

Followup on the $18000 StockArt.com story - nkurz
http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/stock-logos-copyright-twitter/

======
ciscoriordan
Repost via MetaFilter (sorry it's so big):

If you're involved in the online graphic design community, you couldn't help
stumble over the fracas that occurred over the weekend when a young designer -
we'll call him Jon - told us how he was being harrassed, sued and billed $18K
for "stealing his own work" by stock agency Stock Art (StockArt.com) and their
ferocious legal beagles, The Intellectual Property Group (ArtLaws.com).
According to Jon and his growing group of supporters, Stock Art had "stolen"
his artwork, placed it in their library, and then turned around and billed him
$18,000 for the use of that work. It's the stuff internet legends are made of.

Further, if you lived under a rock, or were out for the entire weekend, you
may have missed the various incarnations of the tragic tale when it was
everything that designery people on Twitter were Tweeting about. But
Twittering and Tweeting they were. A hash-tag campaign called #savejon was
started, and as I write this, howls of protest-laden Tweets are still ripping
through at the rate of one every three minutes. And why not? The design
community is outraged. One of our own was under attack by some Corporate giant
and their sleazeball lawyers, and he needed our help. And man, did he get the
design community's help. Hitting the front page of DIGG took out Jon’s blog
and company website, such was the traffic, but still the internet noise
continued unabated. Boycotts, and worse, were called for. This legal outrage
needed to be fought back, and fought back hard, so a legal defense fund was
set up, and at this moment it boasts $1800 in contributions from concerned
internet citizens (though it will probably be higher as you read this).
Designers saw a great injustice being done, and admirably sought to help by
blogging, Twittering, DIGGing, Slashdotting and forum posting their avenging
angel vibe all over the web. Thousands of e-mails were ripped off to the
corporate bullies - some terse but professional, others less so. Others were
disturbingly threatening, no doubt spurred on by the anonymity of internet
communication. All bore a similar variation of the message - "How dare you
steal someone's artwork and then try to charge/sue/harrass them for it."

It was, it seemed, the internet at its very best, a juggernaut that could be
tasked to help the downtrodden and harrassed within hours, the echo chamber
bouncing the message from one avenue to another, recruiting one concerned
designer after another. It's always a compelling story when the internet helps
the little guy fight back 'The Man' and to take down 'The Villain'. Trouble
is, none of the story may be true, 'The Man' may be right and the 'Villains'
of this story may not be villains at all.

Let’s back it up a bit, to August of last year when Jon was hit up for a bill
from StockArt.com, a stock artwork licensing agency, supposedly for the use of
his own work. Let’s read a bit of the original post as it appeared on
Logopond, a gallery site for logo designers.

Someone has apparently ripped several of my icons and sold/posted them across
a couple stock illustration sites. The stock site watchdogs ran across my
portfolio and is now threatening to sue ME. They sent me an $18,000 bill and
said if I don’t pay up they'll sue.

Well, that’s certainly going to get any designer’s attention. The idea that
someone could not only copy your work and put it on a stock art site is one
thing, but threatening a lawsuit if you didn’t pony up $18 grand for using
your own artwork? I get freaked out when my credit card company calls to tell
me my payment is late. Quite oddly, the issue went on the forum back burner
until this past weekend, when another post hit the thread, but this time, Jon
seemed a little more frantic.

Its becoming a bigger problem. I was banned from Design Outpost this morning
which led me to start talking to clients. Apparently, they're calling EVERYONE
they can find to tell them I’m under investigation for copyright infringement.

Woah. Now that's a whole different ball game. The legal beagles contacting
Jon’s clients and telling them that he was under investigation for copyright
infringement? That's certainly not fair. But wouldn’t it also be on shaky
legal grounds as well? When I first read it, the words Slander and Libel
entered my head. But it also posed a question - what kind of lawyers would
expose themselves to such legal pain in order to get even with someone even if
they did copy work from their clients? Surely such actions would invoke all
sorts of sympathy for the young designer, who from what I've managed to find
out, was only trying to get by. Seemed to me that it was a case-destroying
move, and one that was certain to garner the wrath of half the internet.

I was certainly right about the backlash. The first Tweets started on
Saturday. I happened to be desk bound, so I added my comment into the feed.
Those comments were re-tweeted. And again. And again. So on and so on. Before
long, comments and protestations about the events had taken on a life of their
own, and the news about the hapless designer’s predicament began to spool out
past Twitter and onto other social sites like DIGG and Slashdot. Something was
happening. There was a movement afoot, and every iteration of the news added a
new detail. A new wrinkle. Trouble is, no-one really knew anything, and other
than the first fairly well-informed tweets and posts, everyone was making it
up on the fly. Not surprisingly, the design community wanted more as it's hard
to keep up the moral indignation without some salacious details to write
about. Jon told us that he was hurredly working on a blog post to be published
later that afternoon. That news went out via Twitter where it was added to the
cacophony of drama. And to DIGG. And Slashdot. And Hacker News. The items
started to number in the thousands but all the posts, blogs and Tweets had one
thing in common. This outrage would not go unanswered. And sumbitch has to
pay. When the blog post finally came, it was a highly anticipated event. The
post itself turned out to be mildly anti-climactic.

