I really dont like to open discutions in forums...but here I am again...with a problem...

I know to many of us happen this...and to me it just happen the fifth time ! This time was my art only, but in the past, three times a part of my store has been stollen and sold on other sites by other people !

Now, another person, took my identity and my images and posted it on another site, a very well know one also. At least 10 of my images were already posted there ! that thief not only took my name and my images, but she even made conversation with people in my name ! Talking with those people and pretending she is me...well, this is quite scary, believe me !

I dont get it...why these people do this exactelly ? they dont seem to know that a person can get sued for impersonating somebody else, a person can get sued for copyright infrigement ! However, they do this and they dont care !

When i contacted the person and I was polite with her asking her why exactelly is she doing this to me...guess what she did ? Instead of appologissing, she insulted me...even using the "fuck" word ! The message was so insulting that I thought I am gonna fall down off my chair...!
I mean, come on...she steals my art and my identity and she is the one who isults me and makes me feel like a pile of garbage ?

Much later the problem has been solved by the admins...

anyway, I just want to give few advices for the artists:

1...No matter how many art sites you discover, always make an user name on them. Post few of your images and be there before others take your name and put your own art there before you.

2...Always keep the original renders and the high rez images and dont post on any site too large rez images, post small ones that cannot be reproduced by thiefs... Believe me, it is a huge shock to see your own art image on a CD cover, a magazine or a book...when you didnt even sold it to them.

3...sometimes, when you post small sized images there will be new subscribed members who will write you in private and tell you how much they love the image and that they would like to have a high rez version of it to use it on the desktop as a wallpaper... believe me, they will use it for something else. So, never send high rez images to anyone !

well...this is it...I usually dont go in forums to talk about my problems, but this time I am a bit desperate...I mean...5 times stuff have been stollen from me...and this thing happen to many other artists and it can happen to anyone.

Thank you for listening to me !

Valentina

Message edited on: 11/06/2005 03:49

Have you considered a lawsuit? If not, why not?

I mean, come on...she steals my art and my identity and she is the one who isults me and makes me feel like a pile of garbage ? That's it, right there. She feels like a pile of garbage, herself. She uses your art and your identity because she's so very unhappy with her own. She pretended to be you so that she could have people praise her, and she's so screwed up that it doesn't matter that the praise wasn't earned. Pretty pathetic, really. Most art thieves don't go to these lengths, but they will steal stuff to make themselves look "cool" (look how many images I stole! Aren't I cool?!), and to gain status amongst their equally pathetic peers and so on. And some people who do it are just genuinely ignorant and/or stupid, of course, but those are the people who will also pretend to be you in order to get some sense of identity. I'm sorry you had to deal with this sort of person. I've had my share of dealing with people like that (not the specific situation you've experienced, but the same sort of person, anyway), and it's definitely NOT fun. bonni

yes, I did considered and I did this with past occassions. Right after I received her insulting message, I told her she will have to deal with my lawer very soon. But this time the person backed off and publicly appologissed many times saying that she was just jealous and that it will never happen again. And the tones of message from her telling me she is sorry. They all do like this... English is not my first language, but I think she must be a teenager, her imature way of solving the problem proved this... However, I will take measures about this...

Good luck! Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not new! Something very similar happened to me way back in the '70s! And got up close and personal at that - way before there was an internet. It's just more prevalent now that there is one! Larry F

Yes, as long as you are dealing with individuals it's allot easier. You can have a lawyer send a letter stating that the offender could settle out of court for monetary damages (especially if your image wound up on a magazine) and the magazine itself could be held liable, even if not for monetary purposes but if nothing more than to set the record straight.

My main dealings in art is as an inventor, the US Patent Office describes this as art. I have had several patents and three have been ripped off by large corporations and, as much as we may not like to admit it in America, our pledge of allegiance to the Flag might as well end "...with Liberty and Justice to all who can afford it." because in a court of law, when it comes to patent art, the person with the deepest pockets usually wins the case.

Sorry this happened to you, Valentina, and I'm glad it has been sorted out now.

Well, Im psychologist of profession and it seems that this person has a real probleme with his/her psych. I think there doesnt help a lawer, at all if the person is living in another country as you do. I think the best solution is you write in each forum a statement, like here. Also the same on your personal website. Really shit whats happen sometimes in Internet. Greetings Andrea

I'm so sorry this happen to you. Thank you for the advice, it really makes good practice with smaller size. To steal from your store, (past) is really awful, you keep your prices so low, I can't see the need of anyone stealing from you. I love your Artwork, don't let this stop you from posting. I look forward to seeing your artwork so much. Hugs to you. Leah

the only way to get people to stop doing this is to get a copyright on your art. Unfortunately, it's not always that easy, because of the time is money. Also, because this is the internet, it makes stealing and reproducing images a lot easier. There should be a way to stap an imvisible watermark on a graphic that would reproduce if anybody but the original auther/artist uses it. Oh well, so much for dreaming.

