THE NEVERENDING ESSAY: WHAT IS "SNAGGING" AND "TUBING"

"Snagging" is a euphemism for appropriating and/or misappropriating graphics files and sharing them in Internet groups without any way of identifying where they originated. Basically, "snagging" groups are organized for the purpose of file sharing without uploading to a physical website. In fact, graphics file sharing must be done in a digital group setting (like Yahoogroups) because it would be illegal to upload someone else's copyrighted material to the internet but it's apparently legal if you just send it through an email list. On the listgroup itself, you get an attachment to open. But if you go to your Yahoo mail online, the images will be displayed on your screen when you open the email. SnaggerTubers groups which unwittingly or purposely accept copyright violations need a technically legal way to redistribute graphics files without accountability, so they can honestly claim that they do not know where the images came from and must trust their members to be ethical. But we know this does not work. So unethical filesharing groups automatically become environments in which copyrighted material inevitably is passed from hand to hand anonymously.

"Tubing" refers to a Paint Shop Pro file format frequently used by Snaggers, where the image has a transparent background and can be repeatedly applied with a mouse . . . sort of like painting with images . . . like a Painter Nozzle.

Tubing itself has a valid use and some people only share images they they have a right to redistribute, but many of the people in Snagging Groups pick up graphics all over the internet and generally have no idea (or claim to have no idea) who the original designer or artist is.

But tubing has also become a favorite way to share snagged graphics. In this format, snaggers sending and receiving images naturally have no way to know what the original licensing terms for that image would be. Therefore they cannot be expected to follow any Terms of Use for images they snag. Unethical SnaggerTubers do not like people who try to deny them pixel-fixes and they definitely don't know much about what digital artists or designers actually do. SnaggerTubers prefer to stay in the mental framework of the poem above and don't want to be reminded of where the images came from.

Snaggers love to share what is actually not theirs to give away. Snaggers share with hundreds of other SnaggerTubers who share with hundreds of other SnaggerTubers. Once stuff is passed around in a digital snagging community, copies multiply like mad. In the huge volume of shared imaged, unethical Snaggers can honestly claim that they have no idea where the images came from originally, so they couldn't possibly be violating anybody's copyright. Or if they are violating copyright, they aren't doing it on purpose and therefore, since they have no intent, there actually is no violation. Kinda ostrich-like, i.e., if you keep your head firmly in the sand you can't be seen.

It's a bit like copying a movie cd and making thousands of new copies and generously giving them away to friends and strangers so that they can have the movie without having to pay a theater or movie rental company and if the movie distributors call you on it, you just say "I had no idea, I was just trying to help everybody have a little fun!". And if you help people have fun, a lot of them will be really grateful to you and say what a warm, wonderful movie sharing group you have. That's called piracy.

Many graphic images are in the public domain, of course. But some of the images provided in snagging groups are graphics resources that digital designers and artists and photographers create in an effort to make a modest living. Snagging seems innocuous but ends up being an exploitive activity designed to gather the maximum amount of free stuff (some of which isn't really free) and make friends by sharing. Maybe Snagging is just a way some people address the need for popularity . . . and giving stuff away always works for that purpose. Even if the stuff isn't free! But passing through the Snagger machine can make it free!

Should a digital designer or artist find that the images they sell in order to make a modest living are being redistributed in a Snagging/Tubing Group and should they protest and demand that the group cease and desist from redistributing the files, that designer will live through a rain of shit they could never imagine. In my case I've heard and seen it all before, though, so I didn't have to imagine it. I've avoided confronting copyright violators for years now because I know that SnaggerTubers writhe like vampires with a stake through their hearts if anybody messes with their free graphics addiction.

