Artstatement.com Illegally Selling Your Work Too?

They are in the business of copying other people's work:

http://www.artstatement.com/about-us

OUR SERVICES

Customised oil paintings based on photographs and specified dimension provided by you.

For instance,

1) Mr Wong saw an oil painting of red roses that his wife likes very much in a gallery:

a) He took a photo, http://www.artstatement.com/image-gallery/customised-paintings/red-roses.html

b) Sent it to us with his specific dimensions, and our artist hand painted it.http://www.artstatement.com/image-gallery/customised-paintings/red-roses.html for a very reasonable price!

The domain appears to be registered to a Singaporean company. Unless things have changed in the past 10 years, my experience with Singapore suggests they had/have very few, if any copyright laws that are enforced. The country simply does/did not recognise infringement as an issue.

One could/can literally purchase bootleg [insert item] on the open streets and in retail outlets. And for dirt cheap, too.

Wow - that's infuriating! I'd almost rather not know if an image of mine ever ended up there ... it would make me so mad!

Thank you for the information about them -- At least they had the decency to take my name off so I won't be associated with their second rate workmanship.

I see quite a few that are familiar. I can't remember the artist's name, but if they aren't his they are close copies.
I'll put the link for where one of the pictures are. They have several there.

I didn't have time to go through all the pictures, but like I said I did see several that looked really familiar.

http://www.artstatement.com/image-gallery.html

Maybe someone else will recognize his work.

These people don't mention an artist's name either.

I did see a few that are from a free domain site.

Good luck!

There is a contact addy.

http://www.artstatement.com/contacts/

Here is just a sample of what I wrote to them. I didn't send it.
You are copying other people's work. That is illegal. There are ways to notify the public about your company and what it does. Even overseas. I suggest you stop stealing other people's work.

If it really upsets anyone then contact Google, make a report so that when the company name is called up there is a ripoff report.
All kinds of ways to get to them.

EricaMaxine, you are probably thinking of the artist Leonid Afremov a great palette knife painter. Indeed they are infringing on his works. In your note you need to mention US authorities will be notified!

send them an office dmca notice and tell google about it. google will remove them from the index, and hopefully will remove your work at the same time.

---Mike Savad

This is why I keep most of my web representations at a relatively low resolution. for the most part, VGA looks good on the computer but make poor prints. maybe someone may make some bucks ripping one off with cards or ripping ones idea off though. :(

Ask them to do an oil painted version of a lawyers letter stating your claim to copyright :-)

edit: just checked it out..great painting(yours:-) I have seen much of this happening on here.. copies of very famous paintings and iconic images. These guys just seem to have taken this to a new level. I always remove entries to my contests where I believe this has occurred. It is a shameful practice and gets right up my nose. Anyhow..good luck dealing with it.

Jane, that is awful. I noticed a few there that looked very familiar. Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to find your work there? Did you do an image search or just decided to check them out?

There are quite a few that look like Leonid Aforemov's (pretty sure I spelled that wrong) work. :/

I couldn't find him on the site to message him. Maybe he's no longer on the site.

He's still here Angelina
http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/+leonid+afremov/all

I hate when the links don't go blue! grrr. this might not either but...

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/leonid-afremov.html

edit: I give up

Since they are based in Singapore there is not much you can do. The only things you can do it to send them a Cease and Desist letter to their webmaster, a DMCA notice to their hosting company and a page removal request to the search engines.

All international copyright treaties are based on the agreements of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and although singapore is a member, they do not seems to have any specific copyright infringement laws that might be helpful to you. You can find that here: http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=328729

The United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a direct result of the WIPO agreements

Here are the links for page removal with the main search engines

Yahoo: https://info.yahoo.com/copyright/us/details.html
google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?hl=en&pid=0
Bing:https://www.microsoft.com/info/FormForSearch.aspx

There are plenty of samples of Cease and Desist letters and DMCA take down notices on the internet.

This is the name and address of the people who run artstatement.com

CKTONIART PTE LTD
31 Bangkit Road
#18-02
S(679973)

THANK YOU VERY MUCH one and all! I am going to try to put some pressure on their internet connections.

Meanwhile I may just troll them a little to see what kind of deal I can get on 144 of my own paintings delivered from Singapore! LoL!

Good luck! As I said, there is unfortunately not a whole lot you can do, but you can show them your teeth a little hoping they don't know any better.

Rudy great info Jane super sense of humor as well as terrific art work. maybe you could send them a bill for using your work and shut them down at the same time. Good Luck with it all and keep us posted on what you find out.

1 Singapore dollar equals .80 US, so they're not that cheap. Means that $600 Lincoln piece is $480 American.

Here is Leonid Afremov link: http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/+leonid+afremov/all

Thanks for the info.

Jane, you have lots of good suggestions out here. if others in FAA see the same thing with their pictures see if you can get them to write to google too. Google might be your best bet, if they take them off of advertising then they KNOW that will hurt them.

@ Barry, there are many sites that have links to public domain. There are certain laws that pertain to copying. Ex: age... if a photo or painting is of a certain age, unless the owner is still holding copyright then I believe that's one of the ways. Just think of all the Mona Lisa paintings.. copied zillions of times.

Some of the artists here (including me) have used public domain pictures. After I check them out, or check with the artist for reprint. Ex: my Bob Dylan shot.
Most of my work at least 99% comes from my head or my camera or both.