Once the sticker shock wore off the obvious question came to mind. Where the
hell did they get these from? It seems as if most or all of them were lifted
from my LogoPond showcase. They especially seemed to favor the ones that made
it to the gallery.

The details of what had actually transpired were strangely vague. There wasn't
any real explanation of how the artwork was absconded with in the first place
(other than some impractical theory that Stock Art had somehow reverse
engineered John’s artwork from Logopond, removed the typography from the
featured logos, and added them to their site). To make matters worse, there
wasn't even any examples of ripped design with the original for comparison.
Rather than take everything at face value, I decided to poke around a little
deeper. I didn't know much about Stock Art, but their site looked legit. They
had an impressive roster of established illustrators - all of whom with
impressive portfolio sites of their own - and it didn’t seem like the kind of
thing that made sense for a company with a client list of well-heeled
companies, some of them belonging to the Fortune 500. Thinking that their
lawyers might be the hardcases in all of this. I took a look at the
ArtLaws.com website and the various pages and reference materials inside. It
didn't look shady at all, and if anything, they seemed to be champions of
designer and illustrator IP rights, as opposed to the sleazy ambulance chasers
they were very quickly, and loudly, being portrayed as across most of the
internet.

They were certainly legit, and have even been involved in the Zapruder Kennedy
assassination movie copyright battle from a few years ago. Something didn’t
appear right. Not right at all. Jon had admitted to us that he was a buyer on
Stock Art after all, having opened an account a few years ago. Trouble is,
there are no artist accounts per se, nothing is uploaded to Stock Art's
server, and Stock Art are extremely picky who they represent, claiming a
roster of only 150 illustrators. One of my original theories on the
'misunderstanding' was that Jon had uploaded artwork to Stock Art for
licensing and then sold the artwork to someone else. As neat and tidy as that
theory would have been, it’s not how Stock Art operates, their licenses don't
work that way, and even Jon never claimed that he was represented by Stock
Art. No, what we had here was a pretty cut-and-dry case of someone using
someone else’s work without payment and/or permission. But who did what to
whom? The tens of thousands of people now involved in this growing controversy
knew who they thought was the ripper and the rippee. But I was starting to
have doubts over my original assumptions. Besides, I always like to get both
sides of a story, so I decided to reach out and touch ArtLaws.com lawyers and
ask them if they’d like to comment on the deluge of bad internet mojo that
they were receiving.

To their credit, they did, calling The Logo Factory studio shortly after
reading my email (apparently, out of thousands of e-mails, I was the first one
that asked for their side of the story). I talked at length with Jamie
Silverberg and John B.. Mason, two of the lead lawyers at the The Intellectual
Property Group, and found them to be civil, pleasant and quite willing to
discuss matters, to the extent that he was legally allowed. Not the "ambulance
chasing scumbags" they were beifng called in the latest round of Twitter
postings. Firstly, IPG have extensive experience fighting on the behalf of
designers and illustrators (as they believe they’re doing in the Stock Art
matter). The partners have experience in the graphic design industry itself,
helping to organize several chapters of the AIGA. They told me that "nobody"
is being sued nor has a suit been filed over the Stock Art artwork, and that
rather than ignoring Jon’s pleas of innocence, have been trying to communicate
with him ever since the licensing issues became apparent.

Seems Stock Art are ferocious in protecting their illustrators property and
copyright (certainly something that I'd demand if Stock Art were representing
me). Silverberg denied harassing Jon's clients, but told me that they had
contacted two in order to see if the clients had legitimate licensing rights
to their client’s work. I wondered how likely it would be that Stock Art's
established illustrators would risk their reputation, and Stock Art's
business, by copying some designer they found on the internet. To make matters
worse, the issue revolved around the licensing for no less than 65 images to
which it appears typography was added and the images uploaded to various
portfolio sites like Elance and Logopond (while they didn’t expressly tell me
so, the $18,000 bill is likely the result of licensing fees for the 65 images
in dispute. Works out to about $275 a pop). I was also told that before
contacting anyone, IPG perform extensive research into the background of any
disputed images, including creation date, history and when it was added to the
Stock Art site, pointing out that some of the images "in question" have been
on the Stock Art website for almost a decade. Logopond, the supposed source
for the designs (at least according to Jon's blog), had only been online since
June of 2006 at the very earliest. The worst point, from a designer’s point of
view anyway, was the dispute involved the work of over twenty illustrators.
With illustrations and icons that just happened to mirror their exact personal
style. And if that wasn’t enough, Jon had previously been billed for other
Stock Art licensed work, after it was discovered that it may have been used
without permission. He paid that bill.

~~~
dejb
I don't quite understand the legalities this being entirely reposted. Isn't
there like copyright on the article itself. Can someone explain?