Unethical Snaggers will defend their right to take whatever they want from the cookie jar and do with it as they wish, regardless of the damage involved to ordinary people (not big corporations). They will claim their cosmic right to give away what an artist/designer is selling, then say you weren't nice enough, then slander your artwork, or mistakenly claim that artwork which uses Poser models or licensed clipart can't be yours anyway, then claim they didn't have any idea it belonged to someone who is trying to make a living, and add that you are an old poopie head who should get a therapist right away . . . and much much more. They have endless rhetorical ploys to justify what they are doing. The upshot is that the Snagger violators must demonize the artist/designer in order to keep that dissociation going between the stuff they appropriate and its human origin and thus prove that they are hurting no one with their innocent fun and they have a right to redistribute whatever they want.

The group with which I have just had this experience is Sig-Havens-Tubes@yahoo.com. But the profile is classic and ubiquitous. There are bunches of these SnaggerTuber filesharing groups out there, ethical and unethical. But if images get into one of them, or escapes the filters of the ethical moderators, they will be automatically given away to a mass audience: the Vast Global Unethical SnaggerTuber Sharing Conspiracy.

I sent an uncompromising cease and desist email to Sig-Havens-Tubes. In return I was able to collect a perfectly matched set of lame excuses, disavowals of responsibility, rationalizations, and indignant assertions of entitlement . . . with almost the precise wording and tone of the response thousands of other graphic designers have gotten from copypright violaters and have shared in graphics forums for years. Those who insist on their entitlement to free stuff always sing the same song. I am going to catalogue and share the various insults, lame excuses, rationalizations and disavowals of responsibility with you and refute each one of the assertions in turn and hopefully enlighten the public (and my potential customers) about the exploitive realities of SnaggerTuber Groups. You'll love it, they're classics in The Literature of Denial. Eventually I'll have enough to produce a nice, tight little essay which I can then redistribute across all the graphics and/or copyright forums and get some laughs. Not to mention attention for myself, ROFLMAO! Snaggers may use snagged graphics to generate warm fuzzies for themselves, but I guarantee that I can take this attention-getting right over the top.

1. The first response I got from one of the list owners: If you were only nicer in asking us not to use your work we would naturally have complied. All graphic designers and artists know that niceness does not work with snaggers. The various forms of technical protection do not work either. Being nice about it, explaining, educating, coaxing . . . none of it has worked yet for any of us. And it's not going to. There's an army of digital designers and artists who will back me on this: there is a subpopulation of the Internet public who represent a black hole in graphics space, which will suck in an infinite amount of free images that will never satisfy them and they will never think that you have been nice enough because they feel entitled to infinite free graphics.

2. This is the 2nd response that came in within 15 minutes of writing the group owner to protest the redistribution of my work through Sig-Havens-Tubes@yahoo.com

You know, you are one very rude woman!! If by chance your tube was shared on a yahoo group, it was by someone who did not know it was your tube. When you sell your work, people have the right to do with it what they wish to, once they buy it, it's theirs! If you don't like it, then don't put it on the world wide web for people to buy. You obviously are a very uptight unhappy woman who has a control problem and feels the need to keep reins on your work, even after it's been purchased. Get over it! If you do not want it shared then she should keep it locked in a box, cuz once someone buys something, they paid for it and it's theirs to do with what they like. Obviously your gift of talent has not afforded you an ounce of class, because you've just assumed that this was allowed to happen, you did not even have the decency to ask if it might have been by mistake. Do you think that you are so freekin famous that we all just know your work when we see it?? Get a grip lady!! Did you stop to think that maybe, just maybe, the person who shared your stupid tube was someone who bought it from you and just didn't care about your rules?? That it was not the fault of the yahoo group owner. Messages are not monitored to see if your precious tubes are among them you know. Some of us actually have lives!! All you have done is shown what you are really like, that you have no grace in presenting your opinion at all, and if anyone had respected you or your work in the past, they certainly don't now! (from Lisa Ann)

