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 harassed, 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/harass them for it”.
It was, it seemed, the internet at its very best, a juggernaut that could be tasked to help the downtrodden and harassed 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 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 designs? 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 D. 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 they were 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 client’s 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.
Jeezus. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the cut-and-dried case that half the internet believed it to be. To make matters worse, I managed to track down some of the images via Google and Stock Art’s search engine using simple keywords. I wasn’t terribly thrilled with what I found, especially considering I had been around ground zero for some of the anti-StockArt.com and anti-Artlaws.com sentiments now swirling angrily around the internet. I’m not particularly proud of that.
And that by the way, is the reason I’m writing this. At the risk of enraging a good chunk of the design community, I think there’s more here than meets the eye. A lot more. I also believe there’s enough evidence to indicate that neither StockArt.com, Artlaws.com or the various people that work for them, hire them, or use their services are the bastards that they’re being made out to be. And while the entire world has heard Jon’s side, only a few have taken the time to research the other side (or even taken a look at some of the work in dispute). Do I know who copied who in this case? Not for absolute certainty, but I have some pretty strong opinions as to what’s what. I’ll have to keep them them to myself, as they are just opinions until someone comes clean, or this case hits the courts. Only then will you, or I, know for certain (and even then, we may never know, should things get settled beforehand). In the meantime, I know I’ve stepped down off my high-horse, and I think others need to as well. I love internet mob justice as much as the next cat, but I think a lot of people took an undeserved battering over this, and I for one, won’t be joining another internet mob anytime soon. My pitchfork and torch will have to wait for the next time that I’m absolutely sure of the cause. And who the bad guys really are.
I hope some of you will do the same.
UPDATE 3:. Posted to Twitter on May 20.
UPDATE 2: Turns out a lot of the images in question can also be tracked back to logo design contests on Design Outpost, a website that hosts spec design competitions and bills itself as “A Different Kind of Design Firm”. Many of the images that can be found on StockArt.com were also entered into design competitions, and in several instances were selected by contest holders as the winning entries. I guess if there’s an additional lesson to be learned here, it is this – logo design contests (aka crowdsourcing) are an extraordinarily bad idea when it comes to developing a logo for your company. Read more about this development here.
UPDATE 1: This post is receiving a lot of traffic from DIgg, Reddit, Twitter and a host of others. There are a few mirrors hosting this site (to reduce server load) and the comment field may not work on all of them. If you’re reading this on a Coral Cache version (it will have some variation of http://www.thelogofactory.com.nyud.net as an URL in your browser address bar) and If you feel inclined to comment on this article you can do so by clicking here – that will take you to the correct form. Apologies for the temporary duct-tape solution, but the response to this post has been overwhelming.
Related posts:
- iStockphoto to sell stock logos
- Twitter graphic $6 proof that design crowdsourcing works? Not quite.
- Poor Man’s Copyright
- The Jon Engle vs. Stockart.com story – an anti-spec work parable?
- Poor Man’s Copyright (again).
Tags: business, freelancing, industry, social media, spec work
The fact it was from multiple artists seem to completely derail Jons original argument. If he indeed lied, he’s really in for a rough ride coz the internet works both ways.
[...] Stock artwork, logos, copyright and Twitter. | The Logo Factor Design Blog "I think there’s more here than meets the eye. A lot more. I also believe there’s enough evidence to indicate that neither StockArt.com, Artlaws.com or the various people that work for them, hire them, or use their services are the bastards that they’re being made out to be. And while the entire world has heard Jon’s side, only a few have taken the time to research the other side (or even taken a look at some of the work in dispute). Do I know who copied who in this case? Not for absolute certainty, but I have some pretty strong opinions as to what’s what." [...]
wow, seems like Jon’s resume may be mostly fake. *shakes head*
Though I am still unsure *how* Jon came into possession of the images, it’s pretty clear he’s not on the up and up, with all these supposed clients who seem not to be, and various work which is clearly not his at all. However, when images are available on the internet for years as these are, not everyone takes them from the original site. I have seen sadly so many instances where images found on the net are repackaged and resold by dodgy outfits as royalty free stock at cut rate prices, incorporated into “free fonts” etc. It’s sad.
This is why I am still unsure of “how” he came into possession of the StockArt images (and this “how” means a lot, actually), but I am very sure that they’re not his. The rest of his actions speak volumes, though. Unfortunately people who are definitely like how Jon appears to be, are getting a lot of customers in trouble on copyrights by selling images which do not have the proper licensing. It’s a plague on the net these days.
you know… the 20 artists could potentially be 1 person…
i see lots and lots of “take the crowd” tactics here, not my type of brainwash…
if you want any sence, just look at the facts.
jon has work
layers need work
i really doubt that the law firm cares who is actually right in this case.
