Deus Ex Alpha

Art4Love was this website hosted by this douche named Chad Lieberman, he basically took popular art from deviantart and renamed them, then sold them at ridiculously high prices.

Here's one case explaining what happened to Vitaly Alexius, a professional artist (full view recommended). The interview bit especially makes the guy into a cartoonishly nefarious character



Sickening. The dude is seriously fucked litigation-wise.

Is court action gonna be taken against him?

No idea. Most likely, otherwise it would be a damn shame. A lot of the works he stole are protected by legit copyrights, and almost all of them are protected under Creative Commons anyway. His website was taken down though, but he has a couple backups up.

This is disgusting.

Fucking destroy that cunt.

No excuse for that repulsive act of manipulation.

This greaseball needs to be locked up for a while, AND fined.

What's the current status on this now?

Last I heard, the site he used was down but he brought up another one with a different name. No litigation was taken against him AFAIK.

Terrible thing to do. And pretty dumb, yet at the same time genius.

It's better then scamming people into paying for something they'll never receive, people who bought this knew exactly what they were buying. They didn't know it was stolen artwork but they wanted that specific piece and got it.

It's also better then robbing old people.

I personally wouldn't give a damn if I was putting up pictures on the internet for free and someone steals it and sell it. Don't put your precious masterpieces on the internet without a watermark if you don't want this happening...

Still a very bad thing to do, but these are my thoughts on this.
Dontflamemeplease

I realize some part of this post, or even the entirety of this post could be based on a faulty observation, my apologies if this is the case :3

Mastakilla wrote:Terrible thing to do. And pretty dumb, yet at the same time genius.

It's better then scamming people into paying for something they'll never receive, people who bought this knew exactly what they were buying. They didn't know it was stolen artwork but they wanted that specific piece and got it.

It's also better then robbing old people.

I personally wouldn't give a damn if I was putting up pictures on the internet for free and someone steals it and sell it. Don't put your precious masterpieces on the internet without a watermark if you don't want this happening...

Still a very bad thing to do, but these are my thoughts on this.
Dontflamemeplease

I realize some part of this post, or even the entirety of this post could be based on a faulty observation, my apologies if this is the case :3

I agree

It is definitely a lot safer than the British group that faked large emergency loans that was all over the news last week.

Bare in mind Masta, that creative licenses normally exist without watermarks etc to protect it. This can be in the smallest forms such as sigantures hidden in the art. Though yes, even if licensed on public domain in its native/a large resolution without any watermark is calling for someone to theft it.

Did the artist just happen to stumble upon these images one day whilst browsing or was he pointed to it by someone else, or something else altogether?