I just got a really nice email from Joe Wierenga that pretty much sums up the situation.

Below is copy of the email he has sent to the GAG
–
“To the Law Advo­cacy Group,

My name is Joe Wierenga. I am not a member of the Graphic Artist’s Guild, but my sit­u­a­tion is cer­tainly one that should be brought to the Guild’s atten­tion. What has hap­pened to me and 93 other artists is a huge con­cern for the entire visual arts com­mu­nity: things like this simply should not be able to happen.

Like nearly every other visual artist, I have a per­sonal web­site fea­tur­ing gal­leries of my work as a means of self pro­mo­tion. I recently dis­cov­ered that a book has been pub­lished with­out my knowl­edge fea­tur­ing many illus­tra­tions stolen from my web­site. A line of text saying “Joseph Wierenga (c) 2007 All Rights Reserved” appears under every image on my web­site, but in spite of this the book’s pub­lish­ers took the 72 dpi, 500 pixel tall images out of my gallery with­out ever telling me, and are sell­ing them with­out my permission.

I am not alone. The book is called “Col­or­ful Illus­tra­tion 93*” and fea­tures stolen work from 93 dif­fer­ent artists, most of whom are emerg­ing young illus­tra­tors and design­ers. Every single image and line of text has been stolen from per­sonal web­sites and blogs with­out a word to any of the cre­ators. Worst of all, the book is tac­itly set up like a stock illus­tra­tion cat­a­log and comes with a CD of files for every stolen image. Buyers might think they’re buying duty free usage of all the images along with the book; there’s a chance I could open a random mag­a­zine tomor­row and find my own illus­tra­tions look­ing back at me.

They found our web­sites through a web portal for illus­tra­tors called The Little Chimp Soci­ety. LCS is intended to be a portal for young artists to meet each other and share advice on each other’s work. LCS claims no own­er­ship to any of the work fea­tured by its mem­bers, and attribute full own­er­ship to the artist. Many inter­views and news posts made by the portal’s web­mas­ter were also put in the book with­out per­mis­sion. Last week a member of the portal hap­pened across a copy of the book in a store and reported it to the LCS web­mas­ter. He imme­di­ately con­tacted all of the illus­tra­tors and we are cur­rently pur­su­ing legal action.

We are not get­ting any­where. The name of the pub­lisher and the ISBN number given in the index are both fake. The phone number given is actu­ally for an air filter com­pany. The address of the Pub­lish­ing House is in Hong Kong. The dis­trib­u­tors are located in Japan and Spain, and are thus far being unco­op­er­a­tive in help­ing us locate the pub­lisher. Unless we are able to track down the cul­prit, there seems to be no legal recourse avail­able to us. And they have been very thor­ough in cov­er­ing their tracks.

I am report­ing the sit­u­a­tion to you, even though I don’t know whether any of the 93 artists involved in this inci­dent are mem­bers of the GAG, because every visual artist with­out excep­tion is in danger of having this happen to them. With­out being able to find the pub­lisher to hold account­able, the law offers us no pro­tec­tion. Even if we are able to shut this oper­a­tion down, there is noth­ing stop­ping others from doing the same thing. This base­less thiev­ery could happen to anyone who has put their work, copy­righted or oth­er­wise, any­where on the inter­net. If one of the 93 artists had not hap­pened across the book by chance, none of us would even know it ever hap­pened. Some­thing needs to be done.

I am not an expert on copy­right law, but I am aware of the cur­rent polit­i­cal tur­moil sur­round­ing copy­right and its appli­ca­tion to the web–specif­i­cally inter­net piracy. What has hap­pened here is Inter­net Piracy at its very worst. This sit­u­a­tion is a clear exam­ple of how poorly the old law func­tions in the dig­i­tal world. This says to me that the fight must be made to pro­tect artist’s rights. I hope you see it the same way.

For your ref­er­ence:
The web portal these pub­lish­ers used to find their vic­tims can be seen at http://​the​lit​tlechimp​so​ci​ety.com/
The LCS webmaster’s blog, with news updates and fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be seen at http://​ape​fluff.com/
His name is Darren Di Lieto. He is the one orga­niz­ing the charge against the pub­lisher and can be con­tacted by email at (use the con­tact link at the top of the page)

Thank you for your time,

~Joe Wierenga“

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