What this Singapore company is doing, is taking a picture (photo) of the original work and having someone re-paint it. The Asian people are very talented. Did you ever see when hotels advertise painting sales? There are hundreds of pictures there original paintings (so they say).
It doesn't matter what res you put your picture, they are copying/repainting your pictures.

Last idea: Think of a symbol to put on every painting you do. Not something obvious, but work it in somewhere. They will copy it cause they think it's part of your picture, but it gives you proof that the picture is yours when you show Google, Yahoo, etc the proof.

I have posted this before. Western artists Tim Cox and Chris Owen tried to form an organization to address the very problem. They were scouring the internet looking for bootlegged copies or hand painted original copies of their artwork. They were, at one time, aggressively perusing the issue and other artist to join with them and hopefully end up with a group large enough to fund serious legal action.

I have no idea how that turned out because I stopped selling their work as part of my cutback when I went into simi-retirement. (I was an authorized dealer for their work. I still am for Tim Cox, but I no longer offer his work.)

I do know that they ran head long into the problem that Jeffery mentioned. These foreign countries just do not have laws against what they are doing.

I used to buy picture frame form a company in San Diego. I knew they also sold "studio art" which is what the trade started calling it instead of "starving artist" paintings. Remember them?

I had never been to their "studio" but I happen to be in San Diego playing golf when one of me orders was being filled. I dropped by to same the shipping. I was shocked when I seen a whole table full of what was probably a couple hundred or more 24 x 36 Chris Owens knock off painting. They were wholesaling them for $18 to $36 dollars depending how many you bought. These were very good paintings. And for the money they were a great buy if you sold that sort of art. These painting would bring $200-$400 properly framed hanging in a gallery.

Contrary to popular belief, some of these "studio" artist working in third would countries are very, very good artist in their own right.

At the time I was close with Chris' publisher and asked her how they were addressing this issue. She basically said that there was not a damn thing they could do about it.

There is gallery in one of the communities near me here on the central coast of CA. He trades in only western/cowboy art, high end Giclees, signed and number, limited editions, local artist and these "studio" paintings. He does very well. He makes 5-6 times the profit on a "studio" painting as he does on a consigned painting or a limited edition print.

Even if Singapore had copyright laws, it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever.

Here is a 19 page report I wrote some time ago about the subject. I even had long conversations about it with people from IC3 and the FBI.

http://www.copyright.gov/docs/smallclaims/comments/noi_02263013/Umans-Randy.pdf

WOW! Rudy! You about covered it all! Good work! Thanks for sharing that!

Thanks Floyd. It was a good exercise, but the people I wrote it for (RF and RM) couldn't give a youknowwhat. The FBI told me they didn't have time for this. Too small potatoes for them, I tried to tell them it might not be small as they think, but it didn't make difference.

Feel free to share it btw. It's public record now anyway

Ya, I got chastised rather severely in another thread when everyone was calling for the "authorities" to step up the enforcement and I said that was never going to happen because they don't recognize it as that big of a problem. People in here jumped to the conclusion that I was saying it was not that big of a problem.

Actually given the state of the world, I am not too sure I would not rather see resources put into chasing down terrorist then image thieves.

Dang, now I have gone and done it. I have nearly admitted as much that compared to other issues it really isn't that big of a problem! lol

Seriously, we can not allow issues like this get pushed back so far that the crooks in other areas get a free ride. When we do that, the terrorist win by default. They effect change in our way of life with out ever knowing it when that happens.

lol don't worry. I back you up if they jump into conclusions again. I too rather see the FBI (and Interpol) chase terrorist and murderers than image thieves. I tried to kiss up to them a little with that chapter in my report about their prevention efforts and I thought it might tickle their ego, but in reality it's all one big joke.

Personally I pick and choose chasing all the people that stole and steal my images. Too time consuming to chase them all. Especially if they are overseas. You can send them a take down notice and maybe (just maybe) they take it down only to put it back up again after a couple of weeks. I might chase the "big" guys, but the bloggers etc. usually not.

There is also that copyright thing called "fair use" Many, many contributors and legal/illegal image users (to say it nicely) have no idea what that is and what can and cannot be done under the "Fair use" provisions. In hindsight I should have elaborated that more in my report.

You have to know which battles are worth winning and on which ones you just have to suck it up..

I know if you notify the Googles and the isp's the will take images down from certain sites. But these guys just pop up aging under a different name.

It is like these constant going out of business sales some of these furniture stores have. Some of them have already opened up the new store under a new name just down the street before they even close the old one.

We spent a lot of time and effort here writing laws that prevented these scams but they can figure out ways to get around them faster then you can rewrite the laws.

Yep. Right you are. Perpetrators are not only in untouchable countries either like Russia or the far east. I know of some notorious wallpaper companies in the UK. Can't think of their name right now. Darn.

@ Erica. I am fully aware of public domain and the legalities. However, I reiterate, I have seen much of this happening on here.. no naming and shaming allowed but believe me ...it's prolific. There are a few "artists" in particular who have taken to "rippin" images from popular t.v. shows or magazines and offering them for sale with only slight modifications... It's cashing in on someone else's talent and hard work.. and it disgusts me. Even in situations where it is legal, IMO, it is unethical. Anyhow..this is not a personal attack on anyone..Just expressing my opinion on the issues raised within the OP. And I wish Jane all the best in getting this dealt with.

Yeah , I don't understand how someone here could sell an image that is someone else's art or a picture of a recognizable glass sculpture