How Are The Companies That Are Taking My Images Off Faa Getting Large Enough Files To Reproduce Them From?

No there is not a way for anyone to access your files. All they can do is get a screen grab. No one would be here if that was possible.

You mmay be guessing correctly. SearCh General-topics for info about the Form to send and demand they take your work down.
Personally, all my work is identified w/a Digimarc ID, IF ANYONE ATTEMPT TO USE AM NOTIFIED BY DIGIMARC... so need spend no time looking.

You may get a local attorney to write a letter that would convince them to take it down to avoid suite.

Suzanne,

what are the largest sizes of your pictures in their offerings? The question is whether they upsized them from the FAA thumbnails, scanned them from purchased prints, or obtained them in a different way.

If your images were posted by you only on FAA, I would alert them about this infraction.

From what I see Art Gaga sells hand painted copies not prints. I don't see that they would need a hi resolution image (high pixel count) to do that.

Bob and Nadine. No need to feed paranoia when there are other explanations.

i need to see some links first, but they may be selling the small version and claiming its large. or they are painting them out and are stolen that way. many of these places are scrapers used to collect credit card info, we get these chinese run sites quite often. its laid out the same way.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

again - digimarc is easily defeated. if you don't have their plugin installed, it won't check it. and if they use gimp, corel etc - they won't see it there either. i took mine out a long time ago because it makes it longer to load things up. and it wasn't needed by me.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

There is software that can take a screen shot image say 800 X 600 at 96 dpi and upsize it with good results. How much money do you think you are losing? Enough to warrant a lawyer?

.

Bradford,

I'm not a hacker, but I know if Abbie can send me a simple url link so that I can download my original again, without even having to be logged in, then yes... it's indeed possible.

All they would have to gain is the same level of access Abbie has & they would have free reign to easily take whatever they choose.

How difficult it'd be to hack into what's likely mid-tier access, I couldn't say.

I wonder if they take a low res image and then print it on canvas and paint it over? I don't think there is anything one can do to stop the companies in China as the cost to hire a lawyer to do that would not be financially worth it. It just really ticked me off to see my images advertised on a local company and I will certainly be taking it up with them. Now that Ali Baba in in the US it is also a problem. You should see all the paintings on there that I am sure they don't have the rights to reproduce. My musical ones are fairly easy to track down but other work may not be. I have contacted some of the companies in China and told them to take the images down which they do but weeks later they appear again. The joys of the internet!

I see some of their images are the same ones I see advertised by Korean studios. Of course Korea is not the only country that exports these sort of painting. These countries have no copyright laws that prevent them from selling them in the USA and there are no USA laws that prevent it either.

You can contact them and demand they take the image down but I don't think there is anything legally you can do to stop them. But not being an attorney, I am not sure of that. I am not sure that even if there was something you can do legally that it would be cost effective.

I do know, and I have said this before, that there was a couple of very well know artist that tried to take legal action against some of the importers that were copying their images. They were trying to get people to join an organization to deal with the issue. I am not sure if they every got the organization up and running or not.

I do know the one of the most aggressive members and maybe even the founder of the organization was western artist Tim Cox and one of the other that was supposedly involved was Chris Owens. I think it was Tim Cox's mother or sister that was actually heading up the organization.

Both Owns and Cox kind of hit the big time about the same time and their stuff was being done in large quantities form several of the Asian Importers.

If you ever go to one of the big Art Expos you will see these importers there with ten's of thousands of paintings. All knock off images.

If it was illegal they would not be there year after year. I asked one of the expo organizers why they let them in and they said they had no way out keeping them out, legally.

I always thought it kind of strange that there would be some the same artist that were being knocked off at the same Expos. Different room, but same Expos.

I will suggest once again, if this is a big issue with anyone they should go sit down with an attorney and see exactly what can and can not be done and what the process is. To spend a lot of time worrying about something you can't do anything about or to go about doing the wrong thing could be a lot more expensive in the long run then the couple hours of billing that an attorney will charge.

Skip, that is interesting. After the strange request I had for a higher res photo I think something like that must be happening. On my own web site I only put very low res photos.