Its really sad something like this happens to you, i know many people who has hires images in their webpage gallery that they have used imageready or similar to cut the image in slices, stealers are lazy or incompatible to parse the picture together. i think that copying picture to your hard drive option should be disabled from galleries here too to stop these actions from stealers

The problem is that an invisible watermark only works if someone is being very careless and not doing anything to find and circumvent such measures. I can think of several easy ways to remove the watermark, none of them very technical even: 1. If the image is high-resolution, print it and scan it back. No more invisible watermark. 2. Display and take a screenshot. Even for an image with resolution larger than the screen, several screenshots can easily be reconstructed in PS or PSP. 3. Convert in some application to another format that drops the watermark data. This is the problem with encryption, licensing, watermarking, passwording, and so on. Hackers/crackers/thieves don't think conventionally about getting what they want. Applications use frequent checks to verify licensing. The crackers just jump over the checks themselves and continue on their merry way. I think it will definitely come down to personal verification techniques such as retinal and fingerprint scans. Even then, the correlating data that verifies that 'you are you' will need to be stored offline and in Fort Knox to avoid identity theft.

Sorry to hear that, Valentina, that sucks immensely (pardon my french here). And it figures that she only then backpaddled when you came with a lawyer, people usually don't back off that easily, rather insult you and/or threaten you themselves. Stupid people they are is all I can say...

really sorry this has happened to you. :( don't let them bring you down. you just keep on doing your wonderful art.

I saw the antics of this "person" at the site and am stunned as the way Valentina has been treated..it's disgusting. I myself landed up banned for publically telling this person what I thought of her. I am banned for 24 hours. Got 3 to go lol. I had a picture of mine stolen about 2 weeks ago. And it was no way anywhere near to the scale as what Valentina has had to endure. But it is disheartening even on my scale. I landed up with this guys sister harassing me and begging me not to take action. Would you believe this guy even left my watermark on my picture eyeroll. Ty Valentina for the words of advice. No matter whether it is a scribble or a masterpiece of art we have the right to protect it. And no matter how down and out I feel I cannot even think that I would steal someones identity. (((((((((valentina))))))))))))

((hugs)) I am so sorry you have had to deal with this...

This is just crazy, people can not do this on there own, and have to go out and steal others identity? How low is that. I am with you Valentina.

Kitten, you've been temporarily banned?! Sheesh...

" The problem is that an invisible watermark only works if someone is being very careless and not doing anything to find and circumvent such measures. I can think of several easy ways to remove the watermark, none of them very technical even:" "1. If the image is high-resolution, print it and scan it back. No more invisible watermark." Probably it will work, I'm not sure. "2. Display and take a screenshot. Even for an image with resolution larger than the screen, several screenshots can easily be reconstructed in PS or PSP." It will not work, watermark will be preserved. "3. Convert in some application to another format that drops the watermark data." It will not work, watermark will be preserved. Watermark are distributed in all the image, a fragment of the image contains the watermark. Watermarks are the same as holograms and are based on the same principle. Watermark are done in the frecuency or wavelet domain and not in the spatial domain. But watermarks can be easily removed by some softwares or simple PaintShop operations.

Well, 3. covers 'simple operations'. That's why I added 'drops the watermark data'. :) I'm not so sure about discounting 2. either. A screenshot ONLY captures the displayed data (RGBA - most likely not even A). Where is the watermark data in the RGB data (unless they are doing something insignificant to the actual RGB values) since this all that a screencapture will take of the image?

"Where is the watermark data in the RGB data" It is distributed all over the RGB data of the image, the watermark slightly alter the values of each pixel RGB. Watermaking is a destructive process to the image, stronger watermarks more corrupted is your original image. Watermarking is similar to jpeg compression. In jpeg compression some elements of the image are destroyed resulting in the compression of the image. In watermarking some elements are added to the image. Watermarking has the property that if a you a fragment of the image the same watermark is present in this fragment. If the fragment become too small the watermark is still present but cannot be readed or identified.

the only way to get people to stop doing this is to get a copyright on your art. Unfortunately, it's not always that easy, because of the time is money. Copyrights are automatic under international law. You don't have to do anything for your work to be copyrighted. The invisible watermarks are, IMHO, a waste of time and money. You have to pay for an annual license, and it doesn't discourage anyone from taking the art, anyway, AND it's not difficult to remove them (I've tried it, and it's much easier than people think). And finally, how is having an invisible watermark on your images going to prevent someone from pretending they're you?! LOL! bonni

so true bonni...

