I want to post my art online, what do I need to do to protect my art. It's a jungle out there!?

Mainly I would like to use me art as a back ground on Myspace and maybe have a gallery if people like what I do. I had some of my art scanned into PDF files and have been tweeking how they look. I guess I have to converted them into HTML document's to use them (at least that's what I gather from Pimp my Profile.com). I just want to know if I can keep my art protected if I choose to do this or is it best to not post my art. I looked on a legal website and they were carrying on about registering my art with the United States Library of Congress and Copyright office. Is all that worth it or is there a "easy button" for this process or should I just throw all caution to the wind and post the stuff? I don't know what to do! Please help!

I want to post my art online, what do I need to do to protect my art. It's a jungle out there!?
Actually, you need to convert your images into either JPEG, PNG or GIF format to post them online. Some websites only let you upload JPEGs, however.





As for the whole US Copyright Office thing, it's not worth it. See, your art is legally copyrighted to you and you alone, as you -are- the one who drew it, and you own the original copies of everything. You have as just much chance to win over an art thief in court with the original copy and a registered copyright as you do with just the original copy alone, so don't bother.





I completely understand your concern about online art thieves, though. The thing is, once your image is online, anyone can save it to their computer, print it out, whatever - if you have a problem with people doing this while still giving proper credit to you, you probably shouldn't post it.





If you don't mind that though, and would like other people to see your work, but are worried about people yanking them and doing things with them online, here's a simple solution: Make a watermark. Sign all of your work that you don't want stolen, and make the signatures obvious. If you can incorporate your signature into the design of the image so that it's impossible to remove, that's always best -- however, if you can't do that, you can always use an image editing program such as Photoshop to place a semi-transparent "watermark" signature over a part of the image.





These methods have always worked for me, and I haven't had any problems with art thieves thus far - and that isn't because I'm a terrible artist not worth stealing from, or something. The artists that have the most trouble with art thieves usually seem to be fanartists of popular anime and manga series, so if that's not you, you shouldn't worry too much about it - just always remember to sign everything you post online!





Hope this helps! :)
Reply:If you are looking to sell the backgrounds, you could try selling them as stock photography. If you do this, they are protected not only by intelectual copywright laws but also by the company's contracts. If you decide not to do this, you still are covered by inelectual copywright laws. However, good luck enforcing them if you post the photos online