I guess it's pretty much the same as the music industry. Once something is out on the web people think they have the right to have it for free.

@Bob and Nadine Johnston "Personally, all my work is identified w/a Digimarc ID, IF ANYONE ATTEMPT TO USE AM NOTIFIED BY DIGIMARC... so need spend no time looking."

Have you been notified about this attempt to use your image?





I have taken it down already, but I am curious if they notified you.

Incidentally that took me a bout 20 minutes of actual work to do that and it will print out at 39 x 40 inches. It is a 28M file.

I used SnipIt, a painterly program and removed the Fine Art America watermark with PhotoShop. It would be closer to your original if I had not set the painterly at canvas. I did that to emulate a hand painted image on canvas copy.

Susanne,

Thanks for pointing that site out. I went to look at it and I noticed a painting by an FAA artist. I sent the FAA artist the link. Somehow I doubt her image was used with her permission.

We need to watch out for each other.

I have just been notified by another FAA artist that my paintings are being sold on Art Gaga. I sent an email to Art Gaga as well as wrote in one of the comment boxes below my painting that they did not have my permission to use my painting, they were commiting fraud, and I wanted my painting removed at once. I haven't heard back, and somehow fell that I won't. Certainly there must be some way to report this fraud to the various browsers so they will remove this site and other fraudulent sites. Where to start?

I just notified Hanne that hers was on the front header. All of Leonid's are there of course, but they never respond back if you notify them.

With sites like this GAGA - & all these damn " Paint Parties" infringing on our work, it is really weighing heavily on me this season.

Be also careful of thieves that repaint art such as Elephant Stuff selling via Amazon.
You may want to check if your art is on this site and at least notify Amazon to remove your stolen art.

http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creative-hailey-herrera-Without/dp/B00Q287SH2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416967630&sr=8-1&keywords=hailey+e.+herrera

" comment boxes below my painting that they did not have my permission to use my painting, they were commiting fraud,"

Once again, I strongly suggest that you consult an attorney before you accidentally do something that can bring legal action against you.

You can be sued for making such comments if you can not prove them. It is against to law to accuse one on of committing a crime if you can not prove it in a court of law. That means if they force you to prove it, YOU have to bare the cost of doing so.

We just had an excellent thread on this very subject with a different website.

Hi all.

it's me who noticed FAA artists about Art Gaga and I,m happy to see this post as it was too much people to contact by m own but I hope now that more artists will see it and check that site for their art.

I've found my art there using a browser's addon named: Who stole my pictures? (mine is for Firefox)

When you use this, by right ckicking on any image, and choosing 1 of the 4 search engine they propose in the menu that opens, you will get all links of where your exact same image is on Internet.
I have done it with a few of my images only, so far.... and for all art on Art Gaga that I knew was from other artists.

Don't hesitate to help me by using this tool for others as well. Don't think they might have given their permission...on ArtGaga, not only there are no artist names, but they don't even add the Titles. It speaks by itself, doesn't it?

I'm sure it will be much easier to get this Canadian company to remove all of our artwork than to fight with China, Alibaba and Aliexpress sites, and so on. I don't see what could be done to solve this problem so it really stops ( art stealing and reproduction). I think it is an impossible fight.
But if anyone think we could make a difference somehow by taking action as a group, let me know.

@Floyd Snyder

those Review messages are not automatically appearing for all to see on the site. They have to approve it first ;-)

So you got a request for something and didn't check it out before sending it that what you're saying?

Are you aware of this, Mike Savad?!
http://www.amazon.com/Beautify-Your-Handmade-Radical-Pharmacy/dp/B00Q63K5AK/ref=sr_1_216?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1417292707&sr=1-216

Who is this Elephant Stuff on Amazon? I've noticed they are selling several images of mine as canvas. Also noticed Mike Savad and Linda Woods images. Are they affiliated with Fine Art America?

FAA used to have a deal with Amazon. Some FAA images are still there. Nearly all of mine where at one time. Last I looked there were still a couple of them that were still there. I have not checked in some time.

Perhaps somebody from Fine Art America staff could comment on this and confirm if this seller "Elephant Stuff " is affiliated with FAA

I don't know if this has anything to do with what's happening here or not, but how many of you that are being infringed upon, are using the new Version 2?

