Online Etiquette, or How to Keep a High Horse Healthy

I just read some more rants on Ravelry (I'm wondrousitem, by the way) and I'm always surprised (and then almost immediately enraged) at the constant bickering of online rights, pattern copyrights, photo credits, etcetera. True, there are hundreds of seemingly valid opinions for the various stances, but there is one amazingly simple solution to "How Do I Make Sure My Thing Isn't Stolen?"

Do not put it on the internet.

The internets are wonderful, but evil. Like eating an entire yellow cake (with chocolate frosting). I know this. It's fantastic, and great in the process, but the possibility of gastrointestinal distress is potentially cry-worthy. The long and short is this: If you don't want others to have it (whether this is limited to a particular usage of your product/item, or merely an insistence on crediting you with its creation), do not put it out there. At all.
If you must, must share this thing, consider the medium you choose to do it with as a sort of filter. Books are harder to steal than PDFs, but will be loaned and borrowed due to their restricting costs. Magazines are a closer bet, as their limited circulation and availability make it hard to mass reproduce your contribution. The internets? That's megaphoning while standing on the roof. Those pictures of your kids covered in ice cream? Just got downloaded for a clown's advertisement for parties. That carefully constructed pattern for fishnet hair snoods? A screenshot is being emailed and modified to make a toy net. Yay for sharing, but the only downfall is that you can't take it back.

Think of it like gossip. You can say what you want to a close friend, but you can't control who they might tell. You can trust your friend (I hope), but a coworker overheard and remembers a year later at a picnic at just the moment when you pass by. It's a clever joke you thought up. Because of the funny, it gets retold and spread across the world. You can't stop it, and most times you wouldn't want to, but you have to let it go, like children to college. Release your fear that you are responsible for, or have any control over, what it/they do next. You could prosecute, sure, but are the costs worth the constant hassle of having to remain ever vigilant? If they are, be my guest. If not, you will be cast as the evil and greedy person persecuting the underdog time and again, becuase those underdogs will never stop.

It's okay, Spiderman. It wasn't a spider bite, it was an internet post. You are not responsible for this. (Also, that vulture guy? Needs mental help you can't provide. And stop making deals with the devil. He's the/a devil! It never works out in the end.)