Advice on Art Theft...?

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

Someone on DeviantArt just contacted me to let me know that my art had been "stolen." I've never had this happen before, and it's not quite the normal "posting my work and calling it their own" situation...

The person who contacted me was an artist who was commissioned to draw someone's character. Their customer gave them a reference image, which they thought looked familiar. As it turns out, it's a recolored version of a commission I drew a while back.

The original is here, and the recolor that this person showed me had the cat character painted over with black and purple, and my signature crudely scratched out (the person who contacted me has removed the recolor from their photobucket account now, though their customer is still using a cropped version of it as their avatar on this FA account)

The customer claimed they first found my original drawing here, on some site called e621 - a site I've never heard of...

I'm at a bit of a loss, here. They're not publicly posting the recolor as theirs (other than the FA avatar), but they are distributing it via email and were careful to remove my signature and avoid crediting me (or the character's owner).

So... what should I do, here? Is this enough cause for concern that I should approach this guy about stealing my work? Should I just let it slide because this is the internet and stuff like this is bound to happen?

Looks like I'll be watermarking work from here on, though. Sigh, I hate watermarks.

Update: The avatar was removed by FA admins, and the reposted image was removed from e621 once I asked the admin to take it down.

Comments

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[cary everett (from livejournal.com)]

Arc isn't a bad woman. I've known her for a long time; she's nice, and was respectful to the artists themselves if