Nail art theft - it's a big deal!

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a long time, and is in my opinion, the most important post on my entire blog.

Nail art theft. Pretty much every nail artist has experienced it at some point. It's when someone else takes your photo of your nails and posts it somewhere else without crediting you. And oh, how it makes us nail artists angry. I've had people tell me to just "deal with it," been ignored and others I know have been sworn at and blocked. But no. I will not, and we will not "just get over it". 

This post will hopefully help others understand where we're coming from. Many culprits are naive teenage girls, who are just after 'likes' and easy popularity, and don't know what they're doing is illegal in most countries. They're not doing it maliciously, but they need to know that what they're doing is wrong.

There are different levels of theft, and the way I see it, these are:

1. Taking the photo and posting it somewhere without crediting the owner. 

This can be anywhere - on Facebook, Pinterest, a blog, Tumblr, Instagram and many more.

Crediting provides a way for viewers to find the original artist; you can credit simply by leaving their blog link or tagging them. It's a minimal amount of effort on your part, but makes a big difference to nail artists. If everyone did this, there would be no need for watermarks.

Example: Posting this photo without also posting this page's URL.

2. Taking the photo, posting it and editing/cropping out the watermark. 

This is bad, really bad. This counts as malicious, straight away. If the victim or their blogging friends find this, they're not going to be nice. It means that no one can  find the original artist, which is just silly. If someone likes one of their nail art designs, they will definitely like more of them! It's also a really disrespectful thing to do to the nail artist; they spent a long time painting their nails, photographing them, watermarking and then posting them, only to have someone stop them from getting credit. One of the worst pages I've seen for doing this is below. I'll talk about this particular page in more detail soon, but here are my horse nails with the watermark blurred out.

3. Taking the photo, editing out the watermark and replacing it with their own. 

Replacing someone's watermark with your own is the lowest form of nail art theft. I feel it needs no more explanation than that. This is becoming disappointingly common with facebook pages. These girls google "nail art" or something similar, copy all of the pictures and then feel that because they made the effort to do a google search, they have the right to splash their watermark all over them. Wrong on so many levels!! One of the craziest messages I've ever gotten on my facebook page was a girl who wanted me to advertise her page. Her page was full of stolen and re-watermarked pictures! Here's one below, originally done by A Girl with some Clothes. I've removed the watermark this page added - I don't want her gaining any followers from this! She doesn't seem to replace watermarks anymore at least, but she still posts uncredited pictures.

Here's the conversation I had with her - I thought it was so entertaining and ridiculous I just had to save it!

She honestly seemed to think she deserved all the credit because she had done a google search or two. Crazy. In saying that, I'm sure she's a lovely person in real life, just not very educated on copyright laws. Or my country, haha. New Zealand is a very friendly place, thank you very much!

4. Taking a picture and posting it somewhere, claiming that you did the nail art. 

I don't think I've experienced this myself yet, but others have. Just today on instagram a nail girl called nailsbyhayleyb had another instagram user take her picture. The original didn't have a watermark, so the thief added one on and swore and declared it was her own work. It's ridiculous! Fingers and nail sizes are remarkably distinct, and you could easily tell that the nails were done by the first girl! Other people have had their nail art entered into competitions, and been harassed and bullied when they spoke up about it.

Here's a thought.

Some wonderful, selfless people may do nail art and purposely not watermark it, leaving it free for the world to use. That's great and all, and I'd love to show you their blogs or instagr- OH WAIT, no one knows who they are. See? Sure, their pictures may be famous, but they're unheard of. They're lost in the big wide world of cyberspace.

What affect does nail art theft have on bloggers?

Massive loss of exposure, of followers, of pageviews, profits, a massive loss of everything. At the time of writing this, I desperately need a (new) job. I work 8 hours a week, and that's all I have to survive off. Until I get a job, we're borrowing money while my husband works two part time jobs AND studies. It's a fairly reasonable assumption that I wouldn't have this problem if everyone had always credited me. I would be earning enough off my blog to not have to seek out more work. Instead, I've thus far earned a grand total of $30 from google adsense. "So what?" you may think, "not my problem!" 

This affects fans of nail art too. I wonder how many nail artists have given up on their blogs, sick of fighting a seemingly losing battle? Or have become too busy with their jobs to dedicate enough time to nail art?

