I have mixed feelings about the "stolen ferret buttons".  I, myself have
gone to web sites before and right clicked on pictures of art work or
cute pics of animals, etc.. and saved them to my computer for my own
personal enjoyment.  I have a ton of pictures of domestic skunks, ferrets
and other animals saved on my desktop that I downloaded from various web
sites because I just thought they were so cute.  I don't see how that's
wrong.
 
As long as someone is not stealing your art work or photos and selling
them to make a profit, then why would it bother you for people to save
your images or display them on another web site?  The problem is it is
very easy to save most of these things on the internet just by right
clicking on the image and saving it.  It would be virtually impossible
for you to find out where every single image went and go after those
people in court.  It would end up costing you more money than the artwork
is even worth and countless hours of your time.
 
If someone was stealing my copyrighted material and selling it for
profit, then that would be a lagitament reason to be upset.  But if
someone just wanted to display my artwork or save it to look at I
would feel honored that people appreciated my work so much. :)
 
Maybe in the long run it will help you by getting your name out there and
people may want to purchase other things from you in the future.  Now
it's another thing entirely if someone is trying to take credit for your
work, but you didn't say that that occured in this case.  About the only
thing you can do to prevent it is to not display images on the internet
that you are trying to market.  Aside from that there is probably little
you can do to stop people from downloading things.  That's what people do
on the internet after all.
 
[Moderator's note: Perhaps that's what some people do, but many of you
probably have noticed that neither CUNY nor myself are keen on copyright
infringement.  Copyrighted material does not appear here without prior
permission, nor would I condone using copyrighted material without prior
permission.  This isn't the forum to talk about the many aspects of this
issue and I don't want to get carried away discussing it here.  BUT, if
anything, please note it IS illegal, regardless of anyones' personal
feelings and justifications.  I won't preach further -- people may not
make decisions based upon MY observations but I do feel the obligation to
point out the legality (or lack of!) of using material without permission
since that happens on some lists and I try to keep it from hapenning
here.  (No, I'm not directing this at Blossum Flower -- it's just a good
place to put this note.)  BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 4116]