My name is Rockie Nolan. I am a nineteen year old photographer living in the United States.

I was recently informed by one of my followers on deviantART who noticed the large clothing company RESERVED (based in Poland) selling a t-shirt with my image printed on it.

found at a location in Poland

The image is a self-portrait I took this time about a year ago (yes, I am a girl… I just have a boy’s name)

Original self-portrait by Rockie Nolan

I’m not sure what I find more offensive, the fact that they blatantly took my image without my permission or the hideous bedazzling they have added to an already idiotic phrase.

Curiously enough, they do not have the shirt in question listed on the site despite the fact that multiple people have found the shirt in their local stores. Someone else pointed out that another shirt from Reserved features stolen illustrations as well. I had to email the company that owns the company because the Reserved website is too flashy and their contact box does not yet work, but I have not yet heard back from them.

AN UPDATE:
Yesterday (july 14th) I received an email from the company’s attorney.

“We appreciate the value of our own IP rights, and respect IP rights of the other creators. Unfortunately one of our contractor must have taken the shortcut and used your work as its own. Please accept our apologies for it, and be assured that it happened without LPP’s knowledge and acceptance. In return for the inconvience occured to you, we would like to offer you cooperation, and license some of your work found at devianart. Enclosed please find photos that we are interested in using as  printed designs. We may pay you $150 per each, which is regular price we pay for licensing such photos. ”

So basically, instead of taking care of the theft they’d rather rectify the situation by using more of my pictures in the future? While that is flattering, that in no way covers the fact that they stole my image.

For those who commented on me being “a teenager looking for a big payout” that is not the case. I am an artist and I am only seeking a rightful compensation for the illegal production of my work. I am not asking for anything outrageous, only compensation and to teach these companies that they must take caution with copyright.

I will update this when I hear from them again.
Thanks for your support! It is because of this site that they even contacted me in the first place!

YTWWN SAYS:  Im letting this post go up as a ‘what not to do’ the case here is that they have both sourced the same image or both ripped of the same photographer. Also note there is no such thing as ‘google stock image’

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A logo i made for our band ‘Tribal Vibe’ www.tribalvibe.com It has now been stolen and used as a Rage Against The Machine T-Shirt. Apparently for their most recent gig too.

i was looking through the NME magazine and saw the tshirt wiht our DVD cover. imagine my surprise!!!

The original photo comes from google stock image and was edited in a specific way to make the DVD cover.

Here is the Original Design from Tribal Vibe with the rip off tshirt design added in the bottom corner.

here is the link to the original tribal vibe Cover. it shows the date the image was uploaded

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3537061&id=506953970

and there is the link to the RATM TShirt

http://www.backstreet-merch.com/stores/nme/product.asp?item=ratm90

YTWWN SAYS: This is a pretty big call to make, not against artist using photos as reference but if this post is true, that she claims it was her husbands hand? Also to note she is legally blind which often means they can see somewhat but very poorly… really don’t want to beating up on a blind person just because they may have traced one image….
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Blind artist Lisa Fittipaldi, claims that she became blind in 1993. She has appeared on Oprah and in publications such as People Magazine promoting her paintings. What caused me to question her story was the fact that a painting that she first made public in 2001 looks identical to a photo taken of Angelina Jolie’s hand that was included in an article about the actress in the December 2000 issue of Premiere Magazine. An image of the painting was included in a profile of Ms. Fittipaldi in the October 15, 2001 issue of People Magazine. I have included scans of images from the articles for your perusal. Please note that when both hand images are placed on top of each other, the outlines match up perfectly. It does not seem possible for this to be a mere coincidence.

Left: Angelina Jolie's hand holding an apple. Right: Painting by Lisa Fittipaldi - The artist claims that this is a painting of her husband's hand.

I’m a professional photographer based in New York and I received  the following email I received from a friend today:

“Just thought I would let you know you should be more flattered than pissed off by this but there are artists in London who seemed to have based a project off your Darth Vader mask image.

http://www.artslant.com/ny/main

http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/rackroom ”

Littewhitehead installation

Alex Brown's photograph

This photograph was taken by me and first published in The Vice Photo Book 2007 as well as an older issue of Vice magazine. Since then it has been used on gawker.com as well as posted on numerous blogs such as:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvG48qtQt0E

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/10/02/sad-vader.html

http://mooiness.com/2007/10/03/sad-vader/

If you Google “Sad Vader” or “Vader kid” you will see just how often my image appears in one form or another on the web.

