You might heard about this big online-art-theft from Chad Love Lieberman, for those not familiar with that case, its an imposter who describes himself as a multimedia artist with a diverse style who makes a celebrity lifestyle out of it, while in fact all works were taken from other artists, most of them from deviantArt.

For some evidence, here are blogs and more info around the theft:
- http://dametora.deviantart.com/journal/Massive-Art-Theft-Updates-253362644
- http://sflchronicle.com/chronic-featured/chronic-art/2011/08/calling-all-deviantart-artists-that-have-been-screwed-by-chad-love/
- http://www.fleen.com/archives/2011/08/17/one-thing-i-didnt-expect-to-do-when-i-woke-up-today-call-a-us-senator/

Screengrab from Alexiuss deviation

Alexiuss has setup a PayPal-fund for being able to
pay a lawyer for this case, many of his works were stolen, compared to others and its becoming a really popular thread, so anyone whose work is also ripped should donate a few bucks.





Two of my work including SayNoGood where the screenshot is available, was also in his catalog of works:

Thanks to Andreea Cernestean for the links.

SayNoGood by fantasio

Would be hard for this guy to show proof of the image above, since its a sculpture and not a painting, here´s a WIP shot from the piece when I worked on it:

SayNoGood WIP

And it wouldn´t also be possible for this guy to make a turnaround picture of the same sculpture like this one:













Actually I have not the time to worry too much about rip-offs or plagiarism, if the value is high enough, I have a lawyer for this, but in this case the value is still not enough to have a chance for an overseas lawsuit, especially since the site is taken down its hard to show proof and to get things to court.

The only thing I hope is that the community of artists and helpers who track everything down and put every piece of the puzzle together to show evidence of the theft will have success. This blog post and a donation to Alexiuss fund, is my way to help the community of artists to raise awareness.

Actually I don´t bother if artists chose to copy my work, or someone elses, even when the edge between inspiration and plagiarism is suspect, I don´t really bother, because eventually the artist in question learns something out of this. But in this case the artist in question has shown only one ability and this is theft. Theft itself is an artform, an underappreciated, but its art too for some people. But in this case, the thief was so dumb to mess with a whole community of artists and the battle as also the informations about the whole persona, will be manifested into the memory of the internet for generations to come. Hopefully in a daunting manner.

There is a nice article about "short-term-capitalism" on Seth Godin´s blog, that tells in other words what art4love connected with Lieberman was all about.

Feel free to share, blog or repost this article or write your own to make people aware of this fraud, thanks.