The tracker on my web site shows that around 25% of visits are from US Commercial sites — which makes me wonder sometimes what is going on. The only indication of American commercial interest has been the occasional e-mail offering me web services of various kinds. Fellow artists sometimes ask, 'Am I not worried that images of my paintings can be copied?' Well that is a risk you have to take if you publish on the web and there is really no way of checking if anybody is making commercial use of any of my images.
On balance I guess that the benefits of reaching out to a world-wide community to promote my work and share ideas outweighs the worry that somebody somewhere might be making money from copying my images. Unlike conventional publishing my experience of the web has so far been constructive and not soured by feelings of exploitation. I have been surprised by how willing people are to share their experience and expertise through support and discussion forums. Everybody who builds web sites will check out other people's source code from time to time. I was amused to read a comment in the HTML of one site I looked at. The author placed a comment between the tags, 'Now you're here you can help yourself to my source code but remember the words and images are mine!' A nice touch that and I hope it will be generally observed.
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