Well, quite frankly, I used to not care O_o. In 
fact, I remember some of my earliest webpages 
included cel images "stolen" from Hitoshi Doi's 
site, although I had no idea at the time what a 
cel was. Once I found out that these were pieces 
of art that he owned, I took the images down. And 
I have never used someone else's cel image on a 
page since.

Why? Well, I worked for the University of York 
(UK), while going to graduate school, as a web 
developer. I quickly found out that if we wanted 
to use pictures of manuscripts, paintings, 
artifcats, or anything else, I had to go through 
hours of paperwork and calls through the British 
Museum to get permission. This is because the 
British Museum owns those items, and although 
they are in a public museum, the images are not 
public domain. I feel the same is true with my 
cels. I own them, therefore I would like to know 
how they are being used and give my permission. I 
used to not care, and let people use the images 
as long as they asked me first. Then I started 
seeing my cels being auctioned off on Yahoo and 
eBay as a part of a scam operation, and I also 
found my cels in other personal "cel galleries" 
with the markings clearly showing so there wasn't 
any doubt that these were my cels stolen from my 
site.

It wasn't that bad when it was 10-20 sites, but 
when it became 100 or more (people stealing 
images from other sites... it grows like a 
disease) I got really fed up.

The only way to truly protect your cel images is 
simply not to have them available online. There 
are a lot of cool things you can do with 
Photoshop (rubber stamp tool in PS 6 for example) 
that EASILY get rid of watermarking and text that 
you put over images. So, if it's out there, 
prepare to see it stolen, changed, auctioned off, 
whatever.

If you want to show your larger images and don't 
want them stolen, just make sure you trust the 
person you are letting see the cels. I have made 
special cel galleries just for the private 
viewing of people who take the time to ask 
questions and get to know me, not just people who 
write me saying "I am taking all your images, 
deal with it" or e-mail me 20 times a day 
saying "I DEMAND YOU SELL ME YOUR CEL!!" <--- 
arrgh

So, call me a selfish b***** for not sharing my 
cels with everyone, but I really tried and it was 
a complete failure. I am very very tired of 
having to go out and hunt down people using my 
images without persission, so I just removed my 
images. In the end, because there are a few 
rotten people out there, everyone loses (the 
collector, the fans, and the buyers).

misa