Jury Images Stolen

Jury Images Stolen
screen captures are linked to full screen captures
of the respective art show web pages

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and the images of screen captures from various art show web sites prove the allegations of the article title above.

The name of the "jeweler" has been removed from the text of this page as a result of the threat of a law suit against the owner of Art Fair Insiders and everyone who posted in the thread I started about the issue. I was asked to remove the thread after the owner of AFI consulted her attorney.

Michele LeVett, a jeweler from North Carolina, found her jury image on the Orange Beach Art Show and the Brandywine Art Show web sites under the name of a different jeweler. After finding her jury image had been used by another artist, immediately had her image copyrighted. I actually prepared this image as well as Michele’s other images for jurying a few years ago.

Brandywine Art Festival web site

Orange Beach Art Show web site

Michele Levett's page on the Carolina Designer Craftsmen web site

Here are three copies of Michele LeVett's image, a screen capture from the Brandywine Art Festival web site and a screen capture from the Orange Beach Art Show web site. The bottom picture, as a point of comparison, is a screen capture from Michele's own page on the Carolina Designer Craftsmen web site. If you see it anywhere else credited to another artist, please contact Michele or contact me.

Anna Continos, a jeweler from New jersey was notified by an artist friend that one of her jury images was on an art show web site under another jeweler's name. It was a show in North Carolina that she had never applied to.

The image she was referring to is on the bottom left on this page of her web site. The exact same image was on the Durham NC Centerfest Art Show web site on the 2010 page but has since been removed from the art show web site at Anna's request. Good for Centerfest because they take copyright infringement seriously.

from Anna's own web site

Centerfest Art Show web site

Here’s a comparison set of images showing Anna Continos’ reduced web site image next to a screen capture of the same image on the Centerfest web site. The image is the property of Anna Continos and if you see it anywhere credited to another artist, please contact Anna or contact me.

What started out as a group of jewelers finding that their styles and some individual pieces had been copied, became a clear case of copyright infringement once images were stolen and used under a different artist’s name. There is no law against copying someone’s work, but there are federal laws against copyright infringement. And it's interesting in that if you don't specify an image to be used for promotion, an art show almost always uses the number one image in your jury set. Therefore the crook probably used other jewelers images as her number one image, otherwise she might have gotten away with it.

Once ZAPP was notified about the copyright infringement, they consulted with their attorney and deleted the profile from the system for violation of their terms of service.

The question now is what can be done to prevent this from happening again. Anna Continos’ image was taken from her web site where it enlarges to 700 pixels (and some on that same page enlarge to over 2400 pixels) long dimension, much too large for a web size image. Because of the relaxed image requirements on ZAPP, images now only have to be 1400 pixels long dimension to upload. That means the image, starting at 700 pixels, only had to be enlarged by 100%, easy to do for anyone with minimal image editing skills. I’ve always recommended that web images be no larger than 500 pixels long dimension, which would have required a much greater enlargement to be used for jurying. None of this means anything if you upload larger images and then resize them on the web site because the larger image will always be there. The images need to be resized before uploading. And it was also suggested to add a copyright across the image as a text file in your image editing program. I’ve always found that to be a deterrent from selling items. You expect to see a copyright across a photographs, but not a photograph of an object because it’s a distraction.

The real answer unfortunately is that nothing can be done to prevent cheaters from cheating. No matter what safeguards are put into place, they can be gotten around by determined crooks.