I tried to express my concerns about the new version awhile back, but didn't get anywhere. When I switched to the new version, I logged out, and then went to check my new storefront display. I clicked on the image page, then right clicked an image, which should be disabled. What I found, was that when I saved that image, not only did it save that one, it saved the entire page of images, all at the high resolution. So I went into Adobe to resize each image, and they still looked good at an 8" x 10". That alarmed me, very much. So I went back and switched back to Version 1, where I will remain until this problem is rectified.

Anyway, you guys might want to do some experimenting with your pages, and each others. I just did with some of yours before coming here, and you really are exposed:( I hate when this takes place, it's just so wrong.

Sean, we really could use your help on this one.

I do see right click is still disabled on the page for the individual image.

I think the problem between version 1 and version 2, with version 1, the images displayed on the artwork page, are all very small. They can still be right click, and show the high resolution, but much to small to enlarge to do anything with.

With version 2, when you right click them, they save at high resolution, a larger version, and can be more useful for the infringers.

I sure hope I'm making sense here, I'm not good at this.

when you say hi rez - are we talking the 900px image or something else? anyone can get that file at any time. it can print a small print, it bothers some. you have to show it sell it. the version number has nothing to do with it, though if he forgot to disable the right click on that page, that should be fixed.

but even disabled it doesn't matter, it still goes into your cache and google can still get the small image.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Mike, I think the best thing is to go look through your own, and others, and see what you find. Maybe I am just not seeing it right. And like I said, I am not good at explaining.

900px image. i know the size already. people taking that one, would never have bought your work anyway.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

If you looked at mine, and only mine, yes, you will see a smaller sized image, because I am still using version 1. Did you go deeper and check those using version 2?

I totally understand about people not buying your work anyway, that this is the price we pay for putting our work out there, etc. etc. I'm sorry, but that response is not helpful here, I have heard it so many times now, and I get it. I have been selling my work on-line for 16 years now, I get it. But I do thank you for your responses here, you are a huge help on this forum.

the images are the same size. i'm using version 2 right now. if you haven't increased the size of your magnification you may be seeing that. but the pixel size is the same. that never changed unless he did something recently.

whether its helpful or not doesn't matter. it is what it is. and the version doesn't matter. and it will switch in jan anyway.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

@Cathy: the 900px images you downloaded via rightclick entire page are the same ones people will find anyway in the google image search, images indexed directly from FAA. it has nothing to do with which artistwebsite version you are using.

Good, I hope it is just that I am seeing it wrong in my store only, or on my end. I do ask again, those of you who are having problems in this post, are you using version 1 or version 2?

I see a potential problem here if this is to be "what is" come January. I am not complaining, nor trying to start a debate. I am just trying to ask a question and possibly help.

Honestly, if this "is what it is" come January, and I no longer feel our images are being protected, I may decide to remove everything and close up. I hope I don't have to because I really love it here. But, it wouldn't be the first time I left when I didn't feel comfortable anymore. But I, and only I, can, and will make that decision when the time comes. And I will weigh all the costs of that decision heavily, I always do.

I am posting this, in hopes that the problem might get rectified before we all are switched to the new version. IF, indeed, there is a problem. So, with all of that, does anyone else see a potential problem? That is all I am really asking here. Thank you!

Thank you Menega. On my store, I noticed a huge difference between the two. I tried looking at both, while logged out as well. But perhaps it is just because I am looking from my computer, and that is how it shows. So, I am hoping that what I am seeing, is ONLY from my end. That would make me comfortable using the new version.

Okay, if Mike and Menega are both using the new version, I tried right clicking and resizing your images, and they don't resize well, they look blurry. So......... that leads me to believe that I am just not seeing it right, in MY STORE, from MY computer. Whew, I hope that is it! Maybe I should go switch to the new version and have some of you check, yes?

I have to admit, I am not good with all this pixels and things. I am an old fashioned hands on painter, so my computer skills are limited.

I am happy to be wrong here!

Cathy, right-click is disabled on all the AWs I checked, including yours. But that is a false sense of security, rather like locking the front door but leaving all other doors and windows open. There are many ways to access the images, and none that require special hacking skills -- browsers make it easy to save any image from any page, right-click or not.

