Let me tell you a few things I'm really struggling with right now. Been holding off posting this because anyone I contact right now may think this is about them. This is to help understand why third party reporting is detrimental, watermarking/Signing your art is good, and that you should let the Original Artist handle everything privately concerning an art thief.

1. DO NOT post a callout journal and cause mass spammage. please. There are just so many reason not to.
   The first is that if an art thief is confronted, and you try to report them, and they're a well known dickbag who keeps posting even knowing what they are doing is wrong, they can just delete the art before your report goes through. I have been trying to contact original artists FOR WEEKS and they keep posting to this guy publicly. He's NOT going to get a proper report on him if you guys keep advertising you know what art is not his. He posts art not his, I tell artist, Artist comments on his post or writes a public journal, Artist reports him, he deletes the post before the report is looked at because he knows OG artist knows and probably reported him. I've been watching this happen for two weeks of this endless cycle.

Ah also, as the OG artist, you are free to inform someone that copyright exists. There are a lot of people who often don't understand copyright because it is never taught unti you join an art community, and it can be a really helpful experience for new users to be talked to. However, in the event that the user is in fact dickbag#1 who already knows he's going against copyright/claiming art as their own/impersonating/ etc, don't even bother.

On a different note involving third parties, you (the third party who isn't the artist) might be mistaken that the person you are looking at is an art thief. Contact the original Artist first, don't post a callout journal or write nasty things on profiles. I have had the displeasure of having to scold a LOT of people for wrongly reporting and harrassing someone they thought stole art from me. They didn't, just forgot the credit. That mass of mobs frikken scarred that poor fella from being online even though they did absoluetly nothing wrong. Don't be a dickbag asshole. Harrasment still makes you a trash person no matter who it is. Contact the Original artist and let them handle it and determine if they are an actual thief.

2. If you are NOT the Original artist, FIND THEM. Do NOT contact or report the thief. You are a Third party, and you do not have the authority to file a DMCA. Unless you are given exclusive representative permission to file a report, let the Original artist handle it. Art sites DO NOT act on third party reports (as a precausion for reasons like in my previous paragraph). Don't clog up the Report Ticket Queue for the poor original artist.

3. WATERMARK or SIGN your art. Holy hell, let me tell you this is the most helpful thing you can do for yourself as an artist. I have had to rely on Signatures to find artists on so many occassions. Reverse Image Search does not always work, and a legible username watermark is your LAST ray of hope in that someone will be able to find and contact you. Right now, I have sat through hours of time trying to find a small handful of artists because they either did not sign/watermark their art legibly or didn't signature at all. MAKE SURE it can be read. Some of these squiggles are rediculous.

You folks who already sign their art are time savers.

4. Try to Note the original Artist privately. Again, making sure a suspected art thief does not get publicity is very important. If you can note/PM the artist, do it. I have an account literally everywhere for this reason.

5. Just a small tidbit, Google has a reverse image search. If you are curious to see where your art is posted onine all over the place, on chrome you can rightclick your art and reverse search or On Google images, you can upload the file. It struggles with Backgroundless artwork, but if you add a white background to a transparent image it can search easier. Google Images does not pick up Pixiv artists, and I recomend using https://tineye.com/ Tineye instead if you think the art is from pixiv.

Art sites in general (DA, FA, Newgrounds, Tumblr, Weasyl, Twitter, etc) are links you want to focus on finding. Pintrest, Facebook, and amino are often reposts. Sometimes Pintrerst posts have credit links but most of them don't. Twitter and Tumblr are sometimes reposts but have a high chance of having given credit to original artists, so they can be reliable for finding the original content creator. Many Pixiv Artists also have a Twitter, so you might be able to find and contact the artist over there instead.

So yeah, I've been sitting around the past two weeks contacting artist after artist watching the same loop happen again where the thief subverts a trouble ticket by already knowing when the OG artists are reporting them. So I'm writing this little helpful tidbit to help other folks avoid this situation in the future. Dear watchers, if you take anything out of this, at least watermark your art. My gosh if anything, watermark or sign your art. At least do that. save yourself and the person who is trying to find you TuT