#And now bulky repetitive watermarks have the additional benefit of possibly showing up on AI generators if your work gets stolen there

[yukipri]

hi, i love your work and i know you have a lot of experience handling reposts, and i really need help.

i’m an artist who has their work reposted on facebook. i filed two dmca reports with links to the original posts on tumblr and twitter and to the post im reporting, but facebook denied both of them. both for the reason that they couldn’t be certain i was the rights owner.

in the first report i filed, i didn’t put the address in the correct format so i thought that was the problem. the second one, i don’t know what i did wrong.

do i have to use my real house address? the one i provided is the workplace of a family member. do i make “name of rights owner” my full name? i put my username minus the underscore both times i filed. i sign my works like this and it’s visible on the artwork (username minus underscore). do i put back the underscore to make it match my twitter name? my tumblr varies slightly. do i make it match tumblr instead? is there a specific thing i need to write in the “please provide any additional information…” box? do i need a facebook art account to report the post? or is it not working because it’s fanart? i know of artists who were able to get their fanart taken down on facebook so is where i live the issue? i’m really sorry for all the questions. i just don’t know what to do.

Hey there, I am so incredibly sorry this has happened to you. I'll do my best to help.

I'm not sure if my advice is the "best," and if there are legal professionals here who can provide better advice, definitely listen to them! But here's what I have done, with success having DMCA takedowns go through, including on Facebook:

1) I have always used my full legal name, sometimes with a parentheses handlename (tumblr user YukiPri, and/or Twitter user YukiPri_Art, depending on the platform) afterwards. When adding your handle, it should be formatted exactly the way it is to find your various socials, as that is likely part of the verification process. If you have slightly different handles on different platforms, I recommend doing what I did in the example and specifying "Tumblr user XXX" etc for each one. I do believe they still require your full legal name, and you should make very clear which parts of the name field is your legal name, and which parts are social media handles.

2) I have always used my full home address. I completely understand how deeply uncomfortable this is, and I share that discomfort and I am so sorry that you've been put in a situation where you have to experience. I understand the fear of doxxing. But I believe this is also necessary for legal reasons.

I'm not sure if a family member can consent to have their full name/address used in your place, perhaps as a "representative." But I feel like that makes things more complicated, so I've never used it and have always filled out my full info. If anyone with professional legal experience has different advice, I am all ears.

3) You do not need a facebook account, though sometimes it unfortunately is helpful, especially if the post is in a locked account. Either way, you need the link to the EXACT link with the infringing work.

4) Likewise, you need to provide the EXACT link to the work that was infringed, preferably that matches your watermark, since it appears you use one.

From the info you've given me, the only thing I can think of is that they were not able to match your legal name to the address you provided, and therefore cannot verify that you're a real person. I could be wrong. It's stressful, but at the same time I'm glad they have a process in place for making sure not anyone can file DMCA—imagine the chaos and evil people could do if anyone could claim anything was theirs!

It's a horrible and incredibly stressful process to file DMCA claims, and I am so frustrated that we artists have to feel this immense stress to reclaim our stolen work instead of people simply respecting that they have the privilege of viewing our work for free.

I really, REALLY hope this helps you, Anon. Please be assured that Facebook HAS removed my art for me before via DMCA (though sometimes it's taken a while), and I really hope the above works for you.

In addition, while I hate that you have to do more to protect yourself and your work, please consider the following in the future, if you haven't already:

-Add your full url/handle, not just signature to your watermark. I know it's ugly, i HATE having large watermarks, but my watermark has evolved into this for a reason:

My watermark, shockingly enough, isn't actually for people who have stolen my work, or the few people who might see my stolen work who might decide to follow it back to my socials. I mean, that'd be nice, but I know how rarely that happens.

My watermark is designed more so that it's easy for social media staff to verify that my work is my own when I file a DMCA. I want it to be as easy as possible for them to look at my art and for them to say yup, this is definitely by YukiPri_Art @ Twitter and YukiPri @ Tumblr!

Also use simple, legible fonts. I know it can be ugly, so I do try to color them all or choose different fonts to match the work in question. But again, the main point of this watermark to me is so that staff can read it quickly. I want their job to be as easy as possible.

-I also explicitly state "Do Not Repost" on my artwork itself. I have heard "Oh but I didn't know," too many times, dozens, no hundreds of times, even if it's on the post itself, even if it's in my bio. None of that means anything anyway once someone reposts it. But if I stamp "DO NOT REPOST" onto the art itself, there is no denying that the thief reposted with full awareness that they are stealing, and it is a sign to EVERYONE that they did that. More often than not, people have come to me to tell me about my stolen work so I can file a DMCA because of this line.

-Place your watermark somewhere hard to crop out. If it's near an edge, anywhere that you can square marquee and crop without chopping off essential parts of your art, people will crop. I absolutely despise that I have to do this to my art, but placing it near the center, close to the face/body so that cropping it out would mean chopping most of the image and therefore making it unattractive, usually will discourage the thief from editing it out. After all, art thieves are at heart lazy and do not want to do work for attention.

-In that same line, if your art has relatively flat colors, consider adding a bit of a gradient or pattern/texture, at least to the part with the watermark. Or, simply place your watermark in an area with multiple colors/complex lineart (yeah I know, I hate covering up those parts too). This is also so that a thief at least willing to open photoshop to attempt to erase your watermark will have a more difficult time. If it's too much of a pain, they usually won't bother.

I hope this info was helpful, and again i truly hope you get your case resolved, and that you never have to experience this again!!

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