A very scarey thought....

[gypsycaine at yahoo.com]

NOTICE!!!! PicSearch

I noticed that a company called Picsearch had spidered my site with a 
picture stealing robot. I checked out the site, and I was shocked to 
see so many graphics obviously taken from many of the tarot websites 
I know of. Today they had been busy attempting to steal mine. 
Once taken, these pictures are then made available to anyone who 
wants them. There is a handy search engine. If you search 
under 'tarot', it becomes painfully apparent that they have been very 
busy indeed. Many of these pics are company logos! 
I am aware that many of you spend hours and hours scanning tarot 
decks and creating graphics for your sites. I am also aware that many 
of you are artists with your works published on the web. 
For those of you who are sensitive to others using your scans and 
pics, please go to this website and make sure they aren't listed. I 
recognized many of the pictures there. 
If you do find your pictures, they offer a method of requesting 
removal. I am not sure if they follow through on requests or not. I 
just found this site today.
If you want to try avoid any further picture nabbing, the PicSearch 
website says to create a 'robot.txt' file and place it in your main 
web directory. 
They say it needs to include two lines:
User-agent: psbot
Disallow: /
Do not allow any line spaces between, above or below these two lines. 
This will stop the PicSearch robot from indexing your site.
If you would like more control over the other robots spidering your 
site, there are plenty of tutorials out on the web. Just search 
under 'create robot.txt'.
On the other hand... PicSearch does include a link back to the page 
they found the graphic on. If you are not sensitive to others using 
your graphics, it has been pointed out to me that this could be 
considered free additional advertising.
I thought some of you might like this information so you could at 
least make the choice for yourselves.
Blessings - Dawn

http://www.picsearch.com 


I copied this message because it was scary that anyone could have the 
pictures that you worked so hard on (esp. Sterling's and company!).  
In the mix is a huge batch of personal pictures, too.

I hope they haven't snagged anyone's artwork!

Dee