tedster - 1:48 pm on Jul 11, 2012 (gmt 0)

do you know if this can (or should) be applied retroactively to existing works? Is it needed on every static web page or just blog articles? Perhaps a new thread on authorship is in order.

We did - it makes plenty of sense to me.

and if the infringers are on page 1 and the artists are on page two ..all the "head shots" in the world are not going to get a click through to the real owner ..the click will have happened the page before..

I agree with this. However, my results were that within a couple of weeks of using authorship mark-up. the infringers were no longer outranking the original author.

Stopping the infringers head on is a frustrating effort - they seem to grow like weeds. I only have time to go after the worst ones, or the ones that start to steal rankings.