I'm not sure if you are aware, but http://cccmc.com are going around stealing images and selling them as wallpapers on a cd. You may want to search that site and see if your stuff has been stolen as I have a few friends whos work is being sold there without permission. They also have an entire 3d section and alot of the pictures look familiar. info Here is what their "copyright" notice says: "Copyright Notice: Please Read before ordering When you purchase the wallpapers, it is not the wallpapers you are buying, but the time it took for us to collect them, create them and the materials and time to burn them onto a CD (DVD). You only have the right to view them on your machine and for personal use on the same machine. The Art Work is copyrighted by the original Artist and the Wallpaper Design by CCCMC, and you do not have a right to share the wallpapers or to modify them or to use them in any document (electronic or paper or paperless), unless it in on your computer only and is not viewed by the public. You can not recompile them, sell them, loan them, copy them or distributed them in any manner. All of these pics are available on the internet for free if you choose to locate them and take the time to download them. You are paying for our time to do this for you. We are not selling you any rights to use them other than those that you would get by copying them yourself from the same source(s) on the internet. If you feel that you have work here in which is yours and that the copyright has been infringed upon, please contact us and we will discuss this with you. All Work on this site is from the fair trade policy and/or public domain then modified by us to become new original artwork. We do not relinquish the rights on said artwork and maintain our copyright on our work. If you do sell or make available in any other format (electronic, paper, paperless, website, peer-to-peer, etc or any other means) these pictures to anyone else you will then be buying a full license agreement for distribution at the cost of $1000.00 per set as detailed above. We reserve the right to charge you in any manor if you do so, including any means open to us, including legal action. If you have any questions, please contact us. Margaret Organ-Kean did some digging and found their info and that of their ISP: Registrant: Lord Greywolf's Gaming Center 11134 US 19 unit 1A Port Richey, Florida 34668 United States Registered through: GoDaddy.com Domain Name: CCCMC.COM Created on: 07-Jan-02 Expires on: 07-Jan-05 Last Updated on: 19-Jan-04 Administrative Contact: Sawyer, Thomas Lord_Greywolf@cccmc.com Lord Greywolf's Gaming Center 11134 US 19 unit 1A Port Richey, Florida 34668 United States 7278635285 Fax -- Technical Contact: Sawyer, Thomas Lord_Greywolf@cccmc.com Lord Greywolf's Gaming Center 11134 US 19 unit 1A Port Richey, Florida 34668 United States 7278635285 Fax -- Domain servers in listed order: CCCMC.CCCMC.COM CCCMC.CERTIFIED-MCSE.NET

Be careful if you decide to visit this site, the design is awful. As is the spelling... "Wallpaper Copywrite by CCCMC.com - Artwork by Origional Artist"

To bad they don't know they can't copyright someone else's work. And to add insult to injury they are using Paypal, and some of the stuff violates Paypal's TOS.....if Paypal was alerted to this they'd freeze this guys cash in a flash and close the account down.....

That sort of footwork (copyright statement) is the work of someone trying to sidestep the copyright issue for other people's copyright. I saw several pictures from the http://www.digitalblasphemy.com website. I wonder if he is aware of the issue. Also saw some Disney pics, Simpsons, Looney Tunes (WB), .... wonder how they feel about such a site?

email them and find out :)

The Bryster's Gallery Images may be downloaded for your viewing pleasure. Images may NOT be used for any commercial purpose unless prior permission is given by the artist. This is my answer to the above posts.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1874787

Thanks, Jan! He'll get his sooner or later.

I guess this is one of those times when it actually pays to be a sorry artist. None of my stuff has been lifted that I can see. ;) I recognize a few, however, but none I can quite pinpoint in the 3d section, though I didn't spend much time wandering through there. The web design is rather awful.

What a sorry site :( and to make it worse, I think it's being served from an old 486 across a 14k modem or something, sheesh that's slow.......

Since the moron ripped some stuff from Craig Mullins and Stahlberg (among others), ive posted the link over at CGtalk, where those guys usually hang. They are usually pretty good at hanging people by their balls over there for stuff like this. >:)

How deep? Kneep deep in shit i must say, still wondering why this site has not been turned into a smoking crater on the serverfloor.

I've been to the digital blasphemy site before so I gave him a heads up on this thread. Recognized others work as well, hope somthing gets done about this.

Its been posted at the forums at Sijun too.

I wonder if we should contact the Escher estate foundation, seen them selling digitized Escher works there too. I dunno if M.C.'s kids/grandchildren would be happy 'bout that. LOL

Pauljs75: Do you have a link for that Escher site?

Bah...I cant believe I saw Craig Mullins and Jacek yerka's work in there....this guy has some stones.

I used to see some of the folks' stuff here (Nitro 115 and Kevin Kappis come to mind) at a place called Witt's End..still out there somewhere..I'd laugh like hell if something of mine's out there..caveat emptor, and all that..;) but for the serious artists out there, give 'em heck.

I notified Steven Stahlberg earlier, he's going to give the guy a heads up.....;] Also notified Humanoids Publishing about the Heavy Metal mag covers, Harris Comics about the Vampirella comic covers, Digital Blasphemy, DC comics, Julie Bell and a couple of others I saw there.... I'm hoping the publishing companys will kick ass, they don't like this sort of thing at all....

Mullins is well aware of it. He was actually the first one that was told. I think the original thread at Sijun was "Mullins, heads up" I saw alot of work there from alot of artists I know. The guy that runs that site (and steals the images) told me he was taking the stuff down as requested. Hes also been harassed up and down from people (which I dont agree with). really dont think that guy knows what he really is doing. He doesnt seem all that bright and after being threatened repeatedly, I think he got the idea.

Lol I just notified Steven Stahlberg as well lol.

