"Oh!" she said, "There is another cow!"

"No," her mother said. "That is a llama. Some people drink llama milk, in other parts of the world. But be careful how you approach this beautiful animal. Although some like to be petted, others will spit at you!" She smiled. "I will take you to the petting zoo soon."

That is an interesting idea. Thank you. I am unaware of any site that will do that. I don't know if I agree or disagree; let me think about it.

My computer had a heart attack and died. I'm borrowing someone else's. It may take me a few days to get replacement parts. So I may not be responsive for a few days.

Pat

I don't think we want to go on a witch hunt. Lots of people who want to watch are perfectly innocent. Let's not worry about people who do that. Some of them may want to look at your art but may not speak English well enough to leave a comment. I favor people's work more often than I comment because of lack of time, and I want to see their work again.

Pat

Actually, the reason they closed down is because someone from here contacted their host, and complained. It has nothing to do with commotion here. If I don't visit the forums, I'm not aware of any commotion.

They are in the process of taking down all images complained of.

This is unusual responsiveness, and the only thing I can figure is that because Russia wants to be admitted to the European Union, they're cracking down when caught.

Pat

Just because they come here to collect art doesn't mean they look at the forums. Not everyone does. I rarely do. There's no excuse for theft, period, whether or not they read the forums.

Pat

The problem you will have with getting these fantasy artists to act will be, what court will they sue in? If American courts, the Russians will just laugh. If Russian courts, under what law? The Russian courts will just dismiss the suits.

Pat

Maddy,

LOL

I didn't see the characters. I guess I wouldn't have been able to email her! I went back and yep, they're there! Duh!

Thanks for the information.

I have looked at almost her entire collection, and I have more links for art from people I recognize. I haven't seen any of mine. It seems she only tends to rip off art that is the right size for screensavers. Or maybe she changed them to be the right size; can't say. But I usually use a very different aspect ratio. Maybe that's why. Or maybe she doesn't like my art. ;)

It has to be up to the artist how to react. I have decided to start putting my URL on my art (I'll re-upload to do that) so that if she does take anything, people will at least know where to find the artist. Personally, I wouldn't mind the free advertising if I liked the web site, but I don't. It's full of all kinds of things I don't want to be associated with.

Maybe it's time these dumb clucks realized that they'd be better off inviting people to post, rather than just stealing. It seems like a favorites list in a way, but the problem is, it IS on a site which we may have chosen not to post on, and that's about the way I see it. I am very careful where I post art.

I was having a discussion with my husband earlier. It seems that there is some big movie company suing Google. I don't remember who it was, but it's over YouTube. People who have their ear to the ground have said that when a small amount of stuff gets circulated, it actually increases sales. Some artists have put free songs on their site for that reason. He said if the movie company wins, it will destroy the internet. On the other hand, if the movie company loses, it will definitely have a chilling effect on presenting our art on the internet. We will have to make some choices. We can go around fighting this battle until the cows come home, but I don't think we are going to put a stop to it. That's my take on it, anyway. I don't think what the Russians are doing will hurt sales. Aim for a different market. I try to sell art to hang on the wall. It's too much work for them to market my art, so they're not going to bother. So the best thing to do is take advantage of it by putting your URL on your work. Get the free publicity. It sticks in my craw, but the more time I waste on this, the less time I have to do something productive.

Just some random thoughts.

Pat

Exactly. So the best way to stop the ripoffs is to ignore them. When they see it doesn't work, they'll try something else, like maybe inviting us to post. That's the way I see it, anyway. The issue is wanting to get proper credit for our work. The best way to do that is to make our URL large enough on the image so they see who did the work. They don't care. So we can get away with it.

On another note, I think I have figured out what their game is. The URL for thumbnails pages includes us_ad. I think they are detecting IP addresses, deciding where in the world they are, and aiming advertising at them. Never mind that the advertising is all in Russian. They haven't figured that out yet. But it's the ads they're selling, not the art. The art simply gets exposure. But by not being attributed, it doesn't do much good. If they attribute, it helps. But they're not pretending it's their own art work. This is simply their collection of favorites. If you want to take advantage of the free publicity, put your web site or gallery URL on all your pictures. In the meantime, all the investigating we do just gives them hits, and they like that! The best handle would be to band together and get the EU to insist they respect intellectual property as a condition for joining. Some of us might even choose to post on Russian web sites, but the way things are now, all that would do would be to mean more ripoffs. Anyway, those are my thoughts. If we are going to continue to monitor the situation, I recommend we formally volunteer for specific web sites, and other people simply refrain from surfing there, to cut back on their hits.