I guess I should be flattered that someone has created a life size replica of one of my photographs, but I am not happy that they are passing it off as an original concept and that they make no reference to my original photograph. Littlewhitehead are clearly trying to steal what made my photograph so interesting. Any artist with an ounce of creativity would have taken the idea and expanded on it. At the very least, I would have expected them to have the integrity to contact me first and to make some kind of reference to my influence.

first the video:
Charlotte Gainsbourg feat. Beck – Heaven Can Wait

now the images from William Hundley’s Flickr:

now Hundley’s Flickr post after i emailed him the link to the video:

not only did Keith Schofield rip Hundley, but the whole video is rips of other works from fffound.com. Who needs to come up with new ideas when you can just use flickr or fffound?

I guess I was wrong.

I was notified  that one of my photographs was being used in a website design for a D.I.Y. site, ilovecookieparty.com. The person who notified me happened to be the model herself!

The original photograph is:

If you ask me, why would the designer, “Vice Alliance“,  would tackily combine my photograph onto a stolen illustration (because come on, we know it is) in a commercial manner is beyond me. I’ve seen that illustration somewhere, and I’m pretty sure it’s deviantART, but I haven’t found the artist just yet.
Oh by the way, this designer has worked for companies and big names like MTV, WWE, ESPN, D&B, etc. or so it’s supposedly stated on the website.
I contacted the designer, and he said the photos were given to him by the client, so I had to take it up with “Ilovecookieparty.com” instead. Funny that it’s suddenly “OKAY” for a web designer to use other people’s work other than those of the client, because the client gives them the images to use.
Who knows, that may be the case, but it’s common sense that someone else owns the rights to these images, being that I stamp my pictures with my name. Artraged Photography is definitely not “Ilovecookieparty.com”

Is this something that webdesigners normally do? Freely use images given to them by the client with no proof of ownership to those images?

Your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Janel
Dangerouslydolly.com

Below is a poster from Jennifer’s Body, Megan Fox new movie. And this looks like we’ve seen something like this before?

This is a poster of the HBO show “True Blood”, which has obviously been around longer than Jennifer’s Body.

Brasilian Brand Uncle K uses varoius copies of  images by artists featured in the book Tactile by Gestalten Publishing. Those images show copied works that were originally created by the german design studio Pixelgarten, Canadian Designer Julien Vallée and many more.

See even more copies at http://www.caligraffiti.com.br/uncle-k-e-o-plagio/

The Copies were created by:

Design Gráfico | Alessandra Mattos
Direção de Arte | Fred Vegele
Fotos | Rudy Hühold
Assistência de Fotografia | João Gabriel Salomão
Manipulação de Imagens e 3D | Cayman Artes Gráficas
Produção Executiva e Produção de Arte | Mariana Lavrado
Assistência de Produção Executiva e Produção de Arte | Ronna Dias

A little more than that… The funny part is, I’ve actually asked Raquel Reed to work with me, and well, she brushed me off like I’ve heard she’s brushed others off… but wait, instead (either she or her designers) use my business banner from my myspace page as a template for her coming soon banner for her website? Not cool… This was caught on so soon considering she’s quite popular in the industry, by why stoop this low?

Same colors, concept, they (she or her designers) also turned my little owl logo into some strange swirly thing. I just don’t understand people.

First a flickr friend warned me that my photo was copied by a painter. Then I found many galleries on the internet where I found Mr Gena Ivanov paintings of my photos for sale as his original artworks. He has never asked any of my permission to paint my photos, neither has given me any credit for it + the model is my best friend, and I am the only one who has permission to use his image publicly. This is what Mr Ivanov wrote about his art:

“I have always found the male body inspiring and coming to England has given me the freedom to paint in the way I want. I aspire to show the beauty of the male body and the romanticism, the sentimentality and the character. My pictures are about colour, life can be quite grey and I want my pictures to make people feel good. I like to work in different styles, particularly in the impressionist style and I prefer to work big. I have always been quite experimental trying different materials, paints and painting techniques but the medium I prefer is oil painting.”

Here are some of the galleries I found where he sales his paintings:

adonisartgallery.3dcartstores.com/Gena-Ivanov_c_38-1.html
www.studioart.org.uk/ (search for: Dandelion)

and his website: www.matthewkleinman.com/genart/artofman/index.html

Mr. Gena Ivanov has won many exhibition and his work has been exhibited in Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Holland, France and in the UK – Norwich and London. I wonder if he has any original work in his portfolio…

What is your opinion about painters like him?