@yurik – I think we can dismiss the absolutely ludicrous suggestion that the original 20 or so artists are somehow one person. Taking the list of people named (from the Stock Art e-mail (above) we can find not only their profiles on StockArt.com, but their photograph or illustrative likeness, bio and more importantly, ALL the images in question. Here’s just a few of the artists’ portfolio links on Stock Art.
Patricia Dalbey
Phil Bliss
Cindy Lindgren
Scott Greer
Dave Winter
Larry Milam
Mary Ross
Rita Lascaro
Robert L. Prince
Peter Buttecali
Michael Rowley
Elizabeth Burrill
Paul Dolan
Keep in mind that these artists have established portfolios and websites outside the Stock Art domain. More importantly, if we look at the images in question, and compare them in context to the artists’ portfolios, we’ll also see that the images are illustrated in each artist’s style, and are often taken from a series of similarly themed icons and images. I don’t think there’s ANY doubt remaining in the ‘who designed the artwork first’ debate and rather than “taking the crowd” or being “brainwashed”, it seems to me that the facts speak rather loudly, and graphically, for themselves. Keep in mind though, that the real issue here is the proper licensing of copyrighted work. It’s quite possible that the works in question WERE licensed, though that’s certainly not how the story began.
In terms of the events of the last week, the designers and artists listed are the true victims in all of this. To allegedly have their work used without permission is one thing. To be subsequently accused of stealing that work from some poor, downtrodden designer, by half the internet, is another. It was, ironically, that scenario that had half the internet up-in-arms in the first place.
In terms of the law firm involved not caring who is “right”, I have to disagree. The legal firm that’s representing Stock Art are tasked with protecting the original illustrators’ property. As a professional designer, I agree with that premise, as most people who create artwork for a living would. And only by proving “who is right” would the lawyers involved win their case in terms of protecting the original copyrights, as well as Stock Art’s reputation.
All I can say is “wow”. Thanks for digging…
Are those sites behind the pop ups on the PDF’s also part of Jon’s ‘portfolio’?
I just googled most of them and only one (the wrigley’s one) seems to be an genuine logo – seems like most of the portfolio is fake (or is that the point of logopond – you just put ideas up?).
Just a few but:
Mantra restaurant
Alamo racing dogs
Children’s burn foundation
Buddy’s place
Kayak Kafe
Beachfront Brazil….
Sencera
Clarkes benefit’s consulting…..
haha: http://www.ikarma.com/id/21253?
@hypatiaa – I agree, I think he probably had purchased or came into possession of a stock art package that contained these logos. That would explain all of the different styles and the original logos being from so many different artists. Perhaps he thought that the package was legit and royalty-free, he modified the logos to suit his clients needs and then considered them to be his own original work. So if this is true, in a way he must believe himself that they are his original work, but what he isn’t admitting is that they were based on other artist’s work that he did NOT create. Also, I am curious about thelogofactory conversation with Stock Art saying that he paid a previous bil for using licensed work. If true, this implies he has done this before and was caught, paid up which also implies guilt and acceptance of the responsibility, but yet he continued to use logos of questionable origin as the basis for his work. If he paid a bill using work that was in any way similar to this case, and he really cared about his career, HE should have been the one to contact his clients and tell them that there may be a problem. It seems like he was just shocked to get a bill for the $18k and was seeking sympathy and even help in his original post, all the while forgetting how powerful the internet is. Or like I said, maybe he is in deep denial and truly believes he created the logos since he modified them to suit his client’s needs. Either way, he seems like a not-too-smart guy.
Wow. Thanks for this. I admit that I RT’d at least one link in defense of the designer. I wanted to side with the designer because.. well, he’s a designer.
But I did find it odd that they were /only/ charging him $18k – and that he let it go for so long without really addressing the issue. If I was being accused of something like that, I’d be contacting a lawyer right away. I certainly wouldn’t have sat on it for 9 months…
He’s a designer?
Using stock art makes you NOT a designer … my clients would never hire me again if they though I relied on stock services for anything other than editorial photography.
> Using stock art makes you NOT a designer
NO. You are confusing a designer with an illustrator. They are different.
I was taught it’s okay to use another piece as inspiration. Every designer pulls inspiration from somewhere. But you need to interpret it in your own creative way if you want to use that idea. It should not look in any way identical to the original.
