What is WITH people not crediting artists?

[maressa]

A ton of the mermaid forums online (mainly Facebook) bother me to death. People post photo after photo of either real mermaids or of original paintings/drawings, without any credit at all to the artist- or even worse, put their OWN copyright on it since they added a quote or something over the picture. Who is to fault? The artist for not watermarking their work? The person who stole the photo? Not enough awareness about what it means to steal artwork?

How do we start fixing this as a community? It's wrong and it drives me crazy :thumbdown: /end rant

[Mermaid Saoirse]

I'm absolutely flabbergasted and frustrated when artists of any sort are not credited for their work! I just dealt with a case of this over on tumblr a few minutes ago and alerted an artist to one of their pieces being reposted and uncredited.
The best we can do is start from the bottom up in education. Sometimes new members might not understand the courtesy of properly crediting an artist. The best way to handle them is be polite at first and let them know, sometimes it's not even their intention to cause harm. More often than not they'll take it down or give proper credit.
If they are a repeat offender that has refused to listen to reason, then there's little way of stopping them short of outing their actions. If a group as a whole knows then it is very much impossible to pass one's work off as your own.

While the habit of miscrediting/not crediting artists has little chance of ever ending competely- we certainly can reduce it as a community! Being active and alerting original artists to the incident rather than taking matters into our own hands can often avoid heavy conflict/arguments. I've witnessed fights occur on the internet over who owns what/what credit is due to whom. I think with how good the Merfolk community is, we certainly have a shot at reducing the impact it can have. :)

[Spindrift]

Maybe people just don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if they're just kids who don't understand. They see things on Tumblr and Pinterest and never learned to cite things in school *rambles on about the good 'ol days*

Definitely still a problem though

[AniaR]

I HATE IT SO BAD AND REFUSE TO LIKE THEIR PAGES OR SHARE THEIR WORK AND THEY ALWAYS SPAM ME AND I TELL THEM FLAT OUT YOU DONT CREDIT PEOPLE OR LINK WHERE YOU GOT THEIR WORK YOU'RE LAME I AM SO ANGRY IMAGINE ME AS THE HULK MERMAID SCREAMING THIS AND SMASHING THINGS.

[mermaids-and-anchors]

I see a LOT of mermaids and mermen do this too. They'll post of a picture of a mermaid (even if it's not a real picture, like a drawing) and not credit. It's really bothers me. When I do it on my facebook I link the person's facebook page or website and give them full credit. And I get really irritated when I make gifs of mermaids and mermen and people repost it and then have an attitude when I tell them to remove it. I'm not asking people to remove it because it's my gif, I'm asking because I bet 99% of the time they don't even know who the mermaid or merman is and now their gif I made is out and they don't get any credit. >_> Crediting isn't hard - you literally just put a name down!