Yes, I sure did think the original violater was a customer who didn't care about me or my rules. But please note that it is not true that when you license graphics you can do what you want with them. Graphics products have licensing restrictions which explain how the graphics may and may not be used. Snagged graphics have been separated from the original Terms of Use and license which governs their use. My graphic products may not be used in a way that takes bread out of my mouth. Licenses for the use of graphics files almost inviariably prohibit mass redistribution for the reason that if it is permitted, people could give away on a widespread basis what the owner is trying to sell, thereby infringe on what is already a modest income. Hundreds or thousands of people would be able to get it without paying the licensing fee to the originator. Redistribution means that the entire product is made available easily to lots of people, not that it is just used one or two times outside the Terms of Use. As with software, you can buy a copy and you can give it to someone, but if you reproduce it over and over and give it away or sell it you are pirating the creative intellectual work and financial investment required to make it available in the first place and basically stealing someone's income whether you intend to or not. Graphics resources are notoriously easy to redistribute, so a lot of care is taken to make sure that that are not just reissued on a mass basis or . . . the originator would directly lose income from their own product.

And . . . this is critical . . . that product does not have to be something the designer personally drew by hand with a pencil. Many graphics resources incorporate other graphics resources to become yet another product with added value and STILL qualify as original creative works which cannot be reproduced legally without infringing the owner's copyright. In fact, companies and individuals buy up other people's graphic resources and own the license to their use just as Michael Jackson bought a lot of song from the Beatles and he is the only one permitted to use them. Stringent tests and standards are even developed to detect whether composited products have elements which could easily be extracted and therefore redistributed against the artists original Terms of Use. Many graphic products list their design resources used in their readmes. Again, this is something that seems to be very hard for SnaggerTubers to understand. It's actually pretty simple: there is a potential loss of income involved with mass redistribution without compensation.

Next . . . the very point of SnaggerTuber Groups is that they are not monitored and that is what enables them to be gleeful mass redistribution free-for-alls (see poem above). That is why the owners and moderators of these groups can, in a somewhat distorted pretense of legalistic honesty, disavow responsibility for copyright violations that occur there. They can say (honestly) that they are not uploading files to the internet but merely providing the group environment within which the redistribution occurs. Several famous, large file sharing sites have been shut down even while they were claiming the same thing about the redistribution of software, cds and graphics resources. But many more pop up and prosper because file swapping appeals to the primate larceny in many humans. Yes, it is an uncontrollable thing all righty because the public itself has an uncontrollable appetite for free goodies. Naturally we all know that SnaggerTuberGroups don't know where the files came from. Snagging Culture depends on not knowing. If they knew where the images came from they might be tempted to do the right thing and that would ruin the entire freebie mindset. That's why the very subculture of SnaggingTubing groups is set up in a way that makes it almost impossible to hold anybody accountable in the first place.

3. Now here's a great quote from my morning SnaggerTuber email: Your site stinks! You are not even an artist. You use other people's art. Do everyone a favor and take it off the web. And DO NOT email me--I've blocked you. You are a rude, nasty, untalented old woman who needs a life, from Susan.

You know what? I kinda don't believe my site stinks. And I have a great life full of fabulous sensory pleasures mixed with service to humanity, LOL. And I'm earning a modest living in a digital cottage industry that requires me to work like a slave for Pharoah developing my skills. Every single day my life is full of rewarding effort, but like most digital designers, I'm not exactly rich. I just make enough (at 60) to justify doing what I love.

Regarding the use of other people's graphics . . . I certainly do use the work of other designers and artists and pay a licensing fee for everything I use and/or have explicit written permission for its use. And those other designers and artists are mighty glad I buy their work because I always use it appropriately and according to their Terms of Use. Just as I am mighty glad that many designer license the design resources I market. Without graphic designers who buy and use royalty free clipart, or license 3d models, textures, brushes, and pay for tutorials among themselves, the digital design industry wouldn't thrive and alll those graphics that are being snagged wouldn't be available in the first place. Susan's statement is typical of the Unethical SnaggerTuber thickheadedness that makes it futile to be nice to them. Being nice won't change their minds or penetrate their wall of denial. They have a weird persistent inability to understand the difference between using design resources you paid for or have permission to use and whose Terms of Use you observe . . . and just snagging graphics to redistribute in violation of the original licensing Terms of Use.

