An easy way to find incidents of thefts is to do an Image Search on Google Images and it will look for those images that match visually. Anyways this is very sad.

Ooh, Back Alley Ribbon and Stealing Fae's Petals! Amazing work.

Tin Eye is another reverse image search engine.

Unfortunately, there is now a generation or two that not only thinks it is alright to use anything found on the internet but that gets incensed when people suggest it is "ammoral"---if not immoral. It detracts from potential income of the creators of the work or the intellectual property owners.

It is of course hard to feel sorry for large print and music publishers, recording artists, movie studios, rich actors, name brand writiers and so forth I suppose. But there are an awful lot of little people that are paid for their work in getting things to market too. Like the caterers for movie sets, the janitors in recording studios, the printers and binders of books, the recording studio staff, and the list goes on.

And stealing intellectural property is stealing pure and simple. It destroys motivation and incentive for releasing anything one wants to keep protected on the web for review, showcasing and criticsim. Please think twice before using something that may be protected and remember that copyrights accrue to the creator on creation whether registered or not. You cannot legally just use stuff unless you know for sure it is public domain or that permission has been granted. To be safe, assume it is not and is protected.

And play fair. Use a reverse search engine and see if you can source what you want to use. Offer the creator something for use in your project. Most are not greedy and you will better knowing you did right by the person or persons.

Psssst! Don't tell the thief's that you can flip image horizontal to increase your privacy.

bluechaotica wrote:

An easy way to find incidents of thefts is to do an Image Search on Google Images and it will look for those images that match visually. Anyways this is very sad.

If you do not know about it SAFEWEB.NORTON.COM is a great free service that tries to rate the safety, security and annoyance factors of websites. It will also kick back the country in which a site is hosted----something to think about when streaming FREE movies, music, etc. (and bugs and malware at the same time) from Russia and such. Or for exploring a foreign site in a country with questionable internet practices for any reason. It also encourages user reviews about sites and one supposes they are taken into consideration in Norton rating a site. If nothing else, they will be available to others.

To use it, just load it first and then paste or type the website address you want to check out in the search box.

Google just recently announced yesterday it has developed an algorithm to move sites that are known to sell or distribute intellectual property, illegally, way, way down in search listings. The hope is they will get so little attention they will vaporize. There is not really a lot more to be done for hard to reach foreign and clandestine sites.

Hosting companies are becoming a bit more diligent about shutting sites down and internet providers are threatening to close accounts of those in the practice of downloading, streaming and sharing intellectual property without permission or meeting conditions of the copyright or performance right holder.