Back in 2009, while we were working on building Myows Online Copyright App, I remember reading about Sky News using a Twitpic picture by Joe Neale without permission or licensing and the debate that followed.

In Today’s case, the perpetrator is again SkyNews, this time using a 1 minute Youtube video without seeking permission and then using legalese bullying techniques to reach an ersatz settlement.

When Terence Eden discovered that a video about O2′s Security flaws he uploaded on Youtube (with usage restrictions) had been used on SkyNews, the news channel of the year shamelessly first offered to pay a laughable 75$ compensation.

Terence rightfully refused and instead asked for a reasonable 1500$ fee.

To add insult to injury, the answer he then received is proper white-collar Goliath intimidation:

As I indicated, we do not yet agree on a sensible figure for this use.

Bearing in mind you are now invoking the Copyright Designs and Patents Act I have placed this matter in the hands of our lawyers.

This does not represent an unwillingness to come to an agreement between us but, unfortunately, it is likely to slow the progress slightly.

So now we have a giant news channel that steals content from the public, then only offers to pay $75 when caught, or else the matter “must go to their legal department that will slow down the process”. I cannot believe that SkyNews is unable to provide a proper licensing fee for it’s content without resorting to such techniques.

No, it’s not OK to just steal someone’s work, and if they catch you to offer a tiny fraction of what the cost would be to produce it in a proper way.

It’s like someone taking a train without buying a ticket - if that person gets caught, has money and attitude, should they be allowed to get away with paying 1/4 of the regular price? What would that say to the other passengers who’ve duly paid for their ride?

So how did this gripping copyright saga end? To be honest, quite disappointingly.

Head over to the original article Sky News Infringed My Copyright on Terence Eden’s blog to find out.

After Thought
Perhaps this is a clever ploy to force content creators worldwide to watch SkyNews, just in case they discover one of their pics or videos being used without permission? Skynews, we’re keeping an eye on you, and you can’t fool all the people all time!

Unbelievable case today, and shocking response from the copyright perpetrators, Curebit, a startup that recently received 1.2M$ in funding and couldn’t be bothered to pay the few thousand dollars it would cost to design and code their own landing page. Poor form Curebit.

Angered by the blatant design and code copyright infringement, David Heinemeier Hansson, the director of 37signals and creator of the the popular Ruby on Rails framework called the Curebit team “fucking scumbags” for serving content straight off the Highrise (one of 37signals’ products) servers.

For the full story, including code comparison evidence, the heated Twitter exchange between the two startups and Curebit’s douchebag response when caught, head over to Venturebeat’s indepth article covering Curebit’s low morals when it comes to copyright.

With close to 50 000 Twitter followers, Jacob Cass is a celebrity in the design world. He runs the popular logo award site Logo of The Day and publishes regular great articles on his website, JustCreativeDesign.

Many freelance designers worldwide aspire to be him; some taking it too literally as this Tweet may attest.

So today we have a case of a brand identity specialist who’s own identity is being used by an unscrupulous thief in hope of getting work from Freelancer.com – imagine the disappointment on the client’s face should he fall for it?

Thankfully, as a design professional, JustCreative seems to be proactive about it.

This obviously reaches further than just copyright infringement, as Jacob’s moral rights are also being infringed, as well as a legally enforceable case of identity theft. (You can read the excellent post by our resident lawyer Steve Ferguson Copyright and Your Moral Rights – What to do if someone claims your work in their portfolio).

I’ve stated before that with great talent comes great responsibility (to defend your intellectual property), and top designers have to deal with copyright infringement on an all-too-often basis. Just ask @Vonster how he feels about it!

Copyright infringement does not only strike you once. Make it clear you won’t let perps get away with it

As a follower of @justcreative on Twitter, I took a screenshot back in August of another case of someone using Jacob’s work in their portfolio (assumably in order to get agency employment)

While stealing is never OK, don’t you reckon it’s particularly pathetic when people steal from within their own community (read the post about MWEB stealing Numericable’s campaign I published recently).

