i've been here long enough that even the artists ask if the watermark is on there when its printed. many customers have a hard time imagining what it would look like in their house. the logo in the way may be the deal breaker.
people that want it will take it. simple as that. its a small image, yes it can be used for other things. it takes a minute or less to remove it depending on the background. its not much of a step. the stock sites with the writing all over - that takes a while or is impossible. but that would uglify it too much.
now i suppose if he used some kind of flash or java so the image was only on the faa screen, that would curb the downloading, i thought of this method, but then google images wouldn't be able to go to us so easily and i have had hits from there.
i've seen customers come in here asking about the mark as well. i don't think it helps sales, and i don't think it prevents stealing. the most it does is, it allow people to know it came from here - but no who belongs to it. in a defense if amazon is emailed, the person who sent your image up there, could easily make a FAA account here and put those images on their site, making it look like their images.
selling the digital image on etsy, without the lawyers of a stock site is tricky, because many buyers may think they now own the image. and those people may put your full size image online thinking its ok. i've seen it over and over. they take a full size graphic and shrink it down in html, but its still full size. and that's even worse.
i sell my things as art only, to be printed, the actual graphic can be used for anything if your not using a contract. and it could even be used to sell against you... hopefully your using some form of a contract. i didn't think etsy was set up like that.
---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com
