London Art Expo Vendor Accused of Image Theft

asherdeus

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Apr 23, 2012
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London Art Expo Vendor Accused of Image Theft



At least 25 comic-book-inspired deviantART prints were stolen and sold.

Twice a year, fans of movies, comics, and other media pack into London's ExCeL Exhibition Center to take part in the MCM Expo. It's a massive event that sees celebrities, fans and vendors come together to celebrate their shared passions. The first round of this year's events took place last weekend and has been marred by allegations from a tumblr user that a vendor at the show sold prints of images stolen from deviantART users.

Donna Evans, known in the deviantART community as tavington, noticed some striking similarities between drawings at the stall in question and drawings she'd seen on the artist networking site. She snapped a picture of the prints available at the stall (seen above) and asked her fans to help find the artists who really created the work.

After identifying some of the pieces as stolen, Evans posted another topic on her deviantART journal [http://tavington.deviantart.com/journal/#/d51npkx]. In that post, she and her followers have found at least 25 works from site users that were reproduced without permission and sold by the vendor. The stall operator "didn't have any business cards" and is still unknown.

The stolen art includes fan drawings inspired by comics, movies and television programs. Evans has since updated her tumblr with more photos from the booth [http://tavington.tumblr.com/post/24006006212/even-more-stolen-images-please-re-blog-please], showing hundreds of potentially stolen pieces of art up for sale. She is asking everyone to take a glance at the pictures and to share the story with others in order to identify the works stolen and the stall operator.

Source: Donna Evans' tumblr [http://tavington.tumblr.com/post/23992193206/important-please-view-and-read-description]

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jdogtwodolla

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Feb 12, 2009
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I would question the legitimacy of a booth too if I saw a piece up for sale was a freakin image macro.
 

Scarim Coral

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Oct 29, 2010
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Geez and I thought real thief within those conventions were bad already (my mate was selling his work in one of the convenction and at the end of it a few of his works were stolen).
 

aba1

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Mar 18, 2010
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Wow that is really sad. It is also fairly obvious the person was ripping off the work the styles are all so different depending on the prints.
 

Kmadden2004

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This pisses me off.

I work f--king hard to get some decent prints ready to sell at the Kapow! Comic Con, and only sell two - making a pretty massive loss - and then this C-U-Next-Tuesday comes along a week later and makes a small fortune out of a quick Google image search.

Here's a tip, people, if a guy turns up to a convention with that wide variety of work in so many different styles and techniques, claims to be the artist, but doesn't have so much as a business card or isn't forthcoming with any means of further communication, then something is most definitely up.
 

ChaosDemon

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CardinalPiggles said:
Is that a red Hulk near the middle?, or am I being derpy?

ChaosDemon said:
I can't believe anyone would be so shameless...
I can.
Ok, I can but I wish I didn't have to. I hope they find a way to catch the jerk.
 

Pyrian

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So... Will all the people who claim that IP theft "isn't theft" come out of the woodwork to defend this practice?
 

Sneezeguard

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Umm.. one thing, I have a problem with this. How can they claim theft when they technically don't own the character or the rights to produce art based off these character. I know most of these companies that own these characters aren't going to go after fan art but what they're doing could be seen as copyright infringement, so how can you claim theft on something that is copyright infringement?
 

Cid Silverwing

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ChaosDemon said:
I can't believe anyone would be so shameless...
This shit's been done before. By someone I know in the very fandom I chiefly associate myself in.

It's a practice any "artist" will commit to if they think they can get away with it.
 

BanZeus

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Cid SilverWing said:
ChaosDemon said:
I can't believe anyone would be so shameless...
This shit's been done before. By someone I know in the very fandom I chiefly associate myself in.

It's a practice any "artist" will commit to if they think they can get away with it.
That seems like a weighty accusation to level at a very unspecific group of people. Maybe you could define "artist" because it sounds like you're saying all creative people are unethical.
 

Vhardamis

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There's also a Brian Bolland Joker image that was the cover for Batman:The Killing Joke TP. This guys ripping off paid professionals as well. I hope they catch him and castrate him.
 

MasterSplinter

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This is a big thing?
This shit happens ALL THE TIME in big conventions on my country. (Uruguay) Most stands sell stuff like posters, cofee mugs, pins, t shirts, even wall clocks printed with images stolen from places like deviant art or anywhere with a high enough resolution images.

Other stands sell comics, magic cards and more legal stuff. But a large portion of stands sell "stolen art". Nobody seams to care, and a lot of people that go to the conventions have DA accounts. I guess people assume they dont pay for the art, they pay for the art being printed onto something.