Remember Myows is there to help you protect your copyright.

We’ve humorously covered various copyright infringement scenarios in our KopyKat Files – here are two examples to lighten up the mood:

Before Myows, dealing with Copyright Infringement was a pain, and to quote a recent article from HitJerker Songwriting:

“My favorite site for this kind of copyright protection is Myows. You can register your work electronically by uploading text, audio, etc. Then you can get unauthorized copies of your work removed from sites, send cease and desist letters, takedown notices and build cases against infringers.”

From Registering Copyright on the Internet

Have you ever had your work, or worse, your identity stolen? What are you doing to prevent this happening to you?

I’m going to expose the biggest cases of copyright infringement I find online on a more regular basis. Why? Because it angers me that some people think it’s OK to steal other members’ of their own community’s work, only to claim it as their own.

So today, let’s have a look at how MWEB (South-Africa) blatantly stole Numericable’s (France) ad.

First, take a look at MWEB’s latest ad:

Then close your eyes for second. Remember what you’ve just seen.

Now check out Numericable’s ad:

What do you think?

(thanks to @phr0ggi for the info. Follow him on Twitter, he’s a legend)

Last night I was looking for illustrations of eagles.

I went to istockphoto and recognized a logo that our own logo designer, Von Glitschka, had created (this one FYI: Eagle illustration by Von Glitschka ) but it was in someone else’s istock profile (SlipFloat) who had various works with very different styles.

I sent a tweet to @Vonster asking him to check it out.

Unbelievably, The infringer had uploaded that file in 2009 and sold the artwork with istock’s blessing over 100 times for 15$ before anyone notified Von.

Vonster sent a DMCA notice and today I see that the pirated work has been removed from istock.

This brings 3 serious Questions to mind

- What happened to the revenue istock made by selling illegal content?

- What happens to those who bought it in good faith and are unsuspectedly spreading a copyright infringement? (I would have gladly paid to buy it had I not recognized Von’s unique illustrative style)

- Why is the perpetrator’s account not banned from istock? (UPDATE: The perpetrator’s portfolio has now, it seems, been removed from istock – so that’s 1 question answered!.)

As Vonster’s tweets suggest, besides the fact that someone is making a few hundred dollars off a work you created, it is crucial to act upon notification that your work is being redistributed illegally, or it could become an orphan and you will lose ownership.

With great talent comes great responsibility.

Let’s be honest, no one will steal your work if you have no talent. That’s clearly not the case with Von who is constantly having to fight copyright thieves.

Last week, he exposed Logogarden’s LogoGate in a fascinating and well documented article which I urge you to check out. You won’t believe how audacious some online businesses are, shamelessly ripping hundreds, or thousands, of Original Works.

To quote Von himself:

“The biggest hassle in dealing with a copyright infringement is dealing with a copyright infringement.

So design ass holes like John Williams fully understand this and exploit the loop hole as long as they can get away with it.“.

My personal closing thoughts about copyright law at large

Something is really wrong when corporate logo thieves get away with a slap on the wrist after making small fortunes from stealing creatives’ hard work and I believe it’s time for change…

Why should the concrete threat of our OWs going orphan waste hours out of our busy freelance schedules? Should the cash-cow USCO registration fee still be a requirement to seek punitive damages? Shouldn’t websites like istock have better measures in place to prevent the redistribution of stolen artwork? What do you think?

If there is one thing that I’ve learned over the past six years of running Plagiarism Today, it’s that deviantArt is one of the most dedicated and united communities when it comes to fighting plagiarism. Few communities have shown the heart and the unity on this issue and none that I’ve seen have been as quick to rally to stop art theft.

Whether it’s the formation of anti-plagiarism groups, of which there are now several, dealing with uncooperative hosts, or tackling commercial infringement of the community’s work, deviantArt has always been there.

