MASSIVE COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS ON MINDS
Minds appears to be a haven for some copyright violators who scrape images off the internet and post them without attribution, trying to profit from other peoples work.
If you want to know about Copyright and related issues, I operate a website, Visionary Art Gallery, where I dedicated a page to this issue. Also, a link to that page appears in the footer and thus on each and every represented artists page (there are well over 500 artists represented). Check it out here: https://www.vagallery.com/copyright.html
About the specifics
a friend and fellow artist whom I published in my VISIONARY ART GALLERY
This painting, along with many others, was found on MINDS Visionary Art Channel without any attribution, posted by the user Ricky168
After this was initially discovered by @libaws and posted on her Facebook page, a discussion ensued, and Martina Hoffmann posted the following on Facebook:
I usually dislike getting involved in this sort of a thing but was made aware of this site (https://www.minds.com/) that is 'The CRYPTO SOCIAL NETWORK", which states: "We are an open source and decentralized platform for Internet freedom. GET PAID IN CRYPTO FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION to the community". Someone, unknown to me, (https://www.minds.com/Ricky168) created a page called "Visionary Art'..."https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/666722386204172306" and posted my work as well as the work of other artists without asking permission nor giving us proper credit. So I tried to post the following comment below my art on his page: "This image was published on this site WITHOUT MY CONSENT, and while I really do appreciate that the creators of this page did mark the fact that ALL OF MY WORK IS COPY RIGHTED, which makes it subject to my specific consent for any form of usage or second-party publication, they still did not respect it. They also neglected to add the proper title and name of artist next to my GODDESS TRIANGLE BY MARTINA HOFFMANN. My work is all over the net and performing a google search in order to gather all necessary information is not rocket science. Thank you for rectifying this on all of my images as well as on those by all other 'un-named artists' published on your page!"When I tried to post this comment below my art, I received this message: "The comment couldn't be saved because @Ricky168 has blocked you."
WOW!
So to make my complaint very clear: I DO APPRECIATE people sharing my art but I'd l'd like to be credited appropriately and feel ripped off when my art is used, without my consent to collect voting points to earn crypto currency while I'm (the artist) being compensated for the publication of my art....Thoughts anyone?PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS WITH YOUR COMMUNITY and DOWN WITH THE PIRATES!!!
I have an account on Minds as well, which until now, is mostly idling: https://www.minds.com/TheMystic, but following this, I began some research, and after exhaustive scrolling came up with a large list of violations perpetrated by the user Ricky168.
MINDS - COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS:
The first link on my list below is the Austrian Artist Fritz Aigner
and the second one is by my personal friend Vesna Krasnec, and I own this painting:
This list contains just the artists I know and, for the most part, are personal friends of mine.
The list covers less than a 3 week period of September 2018, and the ones I list are among hundreds of other scraped images that are also uncredited rip-offs.
▼ from here: Sep 23, 2018
- https://www.minds.com/media/890029295642038272
- https://www.minds.com/media/890029159744851968
- https://www.minds.com/media/890029120531816448
- https://www.minds.com/media/889670518419279872
- https://www.minds.com/media/889670407218237440
- https://www.minds.com/media/889670365456543744
- https://www.minds.com/media/889670317322711040
- https://www.minds.com/media/889305367580147712
- https://www.minds.com/media/889305243505991680
- https://www.minds.com/media/889305194935386112
- https://www.minds.com/media/889305367580147712
- https://www.minds.com/media/889305243505991680
- https://www.minds.com/media/889305194935386112
- https://www.minds.com/media/888581373451661312
- https://www.minds.com/media/888581263227121664
- https://www.minds.com/media/888217116297048064
- https://www.minds.com/media/888217050189352960
- https://www.minds.com/media/888217010683203584
- https://www.minds.com/media/888216978588225536
- https://www.minds.com/media/887866803700887552
- https://www.minds.com/media/887866719928373248
- https://www.minds.com/media/887866680364937216
- https://www.minds.com/media/886767987505967104
- https://www.minds.com/media/886767951707582464
- https://www.minds.com/media/886767920991469568
- https://www.minds.com/media/886408233675812864
- https://www.minds.com/media/886408177170149376
- https://www.minds.com/media/886408084391739392
