Okay, it's getting pretty irritating that, in the age of instant communication, there are still morons who insist on trying to make money off the sweat and blood of artists. The most recent big blow-up involves art4love.com, a site which was harvesting images from art sites around the internet (in particular deviantART.com) and selling them. They were, of course, busted when fans of the artists whose works were stolen reported them to the rightful image owners. The site is currently down. But what is absolutely frightening is, if you search this company on Google, there are hundreds of business related articles about this company and how they were intending to have tens of thousands of images available in their service. There are articles about how much this company was raking in. Now, granted, a lot of it looks like PR pushed out by the company itself and not legitimate coverage. This isn't surprising since they've turned out to be art thieves. But they were traded on the stock market and all and no one seemed to be any the wiser until just recently.
Worse than the ones selling merchandise with stolen art are the more insidious "social currency" thieves. These people are selling other people's work as content in games and on social sites such as Facebook and Second Life. Those badge, flair, gift and similar applications on Facebook are generally full of stolen content. These people put this together through a site that pays them for the usage of the app. So, when you use all of these cutesy, useless apps, you are ripping off countless artists and designers who are not being compensated for their work. These thefts are a bit harder to track as they aren't nearly as blatant and open and people are unaware of the cash aspect involved. They think it's all free and no one is making money, so it's no big deal. They are utterly incorrect. But still they do get caught like markyourspot.com. Their site is also now defunct. The best thing I can say to the citizens of the Internet is "Don't use these stupid things. They are a rip-off to you and the people whose images are being stolen. Put them out of business by just not using them."
Seriously, morons, it's the Internet. Everyone is watching you. Just stop stealing our work before we grind you into a squealing mud puddle metaphorically speaking. Consider that you are making money off of multiple artists, some of them actual professionals. Consider that at some point someone is going to get smart and mount a class action suit against your sorry thieving ass. Consider that you're risking losing EVERYTHING for a quick profit: reputation, ability to run a business, your home, your car, EVERYTHING. The Internet allows us to let everyone know in seconds what a thieving scumbag you are. The Internet Wayback Machine makes that information at least somewhat available almost perpetually. Yes, we WILL ruin you if you steal from us or our friends. Do you really think you're going to be able to outrun all of this when you're caught? And you WILL be caught, I promise you. Many artists have very loyal fans who are quick to report thieves out of respect. And some of us have a hobby of looking for questionable things which should be reported. We have eyes and ears everywhere. You will not get away with thieving forever. Do yourselves a favor and just get a real damned job you lazy asses.