However, of all the cases I’ve tracked and even worked with the dA community, the most recent scandal, the Art4Love case, is perhaps the best example of it. deviantArt is a site that does not tolerate artistic plagiarism and is at war with the site’s former owner and artist, Chad Love Lieberman

The story, however, is a bizarre one and a case of an investigation that is still struggling to discover how deep the rabbit hole goes.

About the Art4Love Scandal

A week ago, Art4Love was a thriving art site that sold paintings by a previously well-respected artist named Chad Love Lieberman. The site sold a variety of paintings supposedly from the artist in a price range mostly between $199 and $1,000.

However, that began to come crashing down when artists at deviantArt caught wind that much, if not all, of the paintings on the site were ripped off from their community. What started as a trickle of plagiarism reports quickly, through community digging, grew into a torrent, now at a reported 300+ alleged infringements.

The scandal quickly grew to also impact other sites Lieberman was also involved in. This included MarkYourSpot, allegedly a direct copy of Art4Love, OfficeBrokers and LifestYle Brokers, both sites where Lieberman is, or at least was, listed as an associate.

The scandal also began to impact other names associated with Lieberman, this included Craig Pravda, who some believe to be the same person as Lieberman, and was allegedly a business associate helping Lieberman with his sales.

As the scandal quickly grew, it began to draw more and more attention outside of the deviantArt community. At least one news site retracted a previous story about Lieberman, and anther printed a call to deviantArt artists who had been ripped off to have their works features after they published an article promoting Lieberman unaware that much of the work would turn out to be plagiarized.

But even as the art case was gaining publicity, others were looking into Lieberman’s text work and not only finding signs of plagiarism in his two books, but also discovering that many of his articles were also verbatim plagiarisms, mostly from the same source.

On Lieberman’s end, all the sites associated with him directly, as well as his various Facebook pages and other social networking accounts were shut. However, deviantArt members had been diligent in grabbing screenshots of the site and several had formed lengthy side-by-side comparisons of the works on Art4Love and deviantArt.

These images enabled the comparison work to continue despite the closure of the various domains.

One of the artists who had their work used, George Smith, sent an email to an address associated with Craig Pravda and received a response saying, in part:

Apologies for any issue that you may have with Art4Love from whom we licensed the images.

In no way were we aware that they misrepresented their rights to any of the artwork that was used on our site MARK YOUR SPOT.

….

They have stated that they sold their entire collection to a new company and that we will have to continue with our game MARK YOUR SPOT, which only sells BRUNCH CARDS, by acquiring new content or working with our own digital artists.

Finally, another of the artists involved, Alexiuss, claims to be working on and accepting donations for a class action lawsuit against Lieberman.

It seems likely that this case is far from over, though it remains unclear just how strong the prospects for a class action suit are in this case.

My Thoughts on the Matter

This is one of those plagiarism cases where you don’t need a plagiarism expert to tell you about the infringement. There’s no need for a complicated analysis nor is there need for any side-by-side comparisons. The images are the same and it’s as simple as that.

On that note, this is definitely one of the most egregious acts of plagiarism I’ve run across in a very long time. Not only due to the scope of the infringement, including hundreds of paintings, content from two books and several articles, but also the nature in how it was being used.

Given that Lieberman has posed for newspapers in front of “his” paintings and repeatedly said in the press that they were “his” creations, there’s no doubt in my mind he can be described as a professional plagiarist. While professional plagiarists are fairly common, to see one to this degree is a very rare thing.

The biggest problem with this kind of plagiarism and especially with one this large and dedicated is separating truth from fiction. Despite the diligent work for the deviantArt community, there’s a lot of uncertainty about this person, how he does business and with whom.

Plagiarists at this level rarely are who they claim to be. Though I’m not saying that any of the information that is available is inaccurate, I’m saying there’s no way to be certain it is or isn’t without an independent verification. (Note: This is why I’m not talking too much about reports he is Senator Joe Lieberman’s nephew.)

