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Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Icustomonline = Art Theives Look For Your Art!!!

Check for your stuff. Found all sorts of mine there. They happily steel and rewrite Your words

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Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

http://www.icustomonline.com/producttag/33609/rockship

Is this authorized, Dennis Wunsch?

 

Melissa Bittinger

8 Years Ago

Malware blocked a malicious link when I clicked that Laura.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Not surprised. Google search the company. The are also filtering to Anazon.

 
 

Joseph C Hinson

8 Years Ago

I think the point Melissa was making was that folks should not go to that site. It doesn't seem safe.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

I get that. But some of your art is for sale there. And is also for sale thru Anazon from this site as a distributor. Your choice, of course, to check it out.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

From Amazon...only FAA has my permission to sell on Amazon..,

iCustomonline One Breath Laura Brightwood Mouse Pads Heart Shape Customized Made to Order

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U3H4RJK/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_BdNDvb0PQ4416

 

Jennifer Schneringer

8 Years Ago

So they just slapped your art on a mouse pad and stuff didn't even bother taking your name off. Gives you credit for the art but not getting paid for anything. Gotta love the world wide web

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

They have Disney, Peanuts, all sorts of NFL logos. Perhaps I should be proud to be showcased with such stolen goods.:)

 

Jennifer Schneringer

8 Years Ago

I guess that's one way of looking at it. When you included with well known stolen art and they use your name and not just steal your work. One way of getting promoted o_O

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

Then when the customer gets some cheesy cheap product your name is associated with it.

 

Roy Erickson

8 Years Ago

I doubt seriously if they have any of mine, or that they are even looking at mine - no one other than bots and an occasional FAA member (thank you) is even peeking at my digital abstracts

 

Your best bet is to write to Amazon directly. You could also find out who hosts iCustomonline website and write to them. Most hosting companies will drop fraudulent sites like a hot potato.

Check this out; http://www.scamadviser.com/is-icustomonline.com-a-fake-site.html

The site is USA based but the real location is being hidden.

IP Address: 50.97.175.26 United States
Hosting Service: "SoftLayer Technologies"
Hosting City: Dallas
Hosting Region: TX
Hosting Postal: 75270
Domain Created: 2013-07-13T15:46:05-06:00Z
Domain Expires: 2023-07-13T15:46:05-06:00Z
Domain Life: 3652
Est Value: $
Speed: Very Fast (365ms)

If you look at the rest of the information in that link, these people are cloaked as nicely as a Klingon warship.

 

Sharon Cummings

8 Years Ago

There are tons of overseas sites selling my art on all sorts of products. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about it. I let ImageRights.com go after all US based infringers. You CAN get Amazon to take things down. Any US based site will take down your work with a DMCA. But the foreign sites, will not respond. Just the cost of doing business online. I honestly do not think that American/European buyers are flocking to those sites and as mentioned.....If they buy from them, they get a cheap crappy product. Hopefully a lesson learned and they don't buy from China et al again.

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

Write Amazon good advice.

I looked them up on Alexa and compete.....nada.....

Dave

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

I don't know where some of you find the time to go chasing down things that you can't do anything about. Even if you could it would not make for one more penny in your pocket. In fact, it will cost you a lot of money, if in no other way, then the lost of time trying to chase down every little infraction. That time is better spent on creating and selling more art.

Once you start selling on the Internet it is fact that you can no longer even come close to controlling what is going to happen to some of your images. You have to be able to accept that or you could drive yourself batty trying to prevent it. For every one image you get removed, there are probably 100 that you will never find.

Brick and mortar stores deal with shop lifting and shrinkage, in the Internet you have to deal with piracy of low res images. It is simply a cost of doing business.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/reports/infringement

Find your stuff, tell amazon about it by sending them the links and info. they have some of my stuff there too. This is one of those instances where I'm doing something about it. I'll go after commercial resellers when I find them. I've done it about 4 times in the last 15 years, and every time it works.

Send a message to all their online and social media outlets (not a public post, a message), then send a formal cease and desist with the links to the infringing materials via email. It's not that much work, took me 15 minutes. As I said before, it usually works.

They won't go away...They'll keep selling the artwork that no one complains about, but at least it won't be mine.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

I understand I have no power to stop Internet fraud..

I also have no power to stop war.

I have no power to heal disease.

I have no power to stop the unkindness that is an innate part of the human condition.

It does not mean I don't care. And the "I don't have the power to change..." list is endless.

I'm always curious to watch when I share any observation on the Internet in a forum, when it will shift to infighting, judgment of others, and attack, That didn't take long.

Congratulations you are the winner.

Peace out fellow artists. I don't troll fight.

Care if you want. Don't if you don't.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Cynthia, glad the its can help you.

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

I never said I did not care. But it is wiser to pick battles you can win. There is a difference between someone bootlegging full images as in full size wall art and bootlegging low res images for key fobs or coffee cups.

