Jim, if they like your work (outside of the pirates) they'll buy it. If they don't understand and appreciate your opinion, they can go to...well. Y'know. It's YOUR work and you're doing what you feel is best. Folks who like your work will buy it. Period.
A pay for site is not pay so that they can illegally download high res images. It's to *view*. If they want to download, you make it low res so they can have it ON THEIR PC. Then the image is not compromised and still looks awesome. But not for reproduction. At least that's what I understood in the beginning of doing such things. It's only changed with the world of pirating and I see absolutely nothing "hostile" in making it so that such things can not be downloaded at high res. If they want hardcopy, the price of the "Pay" site would have to go up. It would almost be equivalent to buying a hardcopy portfolio.
Those who don't appreciate your pov...shrug. Those who pirate, they get their rocks off in their own little world power trips, and pretty much have no understanding about the morals of such things. It's gonna happen with the monkeys as you know. Not much you can do about it except what you ARE doing. And *I* for one, appreciate it.
Tashta
----- Original Message -----
From: Take a wild, friggin guess
To: SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 1:29 PM
Subject: [SkunkworksAMA] Re: Just an idea I've been tossing around...
--- In SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com, "Chris Sawyer" <fz1rider_at_...>
wrote:
>
> But what I'm getting at guys, is disabling downloads is hostile to
the
> customer.
>
> It's like buying a motorcycle, and then the salesman saying "No!
You can't
> take it out of the dealership."
>
> If an artist wanted to truly protect their art, they would make it
as easy
> and friendly to pay for and use as they could. And if you frustrate
the
> customer, guess what? You have likely made a pirate out of a former
> customer.
But therein, I think, lies the problem. If you make something
easily accessible, there are going to be those who will not hesitate
to take and/or redistribute the items. If the art is on a paysite,
someone will join up and snag what they can, let their membership
expire, and post the site rip wherever they can, either to piss off
the artist (who they believe should not charge for their work) or to
get pats on the back from fellow pirates.
The whole mentality of "I don't think it's valuable, so I shouldn't
have to pay for it" is utter bullshit. There are lots of things in
this world which I think have no value, but I still believe the
person producing those items should be reimbursed for their time and
effort. Opinions mean nothing when it comes to making a purchase,
aside from whether or not one is going to buy it. If an item is
marked as costing 20 bucks, but you only think it's worth 5, guess
what? You don't get the item! Too many folks online seem to think
their fapping material should be free, frequently updated and
effortless to obtain. If I treated my mainstream artwork like that,
I never would have had the money to pay off 100% of my debts or be
able to buy another motorcycle.
I suppose there really is no way to prevent someone from ripping
off an artist's work. What's troublesome, though, is that those
doing the deed see nothing wrong with their behavior. That, I do
believe, needs some correcting. It's onvious that most of those
individuals' parents did a poor (or non-existent) job of raising them
or instilling any values into their offspring. This is especially
sad because, once these nimrods get out in the real world and try to
pull that crap, they'll discover it either won't work, or they'll end
up getting an ass-beating for it. Personally, I'm all for the ass-
beating (I believe thieves should have hands and/or fingers removed
after stealing something. This way, the crippled crook will be the
cause of his own disfigurement, and everyone esle will know that
person is a thief).
But we're still at square one. The only workable solution that I
can see at this point, is to continue producing the art on the "copy-
proof" paper, and/or release a CD of the images at a low resolution,
unsuitable for printing. Unfortunately, both of these options are
going to piss folks off.
And again, we're back at square one. What to do, what to do...
--JMH
Received on Thu May 01 2008 - 14:02:13 CDT