In my experience, operations like this one are typically not run like an amateur artist who got desperate and plagiarized a few pieces, but more like a criminal organization started from the ground up for the purpose of plagiarizing and profiting from others’ work. This, likely, plays a role in the quick disappearance of Lieberman and will likely frustrate any attempts to sue him.

Of course, any attempts to sue him will also likely be hindered by U.S. law. Any artists infringed, even if they are abroad, will only be eligible for actual damages (the greater of what he made or the artist lost) and won’t be able to claim the high statutory damages (up to $150,000 per work) or attorney’s fees. Even registering now, after the infringement, won’t help with damages though it will enable U.S-based artists to sue.

In short, as despicable as the plagiarism is, there may be very little that the courts can do in this case as any copyright lawyer is going to be reluctant to touch the case with a lot of up front legal costs.

In the end, the best that one can likely hope for is that the site stays shut down and Lieberman doesn’t make a return.

Bottom Line

What amazed about this case isn’t just that it happened, but that it took so long for it to be found out. It’s not as if Art4Love was a small site hiding in the corner. It was out in the open, seeking and getting media attention all the while selling duplicates of artwork from deviantArt.

Of course, it wasn’t just images. It was also text in books and articles involved. But with so much lifted, it’s amazing that it took as long as it did, at least a few years, for the infringements to be noticed.

But while justice may be slow, it does prove that it does come, especially when you do something so broad and so egregious. There was simply no way that Lieberman would not be caught and, right now, he should be amazed that he had as long of a ride as he did.

After all, each plagiarism is like playing a game of Russian Roulette. You know eventually the odds will turn against you, but you hope it isn’t this time.

Note: Infringement samples taken from this post.

This work by Jonathan Bailey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Source: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/08/22/the-art4love-chad-love-lieberman-plagiarism-scandal/

I’m a huge fan of the Oatmeal, an abrasive and hilarious comic-strip by Matthew Inman. In fact, he is probably my favorite person to follow on twitter or Facebook and brightens my timeline daily. Matthew is clearly too talented for his own good – producing Highly Original cartoons, and it is no surprise that, with very little deterrents, his work gets republished with no attribution on a plethora of dubious sites. One of which is called FunnyJunk and lives up to the latter part of the name.

Last week, the Oatmeal decided to do something about his work being stolen and the response from the perpetrator is nothing short of astounding and sheds a light on the general ignorance of online content publishers.

Instead of apologizing and bowing before Matthew’s superb work, FunnyJunk’s admin tried to send it’s troop of trolls to give the Oatmeal a piece of their *ignorant* mind.

This saddens me.

Dear Oatmeal, if your read this

You should join our Quest to make the internet a better place, open a free Myows account (you can signup with your FaceBook account) and use a Myows deterrent Banner on your blog – it will look like this:

On top of scaring away would-be thieves, sending a Cease and Desist or a Takedown notice through Myows is simple and pleasurable, and you will save yourself many headaches when dealing with copyright infringers.

We’re here to help talented artists like you.

Scroll down for Shakira’s “version”

Since both Agency Zebra (my Agency) and Engage Brandcraft (Chris’s) are a short walk away from the Cape Town stadium, we’ve heard this song ad nauseam and I was very surprised to notice that the original version was so similar to Shakira’s. Intrigued, I investigated and here’s what I found:

The Cameroonese band “Golden Sounds” recorded the original Waka Waka song in 1986

The Golden Sounds were a band from Cameroon that was made of soldiers (members of the presidential guard to be precise) and enjoyed immediate and huge success across their country. Golden Sounds also enjoyed some international fame reaching out so far as Columbia (where our dear Shakira grew up and learned some of her killer dance moves).

An entire generation of cameroonese can attest to their popularity and place a date on their hit song, Zangalewa (also known, or re-branded, as WAKA WAKA).

