Hmmm... lets see what this is like how you put it... MINECRAFT FORUMS!!!!!!

i know what you mean i't got a lot worse since i joined a few months ago and although none of my skins have been stolen i've seen people posting friends skins and someone even made a whole range by editing rojats skin (but he must have retrived it from rojats account via one of these programs before i convinced rojat to post it as the date was earlier so we couldn't report)

Why do you feel the need to put emphasis on basically every word.

Stopping posting skins for fear of stolen work? Well, it is effective, but not what posting is designed for. Whenever I put something online to the public domain, I always take into consideration that it will be stolen, regardless of what I do.

The primary goal of putting something online with your name on it is basically for showing off your skills. With this you gain a reputation and a loyal following, which when at the appropriate level, can hinder the skin/texture thievery as people will instantly recognise your work (and may seek to destroy all those that attempt to take credit for it)

Now, even with the particular skins that appear to have little effort applied, well, take it from the submitters perspective. Are they a budding artist, just starting out to learn skills? Are they just a bored person chucking out a 5-10 min skin just for laughs? You won't know unless you ask them.

We all put something out for whatever reason, but the ones that stand out are the ones that go beyond the work on the skin, to rise above the sea of mediocre. Such things include promotions and advertising wherever you can. Visibility is key for any competing product in the market.

As for a story, I don't think I've seen any of my skins duplicated here, but while I was on the YouAreMinecraft server, making one of my skins in statue form, I did come across my very same skin that had been remixed. Wasn't a bad job, but you could tell the differences. I don't know who did it or where it was submitted and I was never able to get in touch with the guy that was wearing it, but I don't particularly care anyway lol

Not that I don't care for my work, I'm just a realist.

Totally agree, my friend and I posted a Link skin that we slightly edited... (with the actual owner's permission) and within a couple days we found the exact same skin ALL over the place... it made me feel like trash since not even one person commented on our post... yet these fakes had over 50 diamonds!

Totally agree. Even if I haven't been on PMC for a long time (like most 'experts' i guess you could say), I could see what would happen to this community if the stealing and .. non-common-sense-ness (sorry i dont have good english . . .) doesn't stop.