back up again under another name, (4) initiate an interminable cyberstalking counterattack.  Real offenders are almost never nice about it.  This leads to even more fuming and fussing and . . . further adrenal exhaustion. And by the way . . . did I mention that adrenal exhaustion is the precise opposite of a creative, productive state?

The "Alice In Wonderland" Effect

Let me give you an example of the "runninghardbutgoingnowhere" experience you can have when pursuing copyright offenders. 

There was a guy in England who "allegedly" pirated many of my websets and started a webdesign business.  His offense was reported to me through my message board.  When I queried the guy by email, he totally denied it, and insisted that I search his site.  Then he suggested that as long as I had contacted him, we should become partners and that I could supply him with interfaces for his webdesign business.  He sent numerous emails describing his doctoral work at Cambridge and his extremely successful webdesign business.  I declined his offer, but he didn't want to take no for an answer.  Meanwhile, more postings on my message board reported him as a graphics pirate and a liar.  I began to simply delete the posts, but they came back, using exactly the same verbal formulas, but with different email addresses.  With a lot of investigation, I tracked down the email aliases from the postings.  Guess what?  The person who was posting the accusations against this guy was the same person who was trying to persuade me to partner with him in his webdesign business.  The guy had reported himself as a webdesign pirate in order to get a response from me. Or some such motivation.  Zillions of emails later . . . who knows? It was just another weird, convoluted case of graphics cyberstalking that took a ton of wrist power and many of my precious creative hours to figure out.

Then there's the famous case of the "StickTyper".  Many people may know of this incident, since it was spread all over many graphics forums and became one of the motivating legends of the Grey Day Campaign.  In this example of copyright insanity, it seems that Moyra (formerly of Moyra's Web Jewels), discovered a website in Australia which had appropriated her entire website, all of it, and was actually claiming to be her.  Moyra contacted this person and asked her to desist from pretending to be Moyra of Moyra's Web Jewels.  In response, Moyra received a nasty letter, allegedly from the individual's sister, claiming that her poor sibling was crippled since birth and could only type on the keyboard with a stick in her teeth and intended no harm. The Sticktyper's alleged sister stressed what a horrible person Moyra was to take exception to such an innocent effort at spreading beauty on the Internet.  Needless to say, this effort at professional self protection was frustrating. But . . . it was one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of similar experiences. 

Do you see where I'm going here?

The Numbers, Just The Numbers, Ma'am . . . You gotta keep the hard numbers in mind with this copyright thing.  One or two of these incidents . . . okay, it makes sense to pursue the pirates and see what you can do to stop them from abusing your creative output.  But what if there are dozens - or hundreds - of them?  What if you have a high profile on the Internet and everybody wants what you've got?  What if the pirates are all over the world?  What if their entire website and all email correspondence is in . . . Japanese?  What if they are poor "Sticktypers" with defensive relatives . . . or what if they are pretending to be the relatives of a poor innocent "Sticktyper"?  What if the emails go round and round and round and round as you get more hurt, more indignant, more offended, more angry . . . and less inspired?  What if you squander your precious creative energy trying to protect your pixels? If a designer provides products online and they have a high traffic showroom . . . this kind of thing is definitely going to happen quite a bit.  In Moyra's case, at one time she reported a million hits a week (or was it a day?).  She had enormous exposure, which meant she was literally swamped by weird pirates with many aliases, who sometimes ended up as frightening cyberstalkers, and who were invariably enraged at being exposed.  And that's not counting the plainly ignorant.  It takes a very thick skin to deal with the fall out from these frustrating and futile encounters.  I do not have that skin. Do you?  Many, many good webdesigners have become depleted from these encounters and considered just closing up shop entirely.  And a few of them have actually been chased off the Internet by the discouragement of dealing with the weirdos.  There are just too many of them to round up and spank. In the case of any well known webdesigner with a highly trafficked website, pursuing pirated webgraphics can become a part time job in itself.  The time and money required to stop the theft becomes considerable (see sidebar).  And that's not counting the creative energy that is lost.  This weird conundrum prevails:  the more successful you are, the more people crowd in your eyecandystore, and the more attractive your candy is, the more sticky fingers you have to deal with.  Unless you eventually want to just close up your candy store in adrenal exhaustion, after coming to a complete creative dead end because you've squandered all your energy on people you don't even know and whose motives you can never imagine . . . you won't spend a whole lotta time chasing pixels around the globe. And . . . let's not forget the amount of sheer wrist power it takes to manage the rain of email correspondence from well wishers and cyberstalkers.  Just thanking people for their concern can create  multiple use injuries to your wrist and shoulder.  I need to save my muscles and ligaments for creating webgraphics and coding pages. The drain on creative energy is really the point. This copyright stuff can drive you crazy.  In my case, that's a very short trip.  Hence, I don't want to do much about copyright violators . . . other than to expose them and squeeze a few sarcastic Seinfeldian laughs out of the deal.  I want my entire fund of energy to spend on my own creative development . . . and on the pleasures of life.  Weirdos can steal pixels, but I refuse to surrender my inspiration.  That's why I don't hire attorneys or haunt the Internet in order to bring pirates to justice. I don't have that much frigging time left in my life to squander in that way. You wannabe a webdesigner with a popular eyecandystore?  These are just a few concrete facts to consider.  It's easier to just protect the work at the source . . . but that's another kettle of fish I'll save for later.

Rendezvous With Copyright Realities With the most recent bizarre experience of a website in France trying to sell dozens of my interfaces, without my knowledge, my husband actually looked into taking legal action. For the small retainer of $2,000, an attorney in England agreed to take on the case, track down the pirate and force him to remove my interfaces from his website. Only $2,000 . . .  assuming I do have $2,000 lying around in my bank account which I could spend on attorney's fees.  As a matter of fact, I do. But do you have any idea what I would rather spend $2,000 on?  New figure skates?  A year's worth of coaching fees?  Books?  Part of the cost of a really great 3-D rendering program?  A few days vacation on a dude ranch in British Columbia?  Down payment on a tummy tuck?  Get the point?  I'm a vain hedonist, not a masochist. Paying attorney's fees is masochism. But although I myself might have disposable income, unless they have an attorney in the family, most small online businesses are simply not in a position to pursue legal action against someone in the same country, let alone someone on another continent. Consider the realistic costs of your indignation and the actual losses involved and act accordingly.

Further Topics In "Webdesigner Wannabe" . . .

"The Better The Webdesigner, The Bigger The Target"
"Burning Desire Trumps Talent Every Time"


COMING SOON!

"The Webdesign Business As Guerilla Warfare"
"Clients From The Black Lagoon"