massive art theft on DeviantArt - photos, too

Ecaterin · 08-18-2011, 02:37 PM - **1 Like**

I know a few Pentax Forum members put their photos up on DeviantArt, or have still-occupied accounts from the past when they were first getting started. There's been a massive art theft from DA by a guy named Chad Love Lieberman (nephew of *that* Lieberman, yes). The brouhaha is just getting underway, but people have scared up a LOT of details on this guy, his multiple sock-puppet websites (selling OUR art, OUR photos - as originals, for hundreds of dollars), numbers, addresses etc etc.

Only one artist is likely to catch up to this guy with legal action, cause really, who has the time or money? But he made a critical error in posting up fan-art of DC Comics copyrighted characters (Batman, Wonderwoman). The fans know better than to sell prints of copyrighted characters (and DC Comics is apparently very tolerant of not-for-sale fan-homage art), but this idiot put them up *for sale.* DC Comics has been alerted - someone get out the popcorn, cause this should be good. DC doesn't take kindly to theft.

A blog for an online comic artist (Digger), author & painter Ursula Vernon has extensive details that her (rather rabid!) fans are digging up on how to contact this guy and make his day very very bad. That LiveJournal entry is HERE. Ursula's fans found paintings of hers on the site, and they are a loyal mob not to be trifled with :P

Someone on DA (Kafai) was kind enough to screencap every page of thumbnails on this guy's site, to make it easier for people to scan a slide show of the whole site & try to identify the stolen pieces. That is HERE. Not like it'll do us small timers any good as artists, but at least it's a resource for anyone who wants to know & is willing to comb through the pages!

A hastily corrected online magazine article on the awesome variety of his artistic talent *cough* makes fun reading - parenthetical inserts on his shameless theft are much funnier than the original :P

It's not like our work isn't ripped off all the time - it's one of the dangers of putting your art online. (He even took the time to carefully mask out watermarks...) But the sheer scale of this guy's theft & commercial promotion is kind of mind boggling! The first domain name people found was art4love.com, but this guy has mirror sites under multiple names - as fast as people report one URL and get the domain yanked by the ISP, someone finds another mirror. It's like plagiarism whack-a-mole.

ETA: Huge link round-up at Reddit by Cassandra, with links to all this guys amazing failtastic marketing etc.

JinDesu · 08-18-2011, 02:46 PM

Wowza, that's a huge effort on the part of the community!

Ecaterin · 08-18-2011, 02:48 PM

Originally posted by JinDesu

Wowza, that's a huge effort on the part of the community!

Indeed! I'm always touched by how the online art community pulls together to help each other when their work is stolen

magkelly · 08-18-2011, 04:04 PM

It's not the first time there's been theft on DA. It's one of the reasons I don't post my work there at all. Been there, done that, had a photo ripped off from there. I've mentioned this before, but I don't think I ever said which site, but it was DA actually.

It was that incident that made me realize that I just couldn't post any pic that truly mattered to me online. I only have a handful of pics at this point that are commercially viable. One of them has already landed elsewhere with another person's photo credit on it. I managed to stop that person, but realistically I do get that it's nearly impossible these days to stop people like this.

I don't post anything even close to my best photos online in an size that's near printable or sans a watermark. Doing that may not protect much, but it's better than doing nothing...

Ecaterin · 08-19-2011, 07:52 PM

Now someone is putting together a class action suit. Go art community!

Ecaterin · 08-19-2011, 07:55 PM

Originally posted by magkelly

I don't post anything even close to my best photos online in an size that's near printable or sans a watermark. Doing that may not protect much, but it's better than doing nothing...

Yeah, this is an unfortunate truth. To their credit, DA is pretty good about jumping on inter-community theft (someone within DA stealing another DA members art). There's nothing DA can do about extra-curricular theft though - they're in the same boat as SmugMug or Zenfolio or any other site where you can post your art. The distinction being that most people posting on DA are pretty small time & less likely to be able to sue. But someone is putting together a class action suit, so we'll see where that goes!

Rupert · 08-19-2011, 08:35 PM

They took everything but the Squirrels...imagine that!

Regards!

