Introduction & How To Handle Art Theft Based On My Experience

in #art7 years ago

Hi steemians!
Absolute Ama here!

18-01-23-13-37-38-020_deco.jpg

I've joined Steemit due to a recent issue of art theft. A person had been impersonating me, taking images of my paintings that I posted on my social media, and profiting from them on here for the past 5 months.

17-11-24-12-00-57-971_deco.jpg

I was fortunately notified by a follower that my paintings were being used. Luckily, the posts were flagged and taken down after a day of finding out but knowing someone had made alot of money off my hard work is very painful to grasp.

So through all this, I thought I would take the opportunity to inform you (if you didn't know already), how to go about issuing a copyright infringement towards art theft specifically for the Steemit community. It's actually quite simple:

  1. You can contact the 'Steem Cleaners.' Filling out a lil form describing what was stolen, provide links to the stolen images but also provide proof that the stolen content belongs rightfully to you. Here is the link I went through to get in contact with them.
    Steemcleaners.org/abuse-report

  2. Email support through steemit, for copyright infringement. Explain your situation, provide links to stolen content as well as have links showing proof that that art is yours (linking social media sites, portfolios, etc.)

Those are the steps I went through to get the stolen content taken down. But its also to note, I had the help of a follower who had an account on here already which was extremely useful and may have sped up the process.

I'm no expert in this area, and I am new to this community. These were just the methods I used to have the content removed. I hope you won't ever have to go through this, but if you do, this may help.

17-12-28-09-55-38-204_deco.jpg

On a better note, I'm excited to start posting updates of recent paintings and such, and getting to know you all!

XOXO,
AMA

Sort:  

Good info and great piece of art there . , I think I am going to,like your art so I am now a follower .. Good luck

Thank you so much for your support! I appreciate it! 💕

we have to huntdown who ever is stealing your beautiful art! welcome to steemit its a beautiful place for those who love creating things.

Thank You! I believe their account was flagged and banned? So all is well at this point. Thank you for your support! 💕

Congratulations @absoluteama! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You published your First Post
You made your First Vote
You made your First Comment
You got a First Vote
You got a First Reply
Award for the number of upvotes
Award for the number of upvotes received

Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here

If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

By upvoting this notification, you can help all Steemit users. Learn how here!

I just found your post and thought hmmm this art looks familiar! I love your art and had actually asked the thief if it was their own work because in the post it was not clear and they never answered me, which always made me suspicious! I'm glad you figured it out, your art is amazing and I'm going to feature you in my art curation today, sorry you had a bad first experience here but welcome to Steemit!

Thank You! I'm glad you were able to catch something fishy with their posts. 💕

Oh man, I'm happy someone caught that! I feel bad because I was following that account. D:
Your art is amazing! It's good to see the actual artist getting rewarded for these beautiful pieces.

Ahhhhh!!! That's good to hear though! I was really worried that their following might think I was taking or something (ya never know on the internet 🤷‍♀️), glad to hear though that's not the case from You! Thank You!

Welcome to Steemit Land! Great to see you continuing to post more often now!
I wish you the best! Hope you gonna have fun with our community and see you soon

Thank you so much for the warm welcome! I appreciate it! 💕💕💕

Thats awful! I'm glad it got sorted out, though. Your art is lovely. Thanks for the helpful tips!

Thank you so much! I'm glad it was dealt with as fast as it was! Can't take much more headaches after this! 😧😧😧

THIS is truly important information. So many people are showing their art on this platform and it's great to know the steps you can take to protect yourself on the STEEMIT platform. Thank you for this information.

Thank You! Glad you found this information useful! I wasn't sure if others knew or not but I thought I might as well throw it in there just in case! 💕

That's a truly awful way to find out about something as neat as Steemit, but hopefully now that you're hear, you can share your art with the community, and instead of someone else making a profit off of it, you can make that profit yourself.

While a lot of people downtalk cryptocurrency, it's largely because they're heavily invested in fiat currency, and are afraid of losing their edge and having to restart in a new currency. It's quite beneficial to have both kinds of investment, so earning both for your art is better for you financially.

It still is really disappointing that this is how you learned about the community. Thank you, however, for sharing the process of how to deal with IP theft in the Steem community - there are likely others who need this information or will need it, because unfortunately, IP theft is something that happens everywhere.

Thank you for your comment.
You raise good views that I didn't even think much about! Steemit is quite a unique platform and to be able to make cryptocurrency alongside fiat is huge, especially as an artist. I spend alot of time spreading myself out in terms of income sources to make ends meet but not in the realm of virtual coin so this will be interesting.

I didn't hold too much negativity to the site itself but I suppose if I didn't have this happen I wouldn't be on this platform, so there's pros and cons to the whole situation. 😧
But I'm glad that this post can shed some light on the process of how to file for copyright infringement, if it ever needs to be used because, as you said it happens everywhere.

I'm glad that you're considering the idea of raising yourself some Steem via this community. It's really not all that different from maintaining a presence on other social media outlets, aside from the fact that you should make it a habit to at least once a week check your wallet page to collect your Steem Power and Steem Dollars (which your posts earn).

If you post your work, any tutorials or the like you do, you can make yourself some pretty good amounts of currency here. It does take thirteen days to cash out Steem Power/Dollars to actual Steem, so keep that in mind when you do want to take out whatever you've earned, and it also does deduct from your Steem Power (which is basically your influence on the site), but it's still a really good way to earn currency - especially if you're not familiar with mining or don't have a set up that's powerful enough to mine with.

Again, welcome, and glad you've found another income source - it can be rough with art!

Thank you for your advice! Not sure why I didn't see this sooner! Yeah, steemit has been quite lovely so far. Still getting the hang of understanding the wallet and such so your words are useful! Thank you! 💕

Glad we were able to help you a little by at least removing the payouts and nuking the offending account. I was the one who reached out via facebook to confirm that your content was being stolen, if you need any more assistance or have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you so much! I really appreciated that you contacted me in such a timely manner and helped remove my content. It means a ton to me! 💕

Hi Ama. I love your work!

Thank You! Glad to hear!