On Firefox you can click tools, view page info, select "media" from the options, and you’ll get a dropdown list of everything on the page, cached and non-cached. And yes, you can download the images from there with the handy ‘Save As’ button.

Remember, anything anyone can see on their screen is saved somewhere on their computer.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

Dan, yes, it is disabled on the page for the image itself...... But if you go to a storefront where it shows all the images, any of those can be right clicked and saved. THAT is where I saw a problem with mine. On the old version, you could still right click, but the image saved was very small. When I switched to the new version, on that same display page, when I right clicked, it saved the entire page of images, all in a larger size at the high resolution. I switched back to the old version, tried again, and only one image at a time could be saved, and it was tiny. God, I hope I am explaining this right!

@Amy Weiss it seems they haven't removed anything from the "101 Art Designers Storefront".

@Aged Pixel - I asked Amazon to remove my images... I doubt they shut 101 Art Designers down completely like they should. I'll have to go back and have a look.

@Cathy Peek - I checked and found the same thing as you did. It is possible to right click on the header area of both the AW site and the Pixels profile page and 'Save page as...', saving it as a complete web page. The difference is that on the Pixels site, the images saved are the thumbnail size as displayed on the page, but on the AW site the saved images are sized to 900px on the longest side, as displayed on the individual image pages.

This does not worry me personally, because I know the 900px size images can be taken from the site in a number of ways. The images I upload are usually about 4000px, so for me, the 900px size does not represent the high resolution version.

I checked some of your images, and the ones I looked at were not offered as the larger size prints, so I assume that you are uploading images approximately 1600px on the longest side. In your case, therefore, the 900px size that can be taken from the site is indeed almost full resolution.

There's no way round this - as we keep saying, anybody can save the 900px version anyway, so it makes no difference whether they do it from the profile page or the individual image page.

Gosh they're going up just as fast as we can get them removed. Thanks for the link to the 101 Art Designers...found one of mine up again. DMCA sent.

Thank you very much for checking all of that Jane. I thought I was the only one seeing this. Yes, I don't like to offer mine up in sizes too much larger then the original painting size, so that must be why I am seeing this. I guess the only thing helping me then is the watermark. Thankfully, I haven't found mine on those theft sites, but that sure doesn't mean I won't. It seems no matter what we do anymore, we'll never be safe from thieves on the internet. I hope you guys get this problem resolved, and I wish there was a better way to protect us. I know Sean and FAA try hard, so I do thank them for that!

After we sent in our DMCA notice on the latest stolen work this morning, we sent in a letter to Jeff Bezos expressing our dissatisfaction with Amazon allowing these stores to set up shop in the first place. Amazon is great about removing the listings -- after we spend hours of OUR VALUABLE TIME to locate them. We made some suggestions to Amazon on how we feel they could better handle this situation on the front end, rather than having to deal with all of this after the listings go up. We also have elected to not purchase any more items from Amazon.Com until such time as we see they have made positive changes to counteract these issues. Our combined purchases from our family and office total well into the thousands each year, and I'm sure that won't make a dent in Amazon's earnings, but we cannot in good conscience continue to spend our hard earned money with a company that allows these stores in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to set up shop with our stolen art and designs.

Well I just did my morning ritual of a few reverse image searches, and clicked on the ones to Pixels.com, and sure enough, just as Jane said, when you click view image, and it takes you to Pixels.com, I could right click and save my image, and blow it up to a crispy clear 12 x 14" size. Right click NEEDS to be disables there as well. And I know, that doesn't stop all thieves, but it helps.

I think come January when all of us get switched to Pixels, I am going to do some serious re-evaluating, as to whether or not it's worth it to stay here. Please FAA, I feel this is a serious issue. The first thing I check when trying any new POD site, is how well our art is protected. So far, things seem pretty good with mine, but all these post above are showing some serious problems here.

It would seem that both Amazon and FAA need to give an assist on this one. I guess it's a good thing that not everyone "out there" is as technically savy as some of you, I know I am not, lol. So with that, is there anything I can do on my end to work around this?

