Forums » Smalltalk » Grand scale art thievery

This could go either in this category or the art category, but I felt it would fit better here. I'm not sure how many people know about the recent issue with Chad Love-Lieberman, but he's been caught for some major thievery between DeviantArt, Fur Affinity, two published novels and various published articles on 'helping new artists'. He's been at this since about 2002, but only recently been caught as of this month (Somewhere around August 17th). Talks been going around from DeviantArt to various forums, livejournal groups like Art_Theft and Artist_Beware and personal journals, and as far as MMO forums like Perfect World International and even The Colbert Report forum.

http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/journal/43348269/
http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/journal/43396877/

Read the comments on this one: http://forums.colbertnation.com/?page=ThreadView&thread_id=28276
Side by Side book comparison: http://live-momma.livejournal.com/337590.html
Side by Side article comparison: http://live-momma.livejournal.com/338475.html
A few rather detailed link lists on Lieberman:
http://blog.deirdrereynolds.com/2011/08/art-theft-scam-list.html
http://quirky-love.blogspot.com/2011/08/chad-love-lieberman-art-thief.htm

Now, while the two sites he was using, Art4Love and MarkYourSpot, are offline, he's been hopping around still to other domains, obviously making things difficult. The amount of money he's earned by selling other peoples works as 'paintings' is astronomical, where some pieces he's been selling have gone for upwards of a thousand dollars.

How things will end is up in the air, but I figured it would be a good thing to make this community aware of considering that a fair amount of the community are artists, know artists and have respect for artists in some fashion.

From all accounts, they're in the works on throwing down a major lawsuit against him, but how effective it will be will have to be watched for. I'd recommend doing some digging for yourselves, but most definitely check to see if any art that he's claimed as his is really yours or belongs to someone you know. (A helpful link to have work taken down https://creativecommons.org/dmca )

Personally, I really wish the people who had their work stolen luck, and that Chad get's the punishment he deserves for this indignity.

When I first saw this, I thought it was a big joke but then I went through that art4love site before it was taken down and I was like "Wow. This guy stole a lot of art, I mean A LOT."

So many people posted comparisons of their art on that site and having it being renamed to something silly... Even GENZOMAN'S lovely art from DA was posted every where on there. I mean like, wtf? How can this guy get away with this for so long never ceases to amaze me.

I hope this guy goes down, hard. Can't believe artists' work has been stolen and tried to sell them as profit.