Total Art Soul - for artists

Dear Friend,

I'm turning to my fans and followers of my art for advice. I don't know what to do about all the copyright violations happening with my art. As of today there are more then 200 listings of supposedly my art on ebay, although I closed my ebay account along time ago and don't sell anything on ebay anymore. I see a lot of people stealing my images and selling fake giclees on ebay. I even saw people selling counterfit originals with a fake signature and certificate. Only a little fraction of these listings is my real art that people bought from me in the past and now resell.

When I report a such a listing on ebay, they remove it. However ebay is a big company and isn't able to follow everything. As the matter of fact, they don't really care. I don't know how to protect myself from such horrible theft. Please tell me what can I do. i know i need to hire a lawyer and sue some companies but I don't know what kind of lawyer handles such matters. Many people buy supposedly my paintings and giclees from various website and think its from me. They end up buying a fake or a counter-fit or an authorized giclee with a fake signature and then go complain to me about the quality like they bought the items from me. I don't know what to do about this, please advice.


LeonidAfremov

Don't have any answers, but I feel for you. I hope you can get this all straightened out.

An easy way is to buy the art from the 'fake' seller on ebay, tell them you want to pay by e-check, but don't pay, and then just leave negative feedback saying that the works of art for sale by the seller are fakes, I think that would put them out of business. And you haven't even needed to pay for the item, even if you do have to, you may be able to raise a dispute with Paypal to get a refund.

Hi Leonid - I'm so sorry to hear about your artwork being fraudulently copied (how terrible!), your artwork is beautiful and very special.
I do not have much advice I'm afraid, but have you thought about disabling the 'right-click' function on viewing your larger pictures? To stop the 'save picture as' facility. I'm sure people can currently download your work and print them off quite easily. Maybe you could stop them from doing this and hopefully that will help?
I do hope so.

Sending you my sympathy and blessings, I hope you find a solution soon, your work is stunning. God bless, Emma

Emma, could you explain how to disable the right click function?

All the best,
Jen

There are lots of art organisations out there who if you join offer greatly discounted legal services, if you can afford to go down that route I'd reccommend finding one through such an organisation as you'll know they are a) the right type and b) competent.

There are lots of things you can do to stop work being poached, from limiting the size and quality of images posted online to watermarking them, but the best defense is to simply be better than your imitators, true fans will want to buy directly from you anyway and anyone buying cheap knock-offs deserves exactly what they get. If they buy innocently and come to you, they will presumably be annoyed themselves and are the ideal people to get behind you on this.