This guy said it best.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
-Reinhold Niebuhr

Some people see any difference of opinion as infighting. It is not. It is merely a difference of opinion. That is why they call it a "discussion". People get to discuss different idea and opinions.



 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

Cynthia, I agree that what is happening with your images on Amazon should be looked into. Those are full size, full images and they must have some sort of full resolution digital file. I could be wrong but couldn't some of those people be legitimate Somerset dealers (or other authorized dealers) with stores on Amazon?

 

Bradford Martin

8 Years Ago

Many automated scraper sites are out there offering cheap screen savers etc. New ones crop up as fast as old ones come down. They have millions of images and love to serve you up your own work to entice you. In some cases the real purpose of the site is to get malware on your computer or to get you to link to porn. These types of sites are always out there and not hard to find. Go ahead and have fun fighting them. Let us know how you make out. The chances of them actually selling one of your items is next to nothing. The chances of you getting something on your computer that will ruin your day is great. Pick your battles. But be careful not to post links to malware in public forums. One consistent pattern in these threads is after they link you to malware they accuse others of being passive or uncaring.

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

I think we all care deeply the first few times it happens to us and then after a while it wanes...its very fatiguing.

Amazon is giving a platform to these fraud companies so you'd think they would wake up and do a better job screening. Seems like all of their screening is done on the back end monitoring things like customer feedback, on time shipping etc.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

Floyd, most of my artwork on Amazon is sold by my legitimate licensers (Artwall, Somerset, Cortesi Home and affiliates) But no one never told me they were going to be selling Mousepads. I don't want to be on mousepads.

I'll call them now just to be sure, and to clarify that I still don't want to sell that stuff. I'll report back in a moment.


EDIT:
Nope. NOT a Somerset afilliate, and as I thought, Somerset won't put your work into licensed product without a separate licensing contract. I only contract with them for prints. I have a call into the other two companies as well, although I'm 99.9% sure it's not them.


 

Jim Hughes

8 Years Ago

Amazon is having some crowdsourcing blues. They've tried to become the world's marketplace, selling everything to everyone, by opening up their platform. Maybe they should have paid more attention to what happened at Ebay, which became an out-of-control nest of scammers before the rules were finally changed to put more responsibility on sellers. Amazon also introduced 'self-publishing' and the result was tons of cr@p pseudo-books pasted together from appropriated contents.

Bottom line, Ebay and Amazon - as big as they are - don't have the resources to really deal with all the problems they've created.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

It's like copyright policing here; it can't feasibly be done on the front end, so the infringement fires get stamped out as they get noticed. Ha, or maybe stamped ON, sometimes they don't get put all the way out. :)

But I'm happy to be a thorn in the side of infringers. There are easier artistic targets than me. It's simple enough for me to message and report them consistently until they decide I'm not worth the trouble.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

Icustomonline has already responded to me via facebook and said they will remove everything with my name and will not use any of my work in the future. They seem freaked out about the fact that I reported the infringement to Amazon. :)

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

I love your hopeful Spunk Cynthia.

It was about six years ago the first time I noticed a large company, not little irritating fake companies like this one, stole my work. The retailer Charlotte Russe, stole a phrase I created for a contest at threadless.com. ( happily ever after is so once upon a time.... Currently sold out at threadless). It was fun having the law power of thread less behind me to go get that big company. Since then that phrase is all over the place. It's fine to me that I no longer own it. But I feel differently about my images for some reason.

Best of luck in your efforts!

 

John Wills

8 Years Ago

Nice work Cynthia. Personally, I don't really want to sift through thousands of pages of stuff to see if they are stealing mine, I'm sure they're counting on that from most artists.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

Yea, John, I think you are where they make their money. Apathy can pay, just not always the apathetic! :-) I'm not a hunter of this stuff either, but if it pops up in my face (like this thread), then I'll deal with it. Again, I never worry about personal use, just commercial, and only when I trip over it.

I'm now having a Facebook conversation with iCustomonline. They're in China. They just said "I got the art of the internet and it said it was free". So I'm taking the opportunity to educate this person.

They said:
"Thank you, we will be careful in the future. We are new seller to USA. Thank you for you suggest. And you can check form amazon I had already call customer service to remove your art work, they will do it in 10 minute."

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

here is their trademark registry if anyone wants it...

https://trademarks.justia.com/862/87/icustomonline-86287849.html

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

Thanks for the follow-up Cynthia.

