Wow. I honestly don't know what to do right now.
The recent art thief problems clearly show that the watermarks used by me are not at all effective to stop art theft - of course not, because they were not in the way of any important parts of the image.
Now deciding on a new, more effective watermark is not easy, because they will always harms the photo itself.
Water marks that do not distract, on the other hand, are easy to remove. With my previous watermark it was as easy as just cropping it off the photo.
So what to do?
* Maybe it's best to ignore the art thieves completely and don't apply water marks at all. And then just upload smaller photos that can't be used for anything in a decent quality. But really... most photos don't even look as impressive at the current sizes I upload, uploading even smaller photos would seriously harm the art as well.
* Not uploading anything to the internet anymore would be an option as well. But honestly, I like to share my work online and broaden my audience, that's the reason I joined dA in the first place.
* Leaving deviantART and uploading the stuff somewhere else - not likely to change anything. I don't think this is a problem of deviantART itself, but of some users who don't get the essence of what the internet is - or should be - all about.
Well, I might try and go with a smaller watermark that I place in vicinity to the main focus of the photo while not across it, because it does too much harm. If that doesn't work, I probably just return to the way it all was before and hope art thieves get a life.
Frustrating, really...
Here's the current attempt on a new watermark:
