Interesting development on the subject of artist copyright is that Stability AI, Midjourney, and Deviant Art are being sued for DMCA copyright infringement for scraping sites for AI training...

"This can be done by cross-referencing a particular user to their list of buyers, which takes only moments to do. " Here's to hoping there isn't a witch hunt on those who use a different alias/email address for this site versus the sites they post on. My alias here is different than my Daz3D/deviantArt alias (they're all different in fact), and my purchase accounts use different email addresses than my posting accounts. Don't know why I used different aliases, I DO KNOW why I used different emails, and it's years too late to change these. So, yeah, it's REALLY NOT THAT SIMPLE. Not that I don't agree with what you're saying/promoting, it's just not as cut-and-dry as you are pointing out.

It would help if we can sign our contest work from now on too.

Great statement. Thanks for posting! Recently I have found some of my popular freebies (the news stand, the Brandenburg gate, the Liberty Statue) sold by thieves on big and apparently respectable marketplaces (not here on Renderosity), The uploaders were lazy and did not even change the textures or few details of the models. The 3d meshes were exactly the same. Luckily it did not happen with the transforming robots but I guess they are too easily recognizable. Obviously I have contacted the admins and asked to remove the models, because it's not only IP theft but a scam. People could have downloaded the models for free and legally, as intended by me, but they paid money to buy freebies resold without my permission by a scammer. I hope they were fully refunded. Only once I have asked to the admins of a big site to avoid legal actions, demanding only the removal of a model. After some search I have found that the uploader was a girl (probably young) from a very poor country. She uploaded some simple models (maybe actually created by her, I did not find similar ones elsewhere, they looked like the creations of a beginner) AND my news stand. I contacted her with a PM and warned her, but I did not want to put her into legal troubles. Don't take me wrong, art theft has NO justifications and cannot be tolerated but I gave her a chance to change her behavior, because I remember that when I was very young, in early 1990s, some of my friends and classmates (kids or teenagers) used to make illegal copies of videogames for Amiga. Years later they regretted because piracy harmed the Amiga market too (some creators stopped developing games for that platform, shifting to IBM compatible PCs or consoles and Commodore went bankrupt in 1994).

I support this statement. Even worse than average pirates that buy stuff and then just share it are the sites that buy and share stuff, but *charge money* for it! Making money off of someone else's IP is the lowest...

I have sent vendors information whenever I find their things on other sites a number of times. If we keep an eye out, we can help them (and hopefully people will keep an eye out for my things, too!), by letting them know. They can't be everywhere and still have time to create.