To be entirely fair, Zangalewa was based on an hymn sang by Cameroonese “tirailleurs” or riflemen, during World War II. After extensive online research, there doesn’t seem to be a recording of the tirailleur’s original songs, so for copyright purposes we’ll agree to place a ©1986 Golden Sounds notice on the song. (since copyright basics teaches us that an original work must be reduced to material form to enjoy copyright protection).

Shakira’s Waka Waka was chosen as the FIFA 2010 official song

The source for this info is no less than Sharika’s official website, which claims that “it’s a brand new Shakira song“. Mmmh. If like me, you’ve seen the video above, I’m sure you’d disagree about the originality of said song.

I looked further down to see if any mention of the original creators of the song was made, and apart from a quote stating that “African music is so inspiring“, there was no credit, attribution, or mention that Shakira’s song was a remix sounding a lot like this 1986 track (with some original lyrics she added for good measure, but still…)

The copyright holders were not asked for permission prior to the song being chosen as the World Cup Anthem

(this info is also available on the song’s wikipedia page)

After the song was announced as the Fifa World Cup’s anthem, and to their surprise, the Golden Sound band members heard it on the radio, or were alerted by relatives who had also heard it being aired. Like you, I’m sure they never thought this could happen to them. In an interview with the Cameroon Tribune dating back to April 2010, Golden Sounds’s band leader Ze Bella states that he is actually very honored that Shakira borrowed his song, and that it might bring luck to the Cameroon soccer team “les lions indomptables” but he still expects royalties and will enter negotiations with Shakira’s agents at Sony.

Caught red-handed, Sony Music settles for an undisclosed amount

Considering that Shakira’s version of Zangalewa was poised to become one of the biggest selling songs this year, and probably to avoid massive negative publicity and a huge embarrassment for FIFA, Sony quickly settled for an undisclosed amount.

I do hope the settlement is enough to allow the Golden Sounds to enjoy a Golden Retirement – but that is still besides the point I want to make.

Closing thoughts about the importance of protecting Your Copyright

It’s a shame that may it be for writing, design or music, the very artists that are considered as role-models believe it’s ok to borrow other artist’s creative work and claim it as their own – only to get bailed out if they get caught.

Golden Sounds were fortunate to have so many people knowing their song throughout the world and a video that was also widespread and easy to pass on through social media, hence cornering Sony and Shakira.

For less mainstream recording artists, the risk of being ripped is the same, so make sure you protect your copyright with Myows before giving that demo tape away, you never know what song will be chosen for the 2030 Fifa anthem, it could sound very much like one of yours!

Amber Leigh Turner is a freelance web designer who recently launched a community website aptly called Students That Freelance.

In yesterday’s article, Amber relates how she discovered through Statcounter that someone was using her work without her permission. She subsequently used Myows to have the copy removed and even received a letter of apology.

Are you wondering how that is possible? Then read her very well written article Why No One is Invincible from Copyright Infringement on StudentsthatFreelance.com

DISCLAIMER: I’m the one who recommended Statcounter to Amber. If you decide to give it a try, I need to warn you: Statcounter will bring out the voyeur in you and can become very addictive. For small to medium websites I personally much prefer it to Google Analytics, and I’m slowly recovering from my stataholic addiction.

Yesterday I showcased Tim van Damme’s Wall of Shame, a rather fun way to treat copyright thieves.

Today I’ll present a similar approach, from Panic, the software makers who bring us Coda, Transmit and other Mac apps that have become part of our every day life.

On top of being a leading software maker, Panic is well known for it’s detailed icons and cutting-edge designs, as you can see on their über gorgeous Home page:

As with all things awesome, these icons were copied by lazy designers, and Panic doesn’t approve. Instead, the company decided to create a Western-like page exposing copyright thieves.

They obviously put a fair amount of effort into creating each image, as rolling over a screenshot becomes a game, exposing where the copy is taking place.

I recommend you visit the Panic Rip-Off Express and see for yourself how a leading company tackles infringement with humor.