Pat

I have an idea. I have been thinking of starting a web site for art. It would be a portal to other web sites. A person could post a thumbnail there and when someone clicks on the link, they see the image that is posted on the other site. A person could organize thumbnails to different sites in one place. What do you think about that idea? It could be adapted to provide a fair amount of security and mesh with paying to see pictures.

Pat

Folks,

Valerie asked me to come post. I read and write Russian (though writing is very tedious for me, because I have to copy and paste each letter, though I just got a Cyrillic keyboard, but it's been decades since I used one, and I think this is a different order from the one I used).

Here is some information that may be helpful. Please spread this to other sites with artists who have been ripped off. I don't have time right now to do that. I am also giving information about artists who do other types of art work, not just fractals.

I got the following from people's links on the work itself. Information about the rip-off "artist" is below my list.

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/a/856/83341_310_398_ArtFile_ru.jpg
www.unc.edu/~Maraszti

The link to this person's site no longer works.

http://www.topdesktop.ru/

I don't know the story behind that one.

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|171294
http://www.tws3d.com/

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|171798
savinoff.com

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|178155
www.begann.de

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|191794
fanficbug.deviantart.com

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|192705
GMS

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|194020
Jay Testerman

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|195286
Jaime Josso

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|206253
http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|206254
http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|206255
David Fuchs

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|208832
Ensar Yanar

Dances with Roos
http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|219779
http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|219938
http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|220113

Kas (2007)
Miracles
http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|220590

http://www.artfile.ru/oboi/b/i.php?i=a|220592
David Makin

I already told fanficbug on dA about it. I have also sent emails to savinoff.com and to Magann (begann.de), but haven't gotten a response yet.

The poster is named Kris. Here is her web site: akakris.igumnov.com . It<br></br>is almost entirely in Russian. Email on the site is by means of a form:<br></br><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://akakris.igumnov.com/about?about_send_form=submit">http://akakris.igumnov.com/about?about_send_form=submit</a><br></br><br></br>On that page, the first blank is for email address. The second is for<br></br>subject, and the third is for the message. The final blank probably<br></br>wants to know how you found her, but there are a couple of words I don't<br></br>recognize. I'd leave it blank. The next item is a button for sending the<br></br>email.<br></br><br></br>Her web site settles her gender. Her nationality is Russian.<br></br><br></br>She lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. If you click on the link Крис<br></br><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"></a>on any thumbnail, it will give you a popup box. You can leave a message for Kris by clicking on the first clickable link. The link to the popup box should work whether or not you have a Cyrillic font. It will look different, but that's all.<br></br><br></br>If you need any more information, let me know. It seems likely that she<br></br>reads English, because she has been accessing so many English-language<br></br>sites.<br></br><br></br>As far as methods for protecting art is concerned, most don't work, and I understand there is new software that will automatically rip off art even when it's protected by javascript. The link to the actual image is always in the source code, so the transparent skin doesn't prevent a determined and knowledgeable person. I support not trying to do anything to stop it through security measures because all they do is give a false sense of security anyway. I think in all the years I have been on the internet, I've only seen two sites where you simply couldn't get the image by any means other than screen capture. But screen capture also works! If you can download it to your machine, you have a copy somewhere. The trick is finding out where. Some sites will prevent you from storing the image temporarily in your cache, but those are few and far between.<br></br><br></br>I hope this helps.

Pat

This be me. My son Victor took this.

Pat

1 DrOGaN 2 hilofoz 3 qunsan Pat

@ Erlik, I know what I have to do to reinstall Netscape safely; I have done it before. It's a lot of work. I haven't found any obvious, blaring failure to show CSS properly that would cause me to give up using Netscape, which I use for other reasons. @ kawecki, You probably mean Javascript, which is a different language from Java. I keep Java turned off because it is a resource hog that crashes my computer eventually. I don't miss much because I keep it turned off. Javascript is necessary for most forms, and some other functions, and while Netscape 4x doesn't handle the later versions adequately, it's not usually a problem.

@ Erlik, I have Opera. I don't like it at all. I just use it for testing my web pages. I would prefer not to have to reinstall Netscape. It means I'd have to back up my bookmarks and everything in my email program. It would be a pain. @ kawecki: You're right. I could clear the cache that way, but of course by the time the browser crashes, clearing the cache doesn't resurrect it. I spend so much time on Renderosity some days that clearing the cache frequently is a time-consuming proposition. I haven't been over at Freestuff lately. @ PunkClown: I was accessing pictures from thumbnails pages in the Terragen gallery when it happened, usually. I don't believe it happened in response to any other action, if I recall correctly. I may or may not have had a crash when uploading, but I don't think I did. I didn't have a crash when posting. Hope that helps.