Nothing wrong with designers that aren’t good illustrators, but usually those people keep doing things they ARE good at and have knowledge about, doesn’t matter if it’s ID, IxA, UI, webdesign, developing etc. I am a designer and I have never used stock photos for anything else than mockups. If you just sell clients logos you didn’t make yourself you are not a designer. Period. Because THIS is something the clients could have done themselves. And the reason why stock art services exist in the first place. I don’t see how any stock art could connect to any of the clients I have. Each has an individual history/agenda/background and I prefer to treat them as such instead of just layout brochures for them with material I collected somewhere else. Doing that is not bad per se, but it has nothing to do with a design process. It’s just something any printshop could do.
Moral of this story? Don’t plagiarize designs – it cheapens your portfolio and leads to trouble. If anything positive can come out of this, it’s getting these issues out into the open.
argh, illustration is just *one* facet of communication design – it’s not all of it. Certainly there are many web, interface, and layout designers who are not illustrators. Many web designers are programmers, and such a skilled person I’ve plenty of respect for.
Many graphic designers use stock photos and art in the publishing industry, when you are up against a deadline you often need to use them. Not every publication can afford to have a photographer and an illustrator on hand. It’s just wrong to not pay for them. It’s even more wrong to claim you created the work of others and stick them in a portfolio. If you buy stockart and pass it off as your own work, you are definitely not an illustrator. But that doesn’t make the work less of people who do need to buy the work, who are equally skilled in some other area of communications design. I don’t expect all web and print professionals to be illustrators.
@hypatiaa
Agreed, of course the usage of stock photography etc. is absolutely legitimate if it’s just a placeholder for content.
But you have to admit there’s a big, big difference between doing this and selling your clients logos for THEIR businesses that you just downloaded somewhere and are as generic as it gets. I don’t know about your clients, but mine would be pissed off if I would pull something like that off. Because if they hire a LOGO DESIGNER, they should get a professional who is capable of coming up with a solution that he/she put some thought in. A solution that is not used by hundreds of other businesses already. Otherwise, what’s the point? They could have bought a stock logo themselves, without hiring a designer.
“I don’t expect all web and print professionals to be illustrators.”
Again, I agree 100%, but usually those people don’t pretend to be logo designers when they aren’t. This is as if I would tell my clients “Oh, I am a web designer and can make your company a kickass page, no worries” but all I do is using some template page instead of offering them an actual design service. Customizing the colors of a template is not web design. And downloading stock logos and modifying some details is not logo design, simple as that.
TO LILY: The moron with the retard post detailing her dismay at the op’s lengthy post. Fall into a ditch and die. Signed The Educated.
For those of you who are still following this unfolding saga – many of the images in question can also be tracked back to Design Outpost logo design contests. Design Outpost is a website ‘company’ that host spec design contests and refers to itself as “A different kind of design firm”. In several instances, the images that we can find on Stock Art were selected by contest holders as the winner.
Suppose if there’s another lesson to be learned here, it is this – logo design contests (being rebranded as “crowdsourcing”) are an extraordinarily risky way for any company to have a logo (or anything else for that matter) designed. Probably worth a blog post of its own, that.
That’s amazing, Steve… Richard Askew was right, Jon basically did use stockart.com as his personal pool of art to steal from.
Over on logopond, a private, restricted forum has been set up for Jon Engle to talk with his friends with on that site and offer “his side of the story.” Apparently he thinks that all of the other people who supported him on Twitter, pledged to his legal defense fund, wrote up his account of his situation on their blogs, etc don’t deserve any kind of an explanation from the person who used them and embarrassed them.
http://logopond.com/forum/view.....66&p=3
So it all comes down to logo design contests, eh. That figures. Many designers have been saying that it is only a matter of time before a very high profile incident shows how unprofessional and dangerous logo design contests are. Well here it is. This is what happens when people only have a slim chance of getting paid enter contests. They don’t want to spend the time needed to develop original concepts, so they resort to time-saving methods like copying other people’s work.
I’ll bet this isn’t an isolated case either – I would think that other design contest sites like 99Designs and Crowdspring have ticking time bombs all over their sites – copied work just waiting to be found by the original copyright holders. It also begs the question how many other contest holders have purchased logos and design work that belongs to someone else?
Interesting, however, nothing is proven either way, while the article challenges the thinking it does nothing to prove without a doubt that either side is right or wrong.
copyright is vague in its essence and usually depends on who is sitting on a jury at the time the case is presented.
One thing for sure, I know I want nothing to do with this stock art company ever.
Tim’s last blog post..Creating a Website using wordpress
Tim, look at the logo comparisons. The images from stockart.com are from professional artists’ portfolios, many being part of larger bodies of work done in the same style. Engle’s designs have no stylistic consistency, and show signs of being derivative works (the crop box on the fountain pen nib, the white background in the fireplace, the varying line thickness in his “nerd”). Engle’s story does not hold up — read all the comments here. If stockart.com ripped him off, they did it in cahoots with a dozen respected artists in the design community, all of whom have particular styles that Engle imitated flawlessly.