Many but not all SnaggerTubers have a devilishly hard time grasping the concept of the LICENSE and TERMS OF USE. Most digital designers use resources from other designers, paying a licensing fee or getting written permission for the use of clipart, fonts, textures, 3d models, brushes, etc., which they incorporate or composite into other products. Those products may then in turn be sold to the public and/or become additional design resources for print work or webgraphics. This is a common cycle of use in the graphics markets which in fact makes it possible for us all to be artists and designers in the first place, but with which Snaggers are unfamiliar. Many of the graphics which the public people sees as a single image may have a long line of provenance for different elements in it, all of which a ethical artist must be able to account for within the digital graphics communities which self police these things. For example, if I use even a brush or font resource to create a new derivative work, when I submit that work to market such as Renderosity.com, I have to cite the merchant resources which were used in its creation in the readmetxt and provide a copy of the its license, Terms of Use and/or written permission for its use. I'll bet there aren't many Snaggers who know this.

There is a certain (let's be charitable) stubborn naivete among unethical SnaggerTubers which makes it possible for them to claim that if a designer is incorporating other design resources into their work, the products may not then be honored as original and their Terms of Use and copyright may be rightfully violated without consequence to anybody. Among Snaggers, there's lots a gaping hole where Art History should be. And they typicall have zero knowledge of how digital art is technically done. This attitude goes back to the basic Snagger dissociation between the product and the person who produced it. Yo, Susan, you ignorant ditz! I do original digital painting AND I do all kinds of graphic rendering and always use resources I have paid for and/or have written permission to use and where required I list every single resource of every single pixel I didn't generate myself.

Extra emphasis here: This is one of the most frequent responses of SnaggerTubers when they are asked to stop redistributing other people's graphics: You didn't make this yourself and you're no artist and you don't have any talent and we don't need your stupid old graphics any way! Watch for this one! There must be some sort of School for Snaggers where they teach this stuff. I've come to realize that it's an attempt to intimidate and insult the artist to the point that they will never, ever again protest the misuse of their work. In other words: Be as nasty as possible to the designer/artist so they'll be nicer to the people who are redistributing their work.

3. Here is one of the most common defensive ploys of unethical Snagger copyright violaters: Projection . . . I'm off to find the original artist to these works so you can be sued... this is a copyright infringement and you need to be stopped... 1. you have no right to change a artists works.. this is against the law!!!!!!!!!! 2. you can not accept payment for another artists work that you have messed around with 3. you are going to hate life Kates Home [kates_home@msn.com]

Many unethical Snagger Tubers totally freak out when exposed and try to turn the tables and say that the artist whose work they are redistributing is themself a horrible copyright violator who has no right to restrict the use of their own work. They do this without referring to anything specific, and then threaten them with unnamed ugly consequences of some kind.

I've been in business on this website for many years. I am well known in many graphics communities. Everything I do is exposed to the harsh light of critics and the eagle eye of other artists and designers. For some time, in my Readmes, I've listed the various resources I have licensed and legitimately used in a derivative work, with the name of the original artist/designer and the store where I licensed it. I essentially couldn't get away with copyright violations because people like me are under constant scrutiny from their colleagues who are also policing graphics uses and misuses. I certainly can accept payment for derivative works which employ design resources from other artists, just as designers who use my own work in their products can accept payment. Appropriate and legal use of copyright material in the creation of derivative commercial products is not a problem, it is in fact what makes the entire graphics industry go around and makes it possible for many people to make a modest living from their hard work.

These kinds of defensive comments reveal a complete misunderstanding/distortion of the image resource industry and what a License and Terms of Use means in it. Unfortunately, it's just a matter of terrible ignorance . . . hence the effort I have put into this page of education.