I agree with silversurfer. You don't know who these people are, and you don't know what they're doing with your audition. Yes i'm sure the majority of voice seekers online are honest and trustworthy; but there are those out there who are not. And you have no way of knowing who is honest and who isn't. Trust is earned, not given out willy nilly (did i just type that?).
Obviously if the audition comes from an agent, then you shouldn't watermark... because it's coming from someone you already know and trust and have a working relationship with.
Example: a spot I voiced for a local winery was given to the client for audition purposes. Never heard from them after that. Figured they couldn't come up an advertising budget. I had sent them the spot with a watermark, and as a low quality file. a couple of months later i got a call from the production director at a radio station (who's a friend) wondering if i 1) knew that XYZ client was planning on running the spot i created with them, and 2) if i had a higher quality spot they can use. i told him they couldn't use the spot since the client never paid for it. i called the client, they claimed to not know anything about this new schedule. then got another call from my friend saying XYZ client was now cancelling their order because someone at the station notified me they were using the spot. true story... and this wasn't even online.
whether you watermark, or change copy, or don't read the entire script, you need to protect your work. look at some online photo galleries. most have a watermark embedded into the preview photo to prevent people from just downloading and printing the preview photo.
in the old days you didn't have much of a choice. you'd go to the studio or office for the audition, read the copy, and they'd keep that recording. you had no control over it. you had to trust that they wouldn't use it without paying you. with online auditions it's different, you have that control.
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