Right, kawecki. I did a search on invisible watermarking - after eating. ;) Yes, they do use 'something insignificant': the least-significant bit of the RGB. The image must be in RGB format for this to work (as compared to GIF/IFF with a lookup table). But, as you say, it is still possible to remove this. So you either have an easily removable, undetectable watermark or a gaudily visible one that is difficult to remove. No way to win. I agree with the idea of retaining a safely stored original that cannot be reproduced by an impersonator. For instance, I can quite easily prove in any court that I am the creator of one of my DVD sets since I have all of the original video (cuts and all), files, references, and so on. Someone would need to break into my house and steal almost everything I own to prove otherwise. ;)

Sadly there will always be arseholes out there who like to steal things (and complain when things of theirs are stolen), I don't think this will stop, and i dont think there is any way around it, even Sony's extremely Harsh rootkit is supposed to stop piracy but looks like it's doing more harm than good. I think the only way to get back at these people is the courts, and for the rest of us (who are honest) to teach these idiots the errors of their ways. And why on earth was originalkitten banned???? jeese talk about wrong.

So you either have an easily removable, undetectable watermark or a gaudily visible one that is difficult to remove. It's entirely untrue that a visible watermark has to be gaudy, ugly, or otherwise unsightly. bonni

That's more my opinion. :) I see visible watermarks as something that detracts from the original artwork, no matter how nicely done or barely visible.

I view nicely done watermarks as the finishing touch on a work, just like a painter would sign a painting. ;-) I do agree that if they're done badly, they're ugly and detract, of course. bonni

I shall try to explain how watermarking works. There are two kinds of watermarks: - The classic watermark where you add a soft watermark image to your picture, you can do it easily with layers in Photoshop. This watermark is always visible. - The digital watermark, this is not visible, in case of a strong watermark you will see noise and distorsions in your image. This kind of watermarks is very much difficult to explain, I shall try to do my best. You have some function between two variables, for example I = f(t), where I is the intensity and t is the time. Now by a mathematical process you transform your function I = f(t) into another function I = g(w) where w is the frecuency. You are representing the same data in another form. Too complicated?, let try a practical example. The variable I is the intensity of a music, a sound is a wave whose intensity is changing through time and fast. You can record the sound wave with a mechanical recorder or view it in an osciloscope. But there is another way to analyze a music, you can analyze it speaking in bass, middle, treeble tones. Now we are speaking in sound frecuencies and not in time with the shape of the waves. Now you have two ways to describe a sound, in the temporal domain of intensity and time or in the frecuency domain with intensity and frecuency. The mathematical function that allows us to change one representation into another is the Fourrier transform. Now we can go back to watermarking. With images is more complicated because we have three variables, the intensity of the pixel (for simplifying only grayscales) and two coordinates x and y (or height and width), so our image is a function I = f(x,y). Now we do the same as with sound and apply another mathematical transformation that can be a two dimensional Fourrier transform and we obtain another representation of the same data of the image I = g(wx,wy). Both ways I = f(x,y) or I = g(wx,wy) are representing our image. Now we take the other reprentation and we change a little I = g(wx,wy) + watermark(wx,wy) and taking the inverse mathematical process (inverse Fourrier transform) and we return to the normal representation of our image I' = f(x,y) this time the image is watermarked. Is something equivalent to adding a treeble note to the music, but our ears are sensible to frecuencies and if we listen carefuly we can hear the watermark. Our eyes are only sensible to spatial information and not to frecuency, so we are not able to see the watermark. Don't kill me, I did my best....

Yes, and Fourier transforms are well understood. So it is easy to do the transform to convert the data representation domain and then analyze to remove the 'treble' frequencies that constitute the watermark.

This is the problem with any type of data encryption (which is what this type of watermarking boils down to in essense). Anything that is mathematically stable (solvable) can be decrypted. It may take a long time. 64-bit encryption was once considered unbreakable. That was until they threw only several hundred thousand computers running as a pseudo-supercomputer at it...it only took four years. Think about how fast it would be it the number of processors were in the millions (several months maybe). 128-bit encryption will eventually be broken. It will not take 'trillions and trillions' of years - only enough parallel processing power to run through the astronomical number of choices.