- https://www.minds.com/media/886044952985726976
- https://www.minds.com/media/886044902725382144
- https://www.minds.com/media/885680633379975168
- https://www.minds.com/media/885680590805651456
- https://www.minds.com/media/885320424943898624
- https://www.minds.com/media/885320376699731968
- https://www.minds.com/media/885320336035016704
- https://www.minds.com/media/885139274604474368
- https://www.minds.com/media/885139131251552256
- https://www.minds.com/media/885139080219455488
- https://www.minds.com/media/885139041273368576
- https://www.minds.com/media/885138998732517376
- https://www.minds.com/media/884948155648339968
- https://www.minds.com/media/884948115938725888
- https://www.minds.com/media/884595462099320832
- https://www.minds.com/media/884595412018556928
- https://www.minds.com/media/884595367626817536
- https://www.minds.com/media/884232904194514944
- https://www.minds.com/media/884232866814877696
- https://www.minds.com/media/884232828348915712
- https://www.minds.com/media/884232766833123328
- https://www.minds.com/media/884232672009244672
- https://www.minds.com/media/883869716368154624
- https://www.minds.com/media/883869666518851584
- https://www.minds.com/media/883869629200064512
- https://www.minds.com/media/883869547885092864
- https://www.minds.com/media/883662058251968512
- https://www.minds.com/media/883661967671779328
- https://www.minds.com/media/883661905946333184
- https://www.minds.com/media/883661874694578176
- https://www.minds.com/media/883542016491347968
- https://www.minds.com/media/883541832174788608
- https://www.minds.com/media/883540522708885504
- https://www.minds.com/media/883540396217065472
▲ up to here: Sep 4, 2018, 4:34:05 AM
Reacting to Martina Hoffmann:
https://www.facebook.com/martina.hoffmann.547/posts/10158205260354896
My Facebook comment:
Martina Hoffmann if you are a member of Minds (I don't know if you can if you are not), you can flag each individual piece - down arrow drop down menu - and mark it copyright violation. What happens next is that they give you a e-mail address:
Please submit a DMCA notice to [email protected]
Anyway, I scrolled around for a while on that users account https://www.minds.com/Ricky168 and between Sept. 23rd and September 4th I found 62 copyright violations of artwork by people I know very well - not counting oodles of photos and tattoo artists. It seems he is scraping a eclectic variety of websites to steal images, i.e. those 62 I copied the URL's I must have scrolled through hundreds of images within that short time period, so we are looking at the tip of the iceberg!
as I said, this list is just the tip of the iceberg, it is just ONE OF THE USERS ON MINDS that stuck out like a sore thumb, but a cursory scrolling of the posts on this MINDS Visionary Art Channel would reveal several more.
I also posted my 2 cents worth on a blog post discussion on Minds:
How to kill MINDS beauty
how to kill Minds?
by having users on there that blatantly violate copyright, scraping images off the net and posting without attribution.
Here is a comment I added to one post (you can see the post, I shared and pinned it to the top of my page) - and this is my comment:
"a quick search between 22.9. and 4.9.2018 I found 61 copyright violations alone of artists works that I know personally, not counting possibly hundreds of others, photographers, tattoo artists etc. within just such a short time period alone. There appears NOTHING to be the work of the user @Ricky168 himself. None of the posts bear any attribution! Even so, copyright work can only be displayed with the permission of the copyright owner, particularly if the use of it is monetized!
To clarify: If the artist himself posts a image, you are allowed to "share" it by re-blogging because then the image link will point back to the artist, but you are NOT allowed to scrape a image from the internet, even if you credit the artist!
How to file a DMCA Notice
I have now also blogged it on my Blogger:
https://artofthemystic.blogspot.com/2018/09/massive-copyright-violations-on-minds.html
and re-blogged on my Wordpress blog:
https://ottorapp.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/massive-copyright-violations-on-minds/
Visit my website
▼
at the Ernst Fuchs Museum
Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention. Many artists' sole income comes from their art and I find this type of behavior dispicable!
these types are the worse kind of leeches! He is "clusterbombing" his channel with massive amounts of images, hoping to earn rewards from them!
Please also read what I wrote at the end of my reply to a Minds blog:
None of the posts bear any attribution! Even so, copyright work can only be displayed with the permission of the copyright owner, particularly if the use of it is monetized! To clarify: If the artist himself posts a image, you are allowed to "share" it by re-blogging because then the image link will point back to the artist, but you are NOT allowed to scrape a image from the internet, even if you credit the artist!