MRRiley · 08-20-2011, 06:59 AM

He also stole numerous Marilyn Monroe images, which even if he had actually painted them, will draw the considerable attention of Marilyn's heirs (who are particularly nasty about wanting to profit off of any images of her). No big deal for the original artists, as long as they were not trying to sell them, but Liebermann could be in deep kimchee.

There is some NFLstuff as well and we all know how deligent they are.

JeffJS · 08-20-2011, 10:13 AM

A relative of a politician has been found out to be a thief? Oh the horror

. My image of politicians and their families is shot to hell now

. For the most part I don't think anything of mine is worth stealing but I would be extremely pissed (and do something about it) if I discovered this was happening with my images.

Ecaterin · 08-20-2011, 12:35 PM

Originally posted by MRRiley

He also stole numerous Marilyn Monroe images, which even if he had actually painted them, will draw the considerable attention of Marilyn's heirs (who are particularly nasty about wanting to profit off of any images of her). No big deal for the original artists, as long as they were not trying to sell them, but Liebermann could be in deep kimchee.

There is some NFLstuff as well and we all know how deligent they are.

Hooo boy - yes, those are 2 groups who do *not* take kindly to copyright violation. Between that and DC Comics.....world o' hurtin'!

MRRiley · 08-20-2011, 01:20 PM

Originally posted by JeffJS

A relative of a politician has been found out to be a thief? Oh the horror

. My image of politicians and their families is shot to hell now

. For the most part I don't think anything of mine is worth stealing but I would be extremely pissed (and do something about it) if I discovered this was happening with my images.

It appears, for the most part, he concentrated on graphic works or paintings rather than photographs, so most of us here who have DA accounts will probably be relatively unscathed... But I sure hope they hang this jacka$$.

Ecaterin · 08-20-2011, 01:22 PM

Originally posted by MRRiley

It appears, for the most part, he concentrated on graphic works or painitngs rather than photographs, so most of us here who have DA accounts will probably be relatively unscathed... But I sure hope they hang this jacka$$.

Yeah, the photos are few and far between....thank goodness for us :P But +1 for 'hanging this guy out to dry!'

RioRico · 08-20-2011, 01:51 PM

Once again:

ANYTHING YOU PUT ONLINE IS GONE! IT IS BEYOND YOUR CONTROL! YOU NO LONGER OWN IT!

Exception (written in pseudocode):

IFF
. you're a corporate entity with attorneys out the yazoo
AND
. you've been infringed in some jurisdiction where you have clout
THEN
. you can hang the infringer's butt up in public like a head on a pole
ELSE
. you can just kiss your efforts bye-bye
ENDIFF

This moron's error (besides hallucinating that Uncle Senator JoMo gave him immunity) was selling this stuff from a USA address. All he needed was a cut-out in some rogue state (not Texas) and he'd be home free and clear. But he's just careless in exploiting the simple truth:

ANYTHING ONLINE IS THERE FOR ANYONE TO TAKE!

Once again:

Anything posted anywhere is copied onto the local drives of whomever accesses it. It usually resides in a browser cache. Browser caches are easy to find; contents are easy to harvest. Text, code, images (still|moving), audio, whatever -- they're like a juicy jackpot, a cornucopia of content. And of course website-skimming warez have been around for years, making it easy to hoover-up just about everything on a site. That's just the simple operational reality. Protection? Ha.

Rupert · 08-20-2011, 02:01 PM

When you are both a crummy shooter and shoot Squirrels, one of the perks is not having to worry about image theft. You can hardly give your images away, and theft of Squirrel images would definitely excite the Squirrel World!

I can see the headlines in Squirrel Monthly magazine....

Squirrels Stolen! Otis Activates His Army!
Thieves Congratulated for their excellent choice......

Regards!

JeffJS · 08-20-2011, 09:00 PM

Originally posted by MRRiley

It appears, for the most part, he concentrated on graphic works or paintings rather than photographs, so most of us here who have DA accounts will probably be relatively unscathed... But I sure hope they hang this jacka$$.

I don't post over at DA and supposedly, only family can download my photos from Flickr.