 Working 40 hours a week doesn't leave much time to do intricate designs on your nails, and when your pageviews are dropping while thievery keeps going up - what's the point? Especially when it comes to time-consuming posts like tutorials.

However, I'm not stopping, not at this stage. I love it too much! I'll just see how it goes once I get a job. I imagine I'll have to cut down my postings to once or twice a week.

My story

When my blog was only a couple of months old and pretty much unknown, a picture was stolen. They were my first converse chucks design, which you can find here. A Facebook page took an unwatermarked version of it from we heart it - I didn't know about watermarking when I first started, and you can't delete photos off that site. This picture got over 70,000 likes. Their followers doubled (if not tripled), as it swept across facebook. Meanwhile, my little blog was being ignored. As the photo was unwatermarked, I couldn't really blame them for not crediting me, as they wouldn't have known who I was. I tried to talk to them, asking for credit - I was ignored many times and when they finally replied, they were defensive, rude, and refused to acknowledge me as the source. Bad idea. I reported the photo to facebook and it was removed within a day - facebook is excellent at that! Six months later, this page, which had about 300,000 likes, no longer exists. Once a page gets enough reports, Facebook notices it and checks it out properly (this page was full of stolen pictures!) That's where nail art theft will lead you, it's just a matter of time.

Since then my pictures have been stolen more times than I can count, but only one other page has really infuriated me. There's a page on Facebook called Unas Decoradas - spanish for decorated nails (essentially, nail art). 

Yeah, I can't spell thieves, oops!

They have over a million 'fans' - and they have posted thousands of uncredited nail art pictures. Even worse? They know it's wrong, and they keep doing it. I've caught them out several times before, but they just keep on posting! Once they even tried to give me credit - only 'tried' because they actually credited me with someone else's picture *rolls eyes.* A month or two after the first time I called them out on it (and I thought they were doing things legally now), they did this to me. The original picture can be found here.

They actually edited EVERYTHING I had written on it out! This would have taken 20x longer than simply crediting me!

And again, to Wacky Laki. These are just two examples, too, there were many more.

The page that posts these stolen, altered pictures is called ~uñas decoradas~ and is still on facebook - here. Want to help stop the thievery? Report them. Tell the original nail artists. Report them some more. Make facebook notice! If I had money, I would actually take legal action against them.

How can you use a picture but not get in trouble?

Credit them! Easy. If there is no watermark it is definitely harder, but you can normally still find it by using google's search by image. That thing is amazing. Most pictures, however, have watermarks. Mine is Nailed it NZ, obviously, and that's my name on most social media sites. If you're posting a picture of mine on instagram, tag me @naileditnz. On facebook, type @Nailed it NZ to tag me (you may have to like my page first). Anywhere else, just post the link to my page (nailedit1.blogspot.co.nz) and say they were done by Nailed it NZ. Same goes for every other artist - see a name? Put it down. It's not hard, and a lot better than having a bunch of nail artists hating on you and getting your page eventually shut down.

How can nail artists avoid nail art theft?

The easiest way is to have a big, obnoxious watermark across your picture. Most people don't like that though, and for good reason. My current watermarks look like this - one or two small ones right next to the nails and a bigger one on the edge of the picture. Picasa's a good, free program you can use to watermark. 

Make sure they can't be cropped out. In this picture, if you tried to crop my big watermark you'd lose half my pinky. That just looks suspicious - whenever I see only part of a nail design I instantly look for the watermark, thinking that it's been stolen. 

Don't put up with nail art theft. Block them, report them, tell them off. Try to be nice though - as I mentioned earlier, most of them are just kids who don't know what they're doing. If they refuse to credit you, then you can be tough. If they realise what they were doing was wrong and promise not to anymore, great! Keep an eye on them for a while though. Most importantly, thank those that DO give you credit. I try to, but don't always get to do it for every one (either because I'm too busy or the account was private). Let them know that it's appreciated, and if you like their blog/account/whatever, follow them. 

If you'd like me to add anything to this, email me - you can find my email address in the contact me tab. Please share this page with other nail artists and their followers, so awareness can be raised.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave your experiences with nail art theft in the comments!