Huge Art Theft Scandal

This has been going on the last few days, you may or may not have heard of it but I find it very interesting. Some big shot businessman/architect/"musician"/"artist"/total guido-looking jambroni named Chad Love Lieberman has been discovered to have stolen art from hundreds of artists off deviantart (some even deceased). He's been putting these up on his site called art4love, and has been selling them for hundreds of dollars.

I feel really passionate about this whole thing because, despite me not having the skills to have something stolen from me, I know how much effort and work it takes to put into a piece of art. And having your effort put money into someone else's undeserving hands is like, really bad, and stuff.

Not only has he ripped off all these pieces, but he has also plagiarized books.



So this one person on deviantart is trying to raise money to get a lawyer and sue this guy.
http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/journal/43396877/

And a lot of other deviantartists are trying to round up and take count of how many people things have been stolen from, and what pieces.

http://blog.deirdrereynolds.com/2011/08/art-theft-scam-list.html

http://www.art4loveisafraud.com/

http://redbeancookie.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/chad-love-part-deux/

Other stuff:

Here is one of his quality pieces of music. He is a renowned and amazing rapper, according to one article I read.


Good thing it ends abruptly

Oh yeah, and he also poorly photoshopped himself next to Paris Hilton
http://sflchronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Chad-Love-Lieberman-Paris-Hilton-Photo-Opt.jpg

Article about him omfg he's such a douche gaiz
http://sflchronicle.com/news/press-...-new-york-multimedia-pop-artist-insures-what/

Now, this is the part where:
A. People get outraged
B. People don't care
C. People bash deviantart because the internet said so
D. We get into a big and interesting discussion
E. Some defiant person denounces all this and makes it seem like everyone who is angry is somehow at fault.
F. All of the above.

I'm hoping it's D.

 

(B), btw. coudln't the buyers just check the autenthicity of the art by Tineye Reverse Image search?

 

I would think the buyers didn't care at the time. They just wanted the art to look pretty in their homes. I doubt they'd take the time to think about doing what you just said.

 

What a douche lol.

 

Taking people's free art and selling it is actually serious business. But yeah, lol deviantart.

 

What WoodenRat said.

I hope it's A and D, Outrage+meaningful discussion=Get stuff done.

 

What are we going to get done?

 

What are we going to get done?

Nothing. Selling of falsificated or stolen art is not new. It's not really biggy (relatively speaking only) if some medium quality popular art gets stolen/damaged.

Much bigger art values go to waste due to vandalism Even museums do not learn even after these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_of_art (trust me it's an "interesting" read).

I could not beleive what some people have done to the most valuable paintings ever, yet in many museums there is practically no effective protection at all, not even a glass (you can touch the paint). When I was at the Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts, any visitor could have scratched, smashed, touched, etc. a Rembrandt, a Rubens, a Delacroix, a Velazquez ... every painting. The "guards" are old people who are like from an old-folks home. And that's not just Hungarian museums I guess since they follow European regulations.

 

Nothing.

That is what I was getting at.

 

What are we going to get done?

Oh, not in this conversation specifically but in conversations in general.

 

I just wanted to make a thread about this, really. I'm not asking for anybody to do anything, and I know we can't do anything but sit back and see what happens. At least some people are currently making an effort to stop this.

But nobody seems to be taking it seriously. And actually yeah trickybilly, it is a big deal. Just because it has happened before and just because it doesn't have to do with vandalism doesn't automatically mean it's unimportant. Honestly, I don't think vandalism, theft, or whether the piece is in a big art gallery really matters..it's still bad either way. Thousands of works have been stolen..works that people have worked their ass off on. I'm pretty sure that they deserve some respect, and they certainly don't deserve to have money made off of their work.

And hey, what about the books? Aren't those important too?

And wow Fab, you seriously did resort to insulting deviantart? Not everyone on that site is an idiot, you know. There are some wonderful artists and people on there. Certain parts of the internet may depict deviantart to be a bunch of whiny douches, and some of them are, but not all.

/somad

EDIT: I'm sorry I sound so PMS-y and bitchy but, bleh. I just hate seeing douchebags getting away with things and I am very passionate about art. And when other people don't take stuff seriously that I'm passionate about, I just get super pissy and defensive. It's a problem I have. But then again, who wouldn't?

 

This is the kind of piracy that I hate. At least they found him.

 

And wow Fab, you seriously did resort to insulting deviantart? Not everyone on that site is an idiot, you know. There are some wonderful artists and people on there. Certain parts of the internet may depict deviantart to be a bunch of whiny douches, and some of them are, but not all.

I know, I've seen some really great artwork on deviantart. The website has a reputation though, so it amuses me when someone has actually stolen art from it, in contrast to the usual "OMG U STOLE MY CHARACTER" drama.
Not that theft of intellectual property itself is funny. I hope the artists are able to sue the douchebag in question, and maybe use the money to host their art on their own website.

 

I say we beat him up

 

I had read a little bit about this a few days ago. If I remember correctly he also took art from FA which I thought was funny and that he was marketing them as oil on canvas which sounded retarded because I'm pretty sure whoever buys it isn't getting a oil-on-canvas painting.

Anyway it absolutely amazes me that he actually even managed to get away with such a thing for a while. How long was he doing this before he got caught? I didn't see that information.

 

Nothing. Selling of falsificated or stolen art is not new. It's not really biggy (relatively speaking only) if some medium quality popular art gets stolen/damaged.

Much bigger art values go to waste due to vandalism Even museums do not learn even after these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_of_art (trust me it's an "interesting" read).

I could not beleive what some people have done to the most valuable paintings ever, yet in many museums there is practically no effective protection at all, not even a glass (you can touch the paint). When I was at the Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts, any visitor could have scratched, smashed, touched, etc. a Rembrandt, a Rubens, a Delacroix, a Velazquez ... every painting. The "guards" are old people who are like from an old-folks home. And that's not just Hungarian museums I guess since they follow European regulations.

This has baffled me ever since I was a child. But the fact that vandalism of art happens so rarely (relatively speaking), that investing loads of money wouldn't make sense since most smaller museums get barely enough money for electricity (citation needed). I guess the fact that there aren't many people who have a fetish of destroying 18th century art helps too.

 

I had read a little bit about this a few days ago. If I remember correctly he also took art from FA which I thought was funny and that he was marketing them as oil on canvas which sounded retarded because I'm pretty sure whoever buys it isn't getting a oil-on-canvas painting.

Just went from scandalous to hilarious.

 

If he's releasing the art in prints, he could technically claim that his reprint is a separate entity from the original, as it is no longer in Internet form.
All they can really do is sue him for X cases of copyright infringement.

 

FA as in FurAffinity?


What.

 

Oh look I found the news article

The reliability of this source is obviously questionable but yeah it says FurAffinity. And not specifically oil on canvas but painting on canvas. Same difference.