Ya, China is a tuff row to hoe. The just blatantly do not recognize copyright laws of other countries and they usually will tell you that in so many words.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

The flipside of that is that people are people wherever they are. If you're generally respectful and reasonable, you usually get that back. I'm 5 for 5 with this kind of art infringement so far.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Im about 9 for 16. And sometimes I let apathy win. I know the risks. It just kicks when it is one of my favorite pieces. Your steady reliance is inspiring, Cynthia. For me it is not about recovering lost money. Who in the world would want that mouse pad. It is more the principle of deceit. Sometimes I fight it. Sometimes I go work with my clients (Im a psychotherapist) and reground myself to what a big problem in life really is. :)

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Hey Cynthia, which pieces of yours did they use? Did you see they also lifted NFL logos, Disney logos, etc. Big companies have whole departments that deal with this all day every day.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

They used Storyworld and Showoff. Two of my most popular.

Storyworld by Cynthia Decker

Showoff by Cynthia Decker


Me, I try to control my own world/art/income. If people choose to be deceitful, my disapproval of that isn't going to change them. I can and will remove myself from their clutches whenever possible, though!

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

I thought they might go after Show Off. I think they may have researched FAA for most viewed images. I love that piece. I'll give it some love on my FB fan page. :)

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

cynthia,

My guess, they knew they were infringing, otherwise they would not have freaked that Amazon might shut them down.

Dave

 

Joy McKenzie

8 Years Ago

Laura and others, how did you go about finding your art on icustomonline? Did you do a search for your name? I noticed that they don't put the artist's name in the description.

 

Jim Hughes

8 Years Ago

Dan Turner must have taken the day off. He usually makes the case that it's impossible to protect online content, and pointless to try.

I agree with the point made earlier in this thread: in 99% of cases, the person lifting your work will never make a dime from it. They're just fantasy sites set up by people with no knowledge or experience, imagining they're going to make money.

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

I searched Amazon for "iCustomonline" and "Cynthia Decker"

I went to their site and searched on my name.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Joy,
My name is still on mine on this particular site. This particular site is not the most savy. Every now and then I search for my name and art online to see what weird places I find my art. I learned this years ago when I started distributing art online...that it would be stolen. I really do find it all over the place. Often ignore it with the apathy others speak of. But this time they went after my favorite piece. And I was in and especially irritated night.

Others are right, you won't win. But I'm a clinical social worker/artist. If I lived a life of "if I can't win I shouldn't do it," I need to drop my whole career.

I have no judgement for what others decide to do. So when I feel like it, I fight, and if I don't feel like it, I don't.

But if you are curious it is always helpful to just Google yourself and see what you find in this age of no privacy.

I originally posted because I've known FAA to be a place that's helpful for artist to support each other in this effort to claim our own copyright of our work if we feel like trying.I originally posted because I've known FAA to be a place that's helpful for artist to support each other in this effort to claim our own copyright of our work

It is helpful to just Google yourself and see what you find in this age of no privacy 😊Laura

 

Dan Turner

8 Years Ago

"Dan Turner must have taken the day off."

Heavens no, I am watching the conversation unfold. My surprise of the morning was that Laura is a psychotherapist. A psychotherapist interacts with patients to initiate change in the patient's thoughts, feelings, and behavior through adaptation.

That profession suggests a certain level of education and understanding, yet she never uses the word "infringement" (which is what this is). Instead, she defaults to the inaccurate "theives" and "steel" -- and misspelled them both!

Is this an example of inner rage blinding otherwise good judgment? And if so, why? When pressed, "victims" freely admit that it's not about the money. So what is the goal? Control? Revenge? Misery loves company? What?


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

 

Joy McKenzie

8 Years Ago

Thanks! That's exactly what I do...every so often I search my name and 'art' or 'kaleidoscope' or 'mandala' and then just scan through and see where my images are currently living.

 

Louise Reeves

8 Years Ago

Looking thru some items and their descriptions had me laughing. You can tell English is not their first language: http://www.icustomonline.com/adorable-baby-zedonk-with-donkey-mother-rectangle-mouse-pad

 

Cynthia Decker

8 Years Ago

I just checked, and my items from icustomonline are no longer available through Amazon. Still on their website, but I did give them 10 days to remove those.

 

Suzanne Stout

8 Years Ago

Agree with Jennifer up there. This is why I always add my name to my images. I've had some work stolen and now, at least my name is on it.

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Dan I came to lure a tutor or is it a Tudor? Or perhaps a tooter...I do smell something. If only i could spell something too.

To others, Amazon took down the links I requested they take down. Icustomeonline has not.

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

People if you know iCustom's ISP send them a takedown notice.

You owe iCustoms a kick in the arse. Not a grace period.

iCustomonline owes you. It is not iCustome's position to make any further decisions.

Dave

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

oh and Dan,

Infringement is infringement, The US Govt and other major govts did not make up the term for Christmas.

Most of the time it is not a suable offense, but it is what it is, wrong.

Dave

 

Laura Brightwood

8 Years Ago

Thanks Dave. Is there a particular process to...

"iCustom's ISP send them a takedown notice."

I emailed them directly. Is there a different way, by identifying their ISP, that I (and others) can make this notice?

I appreciate you helpfulness.

 

This discussion is closed.