Why do all these sites have to fix whats not broken, during the Holidays, only to break it? Argh!

I'm sorry to talk so much, but I just went outside my own head and tried to think like an art thief, and a shopper.

Not trying to start a debate or push the pro's of watermarks, just thinking about this from a whole different perspective, and wanted to share my thought, and hopefully help here.

First off, I think most all shoppers know that a watermark is just that, a watermark. People have been conditioned to watermarks since Ebay began. They are commonly used on other POD sites as well. In all the years I have been selling on-line, I have never been asked if the watermark is on the print. Most people just know by now what it represents, on-line protection.

When someone is looking to lift and steal images, if they do not see a watermark, signature, copyright symbol, etc, they might think you are not serious about your copyrights. It also makes it easier for them to use, such as on Amazon.

Now.......... from a shoppers standpoint. If they go to these Amazon sights that are stating this is original hand painted art, and they see an image showing the watermark, I would as a shopper, see that as an immediate red flag that this site might not be legit. BUT, if I liked the image well enough to buy it, at least there is the FAA watermark, showing where the legit image is available for purchase. And if the artist signature is there, even better, they can find them by name. So I can see here where watermarks and signatures can not only deter thieves, but lead to sales via those thieves. Use it to your advantage, free advertising for FAA. And make those dang thieves look bad!

cathy it won't matter where you go, in the case of amazon, they were taking a small image and actually hand painting it. they have a painting farm factor where hundreds are painted at once. you can have something really tiny still get painted up. we know the sizes are on the large size, but its needed to sell. screens are getting larger, so the images are getting smaller.

you would be surprised how many people still think the watermark comes with the image. even artists are confused. its one thing to watermark a product, its another when its art. people may think it prints that way, you may lose the sale.

many that lift your work won't care about your copyrights. the copyright law states its yours. it doesn't matter if you place a bit C on it or not. and even if you do, they will remove that too if they really want the image.


its a poor form of free advertising when the price is half as as much and it has free shipping. they will come here to pay double that and shipping. guess who gets the business? worse than that if someone sees your image and does a reverse search for it - amazon will trump your links every time. this is why you need to fight them. if you own a bank, robbery is inevitable. the best you can do is lock the doors and arrest them as they come in and hopefully it won't happen that often.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

if you found a bug that has the right click enabled - tell sean right away, he won't see this rant at all. contact us - tech support.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

By all means, keep fighting them! I am not saying not too. I always do when I find infringers, always. I just see how the watermark can possibly be helpful in this situation in the meantime. Also, a red flag to shoppers. But I do understand all that you are saying.

I am saying I use all possible means available, to deter the thieves. If I loose a sale in the process, oh well........... I feel most know, and I also state in all descriptions that the watermark is not on the print. I've been selling hundreds and hundreds of watermarked art on-line since the late 90's, and never been asked, so in my experience, this has not been a problem. And I also do realize, that no matter what we do, nothing is fool proof, but we can do our best to make it harder for the dishonest.

I am just trying to offer up preventitive solutions for future problems. I fear that saying this, I will jinx myself, but I use watermarks, and my signature is on all of my work, and so far........... I have not found mine on those sites. Scares me to say that out loud, lol.


And thank you, I will try contacting Sean about the right click disabling. I do love it here, very much, and want to stay. And I probably will. I just might hold off adding any new work until some of these bugs are fixed. Sounds like they are still tweaking the site, so it will probably all work out.

Mike, can Sean be pointed to this thread somehow? It's been rather exhausting trying to make it understood the problem I am seeing with right click. It would be so much easier if he come here and read it. Sometimes I feel like I speak alien;)

you could email tech support with it. but i think he monitors some of the groups in silent.

if you can tell him about the right click thing i think it would be easier to mention that, since there is so much other stuff in this thread it would be kind of a waste of time to look just for the parts that aren't working for you. as long as you can walk him through the process it will make it easier to fix - if there is a problem.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

OK Mike, will do.

My apologies for the intrusion everyone. I thought was attempting to address something that was possibly OUR problem, not just MY problem. Told ya I wasn't good at this. Anyway, thanks for the responses and keep fighting the good fight!