~~~
lacker
Sure, it's illegal. Probably HN would have to take it down if the original
writer cared. Personally I'm happy it's here because the original site isn't
loading for me.

------
habibur
Here is the summary:

* This is a report from a third person who have talked with the lawers representing StockArt.

* The two lawyers of StockArt claim they did not sue anyone, and that they were trying to contact Jon since the thing blew up.

* Lawers claim they did not "harass" Jon's client, but contacted two of them to check if they also "had legitimate licensing rights" from Jon's work.

* The dispute started when Jon uploaded 65 logos on a second site "LogoPond". Laywers claim that Logopond, the site, was launched in 2006 while a few of the logos in question are in StockArts pocesson for a decade. (I don't know if that says anything)

* And that they previously had once claimed right on Jon's work and Jon actually paid the bill.

Update: as davidmathers have pointed out here is the site page with
comparison:

<http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/stock.html>

For quick summary seekers: Scroll bellow. The browser window at the bottom is
Jon's work. The popup is from StockArt's artists. Note that every art from
StockArt belongs to a different artist whos name is linked in the center of
the popup window. This evidence strongly goes against Jon. Either these 20
artiest with reputation copied from Jon (unlikely) or Jon copied from them.

~~~
davidmathers
"Nothing too convincing for any side."

You seriously believe that a Gang of Plagiarists might possibly have copied
Jon's work? Um... I don't know how to respond to that.

The side by side comparisons:
<http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/stock.html>

~~~
trominos
I agree that Jon appears to be in the wrong here.

But that would imply that he intentionally ripped off a bunch of artists, then
decided to go to court over it (and almost definitely lose) and to start a
witch hunt by pushing a blatantly false account of the whole thing in what I'm
sure will amount to libel.

That's almost as crazy as the possibility that his work was independently
ripped off by multiple artists.

I haven't thought that much about this -- is there a scenario I'm missing? The
situation really makes no sense at all.

~~~
davidmathers
Are you sure he decided to go to court? I thought he just made a blog post
claiming persecution and asking for help.

~~~
jambalaya
While taking in $1800 in donations...the plot thickens!

------
huhtenberg
I've been following the story on logopond and earlier today someone posted
this link:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20011128050555/stockart.com/image...](http://web.archive.org/web/20011128050555/stockart.com/images/preview/PB1/pb1x0546.gif)

It's a clipart piece from stockart.com from _2001_. And it was used AS IS, no
alterations in one of Jon's logos posted in Logopond in 2008. _That_ is very
interesting and basically tanks Jon's credibility.

Shortly after this comment was made, Jon purged his entire showcase, closed
down his website and checked out:

<http://logopond.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=17903#p17903>

But the strange thing is that deleting the logo on Logopond never deletes the
comments, they linger and can be read even after the logo is gone. In this
case however the comments are gone too, which implies there's more to the
story than meets the eye.

~~~
Confusion
"In this case however the comments are gone too" There might have simply been
a bug that they fixed between now and the time you first noticed comments
lingering after a logo was deleted.

------
davidmathers
<http://twitter.com/relevantstudio> :

"Everyone's calling for my proof, but the lawyers say I to keep it to myself
until we go to court. Screwed if I show, screwed if I don't. --about 5 hours
ago from TweetDeck"

I have a feeling Jon isn't going to like the internet after he's made it
angry.

UPDATE:

1\. MetaFilter == Win

2\. TV posters Jon claims to have designed:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrzarquon/sets/7215761640034318...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrzarquon/sets/72157616400343189/)

3\. "Interestingly, a look through the 'network television' section in the
flash interface at Shoolery Design shows that the Veronica Mars poster, the
CSI:Miami poster, the CSI:NY poster, and the CSI poster come from there.
(Can't link directly to flash, sorry.) --posted by Upton O'Good at 9:52 PM on
April 7"

4\. <http://www.shoolerydesign.com/sdi.html>

~~~
cubicle67
You need some sort of eye safety warning next to that shoolerydesign link.
ouch!

~~~
patio11
Suggested text: "We think the problem with your monitor is that less than 98%
of the pixels are Netflix Red. Click here to fix!"

------
leftnode
Aside from the usual disappointments that this case brings if the StockArt's
side is true, is that in the future, if there are
designers/programmers/freelancers actually ripped off by a large corporation,
the Internet is going to be much more reluctant to help them out.

------
mechanical_fish
Yet another example of why we have lawyers and courts.

------
Brushfire
I'm having trouble getting the page to load, and google doesnt have a cached
copy yet.

Is it working for anyone else?

~~~
cubicle67
That's a no from me too

~~~
Gibbon
Nirmal (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nirmal>) has an RSS feed from
Hacker News with inline articles (<http://hacketal.com/#hnrss>)

This article didn't load for me either, but it's in Nirmal's RSS Feed, very
handy.

