Big Watermark

Perfectly understandable Artur, and I quite agree with you that you need to protect your work from these parasites... more importantly you have to protect the rights of your customers.
Good luck with the sales

In total agreement with you. But I have to say If I experienced what you did and discovered a rip of my work anywhere, I would shut it down on all sites. No debating, nothing. I would be gone, along with all my work. I have always said that I will never understand the motives or sense of accomplishment from stealing a work and using it as one´s own. It will never make sense to me.

I am sharing my work for free for 6 years now, the most of my wallpapers for example have been ripped from too many different rippers. Still my work in daily basis is ripped, from here , my site, Wincustomize, Deviantart and many other sites of the skinning community.
I am having at least 10-15 emails every week, from people who want to inform me about the rips.
What can I do? Stop sharing?
No, of course not!
We share our works for FREE here and we take the risk to be ripped, this is a fact in the skinning community that we can´t change it.
If someone doesn´t want to be ripped, my suggestion is not to share his/her work in the skinning community, but only in professional sites for sale.
Big signatures or watermarks are not a solution, who cares to use a photo or a wallpaper with a huge watermark.
I wonder which is the purpose of a photo or a wallpaper upload with a huge watermark on them?

This is just my opinion my friend Artur

And you´re free to give your opinion Nikos. This is my way of dealing with this matter.

Sorry to inform you Artur but I have NEVER downloaded any photography... Size is my factor.... BUT I have never missed one of yours or any other photography submitted.... I ENJOY your work, gives me ideas, And I enjoy the beauty. I can see thru the water mark. I enjoy staring at it just the same,thinking!

And you´re free to give your opinion Nikos. This is my way of dealing with this matter.

Fred: In agreement with you, the problem is that I have my own site, which is the primary place where I show my work and the portuguese ripper who made that, could have taken the capture from there, to exhibit it on another photography sharing site - in this case a portuguese site - after altering the original and resized it to meet that site criteria - less than 800x600 pixels in size. I am not giving up from my site and to show my work, because "rippers". So the big WM is my only defense against that and also to protect the "exclusivity" of my buyers, as they are buying originals and paying for originals. Bro Sed, I am not against the use of images, if the author does know that people do use them. One thing is to use, another thing is to abuse and to publish something that do not belong to the person. And as you said, people can see through the WM. Nikos, again, I respect your opinion but and again, this is my way to deal with the matter. I have the feeling - or I am convinced - that I was not ripped here at SB , but probably in my own site, by a dirty portuguese guy. That´s for sure. The guy is portuguese. One of my oldest friends here in Porto,was constantly saying to me: " watch out Artur, I know guys that go often to your site and they would have no problem at all, to steal some of your "Porto" images to publish them in another site or even to make postcards from them". I have never gave attention to him Unfortunately he was right. And now he is happy with my decision but said to me " you were very stupid and stubborn ". And again...he was right.