From what I understand from the people that know him, he knows exactly what he's done. The site, with all the pages has changed 6 times since the original post, not only that, he has publicly, verbally denounced and abused the artist's whose work he's stolen, who asked him to take it down.

And the artists have every right to be outraged at what he was doing. When the post was first made I emailed him stating that what he was doing was copyright infringement, it was a sane, rational, and extremely polite email, and his reply was pretty much 'up yours'.....

Message edited on: 08/05/2004 19:39

If one of the artists in question contact Paypal they will take action.

His page is slowly but surely dying. This message has been posted on numerous art sites and forums. I guess hes got some pretty serious C&D emails from some pretty big people. One email told him to take the site down completly. I think hes pretty much done for.

If he does not get the message, you can also contact: Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Road Runner HoldCo LLC (XGUKSSRMIO) abuse@RR.COM 13241 Woodland Park Rd Herndon, VA 20171 US 703-345-3416 fax: 703-345-3607 His ISP

Currently, the page says that no cd's or artwork are for sale and that it is a "view" only page. However, I noticed a lot of artwork from Disney that's available to "view". I notified a friend of mine from the former "Retlaw" (Disney's legal dept. -Walter [Disney]- spelled backward. I'm sure there'll be a trial date any day now... :-)

Heheheh... Sent a letter to copyright@mcescher.com, so they'll be aware of this as well. LOL

One thing is for certain, the guy is most likely in serious trouble.

Doesn't matter if the images are 'just to view', he has what is called a complilation site;

COLLECTION / COMPILATION SITE - A site that is created with a variety of graphics, or files from more than one copyright holder. Permission must be received from each copyright holder for every image, or file in the collection. If permission is not given, the compilation site is in copyright violation.

So does this mean that if I share my pictures that he has stolen that he will take me to court and extract 1000.00 from me??????? ha....ha....haaaaaaaa........hee hee. Good Luck.

Yeah, I thought that one was a hoot to!

Attached Link: http://www.morgankeithstudios.com/patrick/pics/pirate.jpg

And heres what the prick posted instead of the images he was forced to take down.

I emailed and told him that it was slanderous to post that image and soon after he started to delete them. Im glad someone saved that picture.

That's funny coming from somebody who was trying to make a quick buck on an image w/o the artist's permission. Not to mention that those images are usually free to view elsewhere.

..and he can't even spell!

yep..seen quite a few of these..tho I guess I'm not good enough to be stolen..sniff, sniff..;)

as for Disney's they let the first sixs years go into publit use with no copyright that happened about 2 years ago they refuse to pay for the fees to get the copyrights to they first six years.

Sad thing about this whole affair is that he probably could have had a bunch of artists sign on to his idea if he had bothered to ask. Oh well, I have two websites which I use, Here at Renderosity for the pleasure of sharing ideas with my fellow artists, and Freshmeat for sharing images with the Open Source crowd. If I should ever get as good as the DigitalBlasphemy, maybe I can actually make real money from my artistic efforts.

That crap is one of the downsides to the internet. You either have the choice to watermark all over your art, therefore decreasing the beauty of it. Or post such small images no one can see the details.

I had an issue about a month ago where a fellow NHL wallpaper site owner (I do those beside 3d) wrote me and told me that along with his images, some of mine were being sold on ebay... I went and looked and sure enough, this other guy had at least 7 of my images there with my watermark removed and for sale as prints...

Took a couple mails to get him to take them off. I told ebay, they didn't care really.
People love to steal and make a quick buck when they can...

Message edited on: 08/07/2004 20:34

What the graphic community need, is to have ONE of these loosers going down hard, and forced to pay a fortune for their theft. That would make an example. Im still hoping for it to happen.

Just an update... I got a reply from the copyright guy at M.C. Escher.com. Hopefully the Escher guys won't mind if I post the reply here, since everyone in this discussion supports this type of action. Thought you guys might dig it though. ---- Dear Mr. [pauljs75], Having just returned from two weeks holiday, I found your email regarding the posting of Escher imagery at fantasy.cccmc.com, for which I would like to thank you. We indeed never gave them permission to post, and/or distribute/sell these images on their website and as such they have infringed our copyright. I have send them an email regarding this and unless they stop, we will start the necessary legal action against them. Once again our thanks for pointing this out to us, With kind regards, Mark Veldhuysen The M.C. Escher Company B.V. Tel. 00-31-(0)35-541.80.41 Fax. 00-31-(0)35-541.17.66 www.mcescher.com ----- So at least one of the "big dogs" are on the case. :)

Pauljs75: Well, thanks for the heads-up. That site has a message saying all Escher's stuff has been removed by request. Thinking about it, as I've done more than one Escher pic in Bryce, I could be in trouble here. What do you guys think? God knows I'm only doing it for fun. But I'm not the only one who's tried to do his work in 3d. ..sigh...:-(

But you're doing your version of Escher's stuff, they were actually selling 'snagged' Escher artworks...

Zhann: Fair comment. I've e-mailed them to hopefully shortcircuit any trouble I may be looking at. No reply yet though. But just out of curiousity, I'm wondering how many peps here have become interested in MCEscher since starting to do 3D in Bryce or whatever? If anything, I'm promoting Escher's work.

If copying a concept would be a crime, 95% of the graphics/artists community would be in trouble. :) I dont think you have anything to worry about Bryster.

True... It's one thing to study a master's work, tell people that it's a copy (and copy via means which aren't a direct reproduction), state the original source(s), and only do it for learning/enjoyment, and it's another thing when taking a direct copy/reproduction to sell for personal gain. There's a certain balance, but some people go over the edge. (That Greywolf guy was one of them.)

Thanks very much for the support, Guys! I appreciate it!