I like to add another thing that is related, if I may - watch this, Harlan Ellison lays it out:
- PAY THE WRITER! This is the way it is supposed to be!Armselig, wer so was tut... aber ich verstehe nicht, wenn keine Namen dabei stehen, denken die Leute dann, dieser Rick hätte die alle gemalt oder was?! :) Ich meine, man sieht doch klar das es von verschieden Menschen abstammt...
Wegen meinen "Träumer" mach ich mir keine gedanken, es ist so niedrige resolution, er kann das nicht drucken. Original ist bei dir.
Was mich stört ist das, das er meine watermark entfernt hat! 😑
Er ist eigentlich nicht der Einzige, da gibt es mehrere die so was machen.
The amount of violations is extraordinary, I resteem this to make more people aware. I hope there is some kind of automated internet-wide alert in the future, concerning copyright violations.
Thank you, and also thanks for your help to spread it around!
https://tineye.com/
Unfortunately, I don't think there is a bot developed that can spot image rip-offs - not like the plagiarism bot that goes after text.
Near the top of my post I provide a link: https://www.vagallery.com/copyright.html - on that page there is a lot of information I had gathered regarding copyright and related issues.
What I found useful - and perhaps a future bot can develop such technology and use it automatically - is this:
got one of mine as well (nr 14 on my list):
Very interesting post. Its so easy for people to create massive social media followings by not creating ANY original content themselves & just using the work of others without permission.
A person I know here in Australia was fined over $ 2000 for a copyright violation from using a photo she found online that was from one of those picture sites where you pay to use their pictures. However if a person lives in a country where copyright laws are loose such as Indonesia it could be harder to control.
On the one hand if the photo of your work is too small people can not see all the beautiful details but on the other hand if the image is too large they can steal it & use it.
What to do....
first of all, you have to find the culprits - it was just by chance Liba found this on Minds.
there are services (that cost an arm and a leg) that would patrol the web for you and send you reports.
The site is a Canadian company:
https://tineye.com/
a basic search you can conduct yourself (from their home page) is free, but if you go pro to get all the bells and whistles, then it will cost - there is a choice of products:
https://tineye.com/products
Once you got that, here are some useful links:
https://sarafhawkins.com/how-to-file-dmca-takedown/
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-submit-dmca-takedown-notice/
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by The Mystic from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Thank you - your support is much appreciated!
To be fair, there has been more than one case of users, one in particular, who were taking images from the photo groups on Minds and posting them here on Steemit as their own work. Probably still are.
I would not doubt it. We need a bot that could spot such violations - but whenever we see it, we should also flag it!
Dear Artzonian, thanks for using the #ArtzOne hashtag. Your work is valuable to the @ArtzOne community. Quote of the week: Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics. -Victor Pinchuk
thank you - much appreciated!
@thermoplastic thanks so much for the heads up awareness there! This is terrible, it's disrespectful and also this Ricky guy is reaping money from all the artists' hard work! While internet is a beautiful thing but I'm sickened by individuals like him who totally abuse the system!!!! Upvoted your post to support~
thank you kindly!
Gonna check out another post of yours! :)
danke Otto xx
I don't know how much good it does - and somewhere else I said that Minds stands in contrast to BeScouted where the members are PROFESSIONALS and such nonsense would not occur! That site is much better maintained and regulated. No immature kids posting from their mothers basement.
https://www.bescouted.com/photos/popular/
buty it is mostly about model photography, except a few artists, like Reinhard Schmid and myself are posting there. There is no category for art, so I am listed under designers, Reinhard listed himself under photographers.
Basically, if you are on BeScouted, you post one photo and it gets cross-posted to Steemit (you have to put in your posting key in settings for this). After that, you can edit your Steemit post to add more stuff, if you like.
I don't use it as often as Reinhard, but at times, here is my profile: https://www.bescouted.com/member/11242244/OTTO-RAPP/designer/
What I like about it is that it is integrated with Steemit, cross-posts automatically, and I earn Steem, not some other goofy crypto ....
thanks Otto,
Honestly i like the Minds community. I don't have a wallet of cryptocurrency there because i always use my crypto to boost my posts. However i like the community. Like anywhere there is a mix of every type of person. But this ricky guy takes the cake. He totally has ignored absolutely every comment i have made and i was so understanding and polite at first!