08-18-2011, 02:37 PM - 1 Like	#1
Ecaterin Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Seattle Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 723	massive art theft on DeviantArt - photos, too I know a few Pentax Forum members put their photos up on DeviantArt, or have still-occupied accounts from the past when they were first getting started. There's been a massive art theft from DA by a guy named Chad Love Lieberman (nephew of that Lieberman, yes). The brouhaha is just getting underway, but people have scared up a LOT of details on this guy, his multiple sock-puppet websites (selling OUR art, OUR photos - as originals, for hundreds of dollars), numbers, addresses etc etc. Only one artist is likely to catch up to this guy with legal action, cause really, who has the time or money? But he made a critical error in posting up fan-art of DC Comics copyrighted characters (Batman, Wonderwoman). The fans know better than to sell prints of copyrighted characters (and DC Comics is apparently very tolerant of not-for-sale fan-homage art), but this idiot put them up for sale. DC Comics has been alerted - someone get out the popcorn, cause this should be good. DC doesn't take kindly to theft. A blog for an online comic artist (Digger), author & painter Ursula Vernon has extensive details that her (rather rabid!) fans are digging up on how to contact this guy and make his day very very bad. That LiveJournal entry is HERE. Ursula's fans found paintings of hers on the site, and they are a loyal mob not to be trifled with :P Someone on DA (Kafai) was kind enough to screencap every page of thumbnails on this guy's site, to make it easier for people to scan a slide show of the whole site & try to identify the stolen pieces. That is HERE. Not like it'll do us small timers any good as artists, but at least it's a resource for anyone who wants to know & is willing to comb through the pages! A hastily corrected online magazine article on the awesome variety of his artistic talent cough makes fun reading - parenthetical inserts on his shameless theft are much funnier than the original :P It's not like our work isn't ripped off all the time - it's one of the dangers of putting your art online. (He even took the time to carefully mask out watermarks...) But the sheer scale of this guy's theft & commercial promotion is kind of mind boggling! The first domain name people found was art4love.com, but this guy has mirror sites under multiple names - as fast as people report one URL and get the domain yanked by the ISP, someone finds another mirror. It's like plagiarism whack-a-mole. ETA: Huge link round-up at Reddit by Cassandra, with links to all this guys amazing failtastic marketing etc.

08-20-2011, 01:20 PM	#11
MRRiley Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Sterling, VA, USA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 6,275	Originally posted by JeffJS A relative of a politician has been found out to be a thief? Oh the horror . My image of politicians and their families is shot to hell now . For the most part I don't think anything of mine is worth stealing but I would be extremely pissed (and do something about it) if I discovered this was happening with my images. It appears, for the most part, he concentrated on graphic works or paintings rather than photographs, so most of us here who have DA accounts will probably be relatively unscathed... But I sure hope they hang this jacka$$. Last edited by MRRiley; 08-20-2011 at 05:59 PM. Reason: danged typos

08-20-2011, 01:51 PM	#13
RioRico Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Limbo, California Posts: 11,263	Once again: ANYTHING YOU PUT ONLINE IS GONE! IT IS BEYOND YOUR CONTROL! YOU NO LONGER OWN IT! Exception (written in pseudocode): IFF . you're a corporate entity with attorneys out the yazoo AND . you've been infringed in some jurisdiction where you have clout THEN . you can hang the infringer's butt up in public like a head on a pole ELSE . you can just kiss your efforts bye-bye ENDIFF This moron's error (besides hallucinating that Uncle Senator JoMo gave him immunity) was selling this stuff from a USA address. All he needed was a cut-out in some rogue state (not Texas) and he'd be home free and clear. But he's just careless in exploiting the simple truth: ANYTHING ONLINE IS THERE FOR ANYONE TO TAKE! Once again: Anything posted anywhere is copied onto the local drives of whomever accesses it. It usually resides in a browser cache. Browser caches are easy to find; contents are easy to harvest. Text, code, images (still\|moving), audio, whatever -- they're like a juicy jackpot, a cornucopia of content. And of course website-skimming warez have been around for years, making it easy to hoover-up just about everything on a site. That's just the simple operational reality. Protection? Ha.

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08-18-2011, 02:46 PM	#2
JinDesu Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: New York City Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,638	Wowza, that's a huge effort on the part of the community!

