guys listen up. since it seems people are a little misinformed on the whole ideal of copyright laws.
it doesn't necessarily take, 'money' to get a copyright. and it doesn't necessarily take extensive work to obtain one. basically, anything derived by an artist, whether it be drawings, crafts, writings, etc, is INSTANTLY considered copyrighted from the moment of it's creation. henceforth why people add the (c) to any piece created. there is also a thing called a poor mans copyright. where you basically take any creation (the original), mail it to yourself, and
do not open it. which is considered a legal document in any court of law. also, there are dmc takedowns where material you do not wish used that you created can be removed from any sites they are on, since permission was not granted by yourself. on every other game but here (surprisingly this topic is being treated as lax as its been) that i play on, art theft is severely frowned upon and despised to a degree where it's taken pretty seriously. i can say for myself, even i've enforced my rights to the fullest extent when it comes to my art.
this may not be the case for everyone. but, there are those of us that wish to protect what we create. we are nice enough to share these wonderful creations with the world and we don't expect them to be taken away in pure malice. i have a creature called the nacknar, and if anyone tried to steal them, i will extract my rights. just because i wish to protect my work, doesn't mean that people who don't take it seriously should think i am being some rude jerk because i place the (c) label and demand it not being stolen. it is -my- creation and i don't want someone who didn't put the time, effort and determination into it's creation to claim they did.
i swear, if youlanda from furcadia saw this topic, she'd tear it up one side and down the other since she feels even stronger about protecting artwork then i do. i didn't think there was anyone this lax on cr laws. sheesh.
oh btw, why don't you guys point tess to this topic? she may not be happy to see that people aren't taking art theft and cr laws seriously. why do you think she put:
http://www.chickensmoothie.com across every pet? hmmm hmmm maybe she doesn't want
her templates stolen. they /ARE/ her creations and work. >.<