But if, as you say, “nothing is proven either way,” why do you “know I want nothing to do with this stock art company ever”? You’re upset at them for trying to defend the rights of their artists against fraud?
All, please know that as one of the artists who created some of the artwork that Jon has allegedly misused, I certainly believe the truth will come out. Nothing to see here folks.
“The legal beagles contacting Jon’s clients and telling them that he was under investigation for copyright infringement? That’s certainly not fair.”
Isn’t it part of copyright law that if you don’t take steps like informing people who are using the images that you believe are being used illegally, then they have the right to use those images.
On the other hand if they are contacting clients of Jon’s who are not using images that they are claiming, I think that’s illegal.
[...] addition, The Logo Factor, a graphic design blog with no relation to either side, did a little investigating into the matter: Seems Stock Art are ferocious in protecting their illustrators property and copyright (certainly [...]
Tim, copyright isn’t vague. You either did it or you didn’t, and I made the art. I am one of the artists that Jon ripped off. I have the printed piece that includes an image of a stork created in 1991 that Jon claimed was stolen from him over a decade later. Rich Askew has spent a fortune trying to track these guys down. But, not unlike trying to find the people who download free music, it has overwhelmed his business and energy. Purchasing illustrations online that are graphic like mine or many artists will become a thing of the past. Technology may be catching up, to be able to instantly scan and find the copyright and licensing information for an image, but for Rich it may be too late. A lot of artists and designers benefit from buying art online but of course there are always those who ruin it.
@Tim wrote: “Isn’t it part of copyright law that if you don’t take steps like informing people who are using the images that you believe are being used illegally, then they have the right to use those images.”
Actually, no, that’s not part of copyright law.
See myth #5 on the 10 Big Myths about copyright explained page. You’re probably thinking of trademarks, which are an entirely different area of intellectual property law.
A copyright owner retains their copyright even if they don’t defend it.
So…
All of those logo’s that appear on the stock site were “done” by Jon? Jon uploaded them and gave the stock site permission to sell them on?
If this can be answered then we can begin actually deciphering who is in the wrong. If Jon did not do those logo (that appear on the stock site) then he has actually sold on intellectual property of the stock company to a end-client!
I know for one, that in stock photography, you have only rights to “use” the image, not sell it on.
Regards,
Marty
@MartyIQ – the artwork in question was not uploaded by Jon to the Stock Art website. StockArt.com illustrators don’t actually upload artwork to the site but rather send their material to Stock Art who then approve the art and then add it to their library internally. And while Jon – by his own admission – had a ‘buyer’s’ account on the Stock Art website, I’ve been told by IPG that he wasn’t ever represented as one of the 150 illustrators mentioned as Stock Art contributors. I also think the fact that established artists, claiming to be the original illustrators, are coming forward – three of them in this comment thread alone – is worth noting.
[...] > Store « Stock artwork, logos, copyright and the power of Twitter. A cautionary tale. [...]
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[...] Stock artwork, logos, copyright and the power of Twitter. A cautionary tale. [...]
[...] after last week’s story about Jon Engle and his blatant plagiarism of stock art and TheLogoFactory.com’s excellent research into the [...]
Excellent article documenting the power and fury of the internet, and serious issues pertinent to creative copyright holders in all mediums. Thanks
[...] saying that he was being charged for his own work which was being ripped off by other people, but some people think he’s not telling the whole [...]
Wow, What a deluded fool and the worst kind of criminal
Im looking forward hearing confirmation that Jon has paid out the 18000 for the work he has stolen. ……although unfortunately I would expect that the money donated to his cause will pay for some of this.
@OB – as far as I know, the legal fund was canceled the money is being refunded, if it hasn’t already. I believe that the donation site doesn’t actually pay out any donations until the established figure is reached. In this case only $2500 out of $5000 was pledged.
All reasonable people know that we need to hear both sides of a story before making an informed decision, but thanks for reminding us.
[...] The problem was that others decided to look into the matter further and post their findings which contradicted Jon’s claims. The major backlash that followed doomed Jon and probably his career in the process. A big lesson [...]
[...] this belongs in the ‘goes without saying category’ but with the recent flaps about copied and improperly licensed logos still reverberating around the design community, thought it might be a good time to take a look at [...]
[...] designer gets sued for own work… You couldn’t make this up even if it was April 1st – Stock artwork, logos, copyright and Twitter. | The Logo Factor Design Blog I know we’re all strapped for cash, but nicking someone else’s work, loading it to your site, [...]