08-18-2011, 02:48 PM	#3
Ecaterin Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Seattle Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 723 Original Poster	Originally posted by JinDesu Wowza, that's a huge effort on the part of the community! Indeed! I'm always touched by how the online art community pulls together to help each other when their work is stolen

08-18-2011, 04:04 PM	#4
magkelly Veteran Member Join Date: May 2010 Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,901	It's not the first time there's been theft on DA. It's one of the reasons I don't post my work there at all. Been there, done that, had a photo ripped off from there. I've mentioned this before, but I don't think I ever said which site, but it was DA actually. It was that incident that made me realize that I just couldn't post any pic that truly mattered to me online. I only have a handful of pics at this point that are commercially viable. One of them has already landed elsewhere with another person's photo credit on it. I managed to stop that person, but realistically I do get that it's nearly impossible these days to stop people like this. I don't post anything even close to my best photos online in an size that's near printable or sans a watermark. Doing that may not protect much, but it's better than doing nothing...

08-19-2011, 07:52 PM	#5
Ecaterin Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Seattle Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 723 Original Poster	Now someone is putting together a class action suit. Go art community!

08-19-2011, 07:55 PM	#6
Ecaterin Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Seattle Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 723 Original Poster	Originally posted by magkelly I don't post anything even close to my best photos online in an size that's near printable or sans a watermark. Doing that may not protect much, but it's better than doing nothing... Yeah, this is an unfortunate truth. To their credit, DA is pretty good about jumping on inter-community theft (someone within DA stealing another DA members art). There's nothing DA can do about extra-curricular theft though - they're in the same boat as SmugMug or Zenfolio or any other site where you can post your art. The distinction being that most people posting on DA are pretty small time & less likely to be able to sue. But someone is putting together a class action suit, so we'll see where that goes!

08-19-2011, 08:35 PM	#7
Rupert Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Texas Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 25,123	They took everything but the Squirrels...imagine that! Regards!

08-20-2011, 06:59 AM	#8
MRRiley Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Sterling, VA, USA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 6,275	He also stole numerous Marilyn Monroe images, which even if he had actually painted them, will draw the considerable attention of Marilyn's heirs (who are particularly nasty about wanting to profit off of any images of her). No big deal for the original artists, as long as they were not trying to sell them, but Liebermann could be in deep kimchee. There is some NFLstuff as well and we all know how deligent they are.

08-20-2011, 10:13 AM	#9
JeffJS Inactive Account Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Michigan, USA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 7,484	A relative of a politician has been found out to be a thief? Oh the horror . My image of politicians and their families is shot to hell now . For the most part I don't think anything of mine is worth stealing but I would be extremely pissed (and do something about it) if I discovered this was happening with my images.

08-20-2011, 12:35 PM	#10
Ecaterin Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Seattle Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 723 Original Poster	Originally posted by MRRiley He also stole numerous Marilyn Monroe images, which even if he had actually painted them, will draw the considerable attention of Marilyn's heirs (who are particularly nasty about wanting to profit off of any images of her). No big deal for the original artists, as long as they were not trying to sell them, but Liebermann could be in deep kimchee. There is some NFLstuff as well and we all know how deligent they are. Hooo boy - yes, those are 2 groups who do not take kindly to copyright violation. Between that and DC Comics.....world o' hurtin'!

08-20-2011, 01:22 PM	#12
Ecaterin Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Seattle Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 723 Original Poster	Originally posted by MRRiley It appears, for the most part, he concentrated on graphic works or painitngs rather than photographs, so most of us here who have DA accounts will probably be relatively unscathed... But I sure hope they hang this jacka$$. Yeah, the photos are few and far between....thank goodness for us :P But +1 for 'hanging this guy out to dry!'

08-20-2011, 02:01 PM	#14
Rupert Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Texas Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 25,123	When you are both a crummy shooter and shoot Squirrels, one of the perks is not having to worry about image theft. You can hardly give your images away, and theft of Squirrel images would definitely excite the Squirrel World! I can see the headlines in Squirrel Monthly magazine.... Squirrels Stolen! Otis Activates His Army! Thieves Congratulated for their excellent choice...... Regards!

08-20-2011, 09:00 PM	#15
JeffJS Inactive Account Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Michigan, USA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 7,484	Originally posted by MRRiley It appears, for the most part, he concentrated on graphic works or paintings rather than photographs, so most of us here who have DA accounts will probably be relatively unscathed... But I sure hope they hang this jacka$$. I don't post over at DA and supposedly, only family can download my photos from Flickr.