If you own a fursona you're deeply attached to, with a fair amount of art involved in it? Then I'm sure you know what I mean when I say that art theft is a constant, ever-present, mind shattering annoyance that makes you feel powerless and downright helpless to them effectively butchering what makes your character special by uninvitedly applying their own bullshit behavioral patterns, fetishes, and piss-poor grammar to the name and subsequent reputation of your fuzzy persona. It is infuriating and feels like an extremely personal affront.

So what can you do to truly discourage this behavior? Obviously, it won't change from one moment to the next, but in the long run, it'll become evident that your character's not one you wanna fuck with(at least not in the good way :3c)

I'm sure many of you have thought of copyrighting your character? And to be frank, they honestly already are upon being created. But if you want an ironclad, court room sound case that would scare the pants off of any self-righteous art thief? Then what you wanna do is register your character with the U.S Copyright office.

Here's what you wanna do:

-Write a story, longer and more detailed, the better, pitting your character as the/one of the protagonists involved. Obviously make sure their name's are identical from story to your reference images and misc. art work.
-Register the story with the Copyright office, and attach your reference sheet to it(preferably SFW, so if you don't have one, either make one/pay for one to submit), and label it as <insert character from story's name here> 's likeness from the story provided. It should cost around $35 to do so, which is not bad at all!

(By the way, this can all be done electronically from their website! https://www.copyright.gov/

And that's about it! Once you get the confirmation from them, your character is officially registered. If someone tries to steal your character, or creates an OBVIOUS likeness of your character, you can actually sue them in the court of law, which they will most certainly lose!

There you have it! After enough time passes and enough people discover exactly what the consequences could be of stealing this character, they will back off, and make it evident with others as well. You can obviously never truly eliminate art thieves, they're like rats after all(sorry if you have a rat fursona. Didn't mean it that way :( ), but you at least have the peace of mind knowing that you will always have the upper hand, should a real need for proving who your character belongs to, ever arise.