How do you protect your art and rights as an artist or photographer in an age where paintbrushes are giving way to pen tablets? This article offers a comprehensive rundown of the actions you can take to secure your data and intellectual property. Inform yourself to stay on top of all the challenges the modern digital artist has to overcome.

Back-Up Your Art and Assets

Part of being a successful digital artist is having access to the right tools. Depending on what you create, you've likely amassed a trove of brushes, stock images, 3D models, or textures. Some artists spend years carefully collecting and managing terabytes' worth of such assets. When you have a library that large, the last thing you want is to lose it due to a faulty hard drive.

That's why you should back up your asset libraries as well as all your artwork and associated project files. Cloud storage is a good idea since your data receives high-level encryption, and you get as much space as you're willing to pay for. Keep another copy on a physical drive in case you ever want to cancel your cloud storage subscription or can't go online for some reason.

Secure Your Accounts

Everything from your subscription-based design software to email and social media requires an account these days. Securing them all is challenging yet crucial since losing them means losing access to your work, fans, and livelihood.

Checking whether your passwords are unique and complex enough to thwart hackers is the first thing you should do. They likely aren't, and it's unreasonable to expect any human to remember more than a handful. Get a secure password manager and save yourself from remembering all your logins while making them exponentially more secure.

A reliable and secure manager will also have a password generator so you can assign a new, impossible-to-crack password to any account. Replacing old passwords is also easy, as is storing any other sensitive information due to password managers' robust encryption. You can install their desktop and app versions on different devices and never lose access, either.

Two-factor authentication is another useful password manager feature. It adds a second protective layer by asking you to input a code whenever logging in from a new device or location. This prevents access if someone compromises your password, giving you time to change it and eliminate the threat.

Keep Your Software Updated

Hackers see any popular software or service as a potential gateway towards unsuspecting victims' data. Art industry behemoths like Adobe aren't an exception. Luckily, cybersecurity professionals who work for such companies are vigilant in identifying and addressing such issues as soon as possible.

You will only benefit from the latest features and security patches if you enable automatic updates. Your operating system and antivirus/antimalware software should update on their own, but check to be on the safe side. Ensure you have the latest versions of all the software and services you use to make art, too.

Permissions, Copyright, and DRM

We make digital art for others to appreciate, which puts its security at a disadvantage compared to other files. No matter what else you do, someone can always take a screenshot of your work and try to pass it off as their own. Even so, you have options.

Publishing some of your art under a Creative Commons license gives others permission to use it or parts of it for their projects. Ethical artists may ask for permission themselves, which you may grant if they disclose that your artwork served as their inspiration.

Of course, thieves won't bother to ask nicely, which is where other measures come in. Asserting your copyright does little in practice, but it can help protect your art against it being used in AI training models once the legislature concerning artificial intelligence and intellectual property becomes clear.

Using DRM tools is the most proactive step in combatting conventional art theft. Their purpose is to prevent unauthorized usage of your content. Some work by limiting the number of downloads and devices that store digital media. Others may prevent screengrabs and recording through third-party software.

Either way, only users who purchased (access to) the art can enjoy it without restrictions. While disliked by the public, DRM is a strong security measure that brings results.

Watch Where You Post

It's natural to want to grow your reputation as an artist or photographer by leveraging social networks that reach billions of people. On the other hand, you're running the risk of giving them the right to use your artwork or photography as they see fit merely by posting.

Familiarize yourself with each platform's terms of service before publishing your art there. Avoid any platforms whose policies allow for liberal use of any content users create and share on them. We realize that avoiding social media altogether is impossible. Still, you can tailor your content in a way that entices followers to continue exploring your art on your website.

AI Concerns

Artificial intelligence is profoundly impacting the digital art world. One could argue how it's empowering more people than ever to make their artistic visions a reality. However, it needs to train on data sets to do so. These contain countless images, music files, or 3D models obtained without the original artist's consent. The legality concerning AI appropriation is murky, and legislators have yet to catch up.

Artists have begun fighting fire with fire, though. Services that leverage AI to protect artists' rights are already emerging. Some embed complex watermarks into images. Others fight back by feeding the AI false information about the content, which causes their predictive models to become less accurate.

However, it's a bleeding-edge field with outcomes we can't begin to predict yet.

Conclusion

Protecting their intellectual property is paramount for anyone hoping to make a living through their artistic pursuits in the digital age. Doing so is becoming increasingly challenging, which is why we hope you'll take all the advice we provide to heart.

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