What to Do When Someone Steals Your Art
Short answer: Screenshot the post or listing and save its URL. Then file a copyright report with the platform, or a DMCA notice to the website or its host. If your art is being sold, use the marketplace's intellectual property report. You don't need to register your art first, and you don't need a lawyer to send a takedown.
Finding your artwork reposted without credit, or printed on someone else's merch, is infuriating. The good news is that copyright is on your side from the moment you create a piece, and every major platform has a process for removing stolen work. Here is what to do, in order.
Step 1: Save the evidence
People who steal art often delete and repost when they're called out. Before you comment or report, save:
- The URL of the post, listing, or page
- A screenshot showing the account or shop name and the date
- Proof the piece is yours: your original file, work-in-progress shots, or your first post of it
Step 2: Confirm it's really infringement
Copyright protects your actual artwork, not a style, an idea, or a common subject. A direct copy, a trace, or your piece with a filter on it is infringement. Another artist drawing the same character in a similar style usually isn't.
This matters because a DMCA notice includes a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the use is infringing. File for clear copies.
Step 3: Report it in the right place
- Social platforms: Instagram, TikTok, X, and Reddit each have a copyright report form. On Pinterest, you can ask for every identical copy of an image to be removed at once; see our Pinterest guide.
- Marketplaces and print-on-demand: Etsy uses its Reporting Portal, and Redbubble has a notice and takedown process. See the Etsy and Redbubble guides.
- Websites and blogs: send a DMCA notice to the site. If it ignores you, send it to the hosting provider. Our free DMCA notice generator builds one in your browser.
- Google: Google removes infringing pages and images from search results, which cuts off most of the traffic even when the site stays up.
Step 4: Watch for it coming back
Stolen art rarely appears once. The same piece shows up on another repost account, another print shop, another wallpaper site. One search finds today's copies; it won't find next month's.
Proprias runs visual matching on your artwork every day across Google, image results, X, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, and the open web, saves evidence for each confirmed match, and prepares the takedown. On Defend and VIP we send it for you. See art theft protection for artists.
What not to do
- Don't rely on call-out posts alone. They spread the stolen image further and don't remove anything.
- Don't file against work that only resembles yours in style. It can be countered and weakens later reports.
- Don't buy the stolen product to "prove" it. A screenshot of the listing is enough.
FAQs
Do I need to register my art to file a takedown?
No. In the US, copyright exists from the moment you create the work, and you can send DMCA notices without registering. Registration matters if you want to sue.
Someone credited me. Is it still theft?
If you didn't give permission, yes. Credit isn't a license. Whether you act on it is your call; some artists leave credited reposts that link back to them.
What if they file a counter-notice?
A platform can restore the content after a valid counter-notice unless you start legal action within the legal window. At that point, talk to a lawyer about whether it's worth pursuing.