When it comes to brute-force, nothing beats the human ego like a computer processor executing millions/billions/trillions of instructions per second. See Gasparov... :) That said, the best encryption scheme would be fractal. Well, some fractals are stable (Mandelbrot, Sierpinski, etc.) whereas others truly chaotic (non-linear). The problem with truly chaotic systems is that the same input yields widely varying results. Therefore, they are unstable. Encryption keys couldn't be guaranteed to be stable under such circumstances, but they'd be unbreakable (for anyone of course).

Message edited on: 11/07/2005 03:02

Attached Link: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/digimark.htm

Having an invisible watermark still won't stop people from grabbing your images. Sure, you can "prove" it's yours, but so what? You could have done that anyway, more than likely, by showing wireframe views, or layered .psd files, or the raw render, or any number of other ways of showing it. Generally speaking, the sort of person who will steal images won't care if there's an "invisible" mark/encryption in it, any more than hardcore burglers care if there's a sign saying "Warning, this property protected by XYZ alarm system". More on Digimarc at the link. BUT... this is getting off topic. What apparently happened here is that someone deliberately took images and then pretended to be that person, which is not only copyright violation, it's really, seriously, CREEPY. The only thing that will help in a situation like that is going to be professional psychiatric help for the person who perpetrates such a thing. bonni

originalkitten was banned because she called that person "a pathetic thief" publicly ! which was true ! it wasn't a false accusation at all ! They said they dont tolerate public accusation...funny thing, because in this case the accusation was right and she didn use nasty words, she just said the truth. However, she was banned for 24 hours... how "sweet" is this ? That person not only stollen my art, but she stollen my identity, pretending she is me ! Talking with people in my name, writting false information under the images she was posting !...and even begging for comments!! This is indeed creepy ! And just because originalkitten called her a "pathetic thief", the admins banned her ? i am sorry to say...but after all this, I cannot say the admins acted the way they should.

Many time ago I experimented how effective watermarks could be, so I did some tests and experimented some ideas.
Some failed and some success, once I had success I needn't to go further just because I knew the answer, "watermarks can be removed"
But you needn't to remove a watermark. The idea is simple and maquiavelic. Take a watermarked image then take other watermarked image and then compose an image with both, can be side by side, superposed, etc.
What will do the software or plugins that identifies watermarks?, there are two watermarks!, if both watermarks are of the same strength the plugin get crazy and reports "no watermark found"
The second image can be only a black image with a watermark that you superpose to the other image.
And here is Maquiavelo, if I watermark my black image with my name and make this watermark very much stronger the result will be that any watermark check will report that the original image is copyrighted be ME!!!
I am EVIL!!!!!!!!!

Message edited on: 11/07/2005 07:54

I say "Out" the #$%^!. Let us know who she is so we can avoid her.

I just read this post all the way through. I'm not sure it was a good idea to tell people all about watermarks and how to get around them because the bad people can take advantage of this information. At any rate you have my complete sympathy! I always sign my art, but it would be easy to remove my signature, then again I never do high resolution art in the first place but if I did, I would make a smaller size and only 72 dpi. Then at the very least it is not printable. And of course ultimately it's best to go after the web site -of course if the web site is run by people who don't care then it is just a good place to avoid. Eight or nine years ago when I went on the Internet and built a gallery I had to face the reality of people stealing my art. I spent a month or two agonizing over this reality and feeling I should never put art on the Internet. But after a while the desire to share my art was stronger and I decided it was worth the risk. I do try to keep watch but really only for my commercial products. I have not gone to galleries at other web sites to look for copies of my own art. I suppose that keeps my stress level down.
But if someone stole my art and my identity then yes I would do everything possible to correct that situation. Now that I'm aware when I do visit galleries I will certainly look for your art. Big hugs!

Message edited on: 11/16/2005 16:44

I agree with Lyne -- to go into detail about how to remove watermarks was not the point of this thread. I feel sorry for what happened to not only this artist but others that I know here at RR as well. I think we all work hard on our work and I feel to steal one's art is one thing but the identity too? PLEASE. That's going WAY too far -- I would have that person on a plate. Kitten -- good for you for standing up for what was right -- they shouldn't have banned you for telling the truth. That woman seriously needs professional help if she feels the need to not only steal your artwork but your personality as well. Heaven help her. Keep on posting Val, we've got your back! I think as a community we can all "look out" for each other and help each other out!

Why isn't the site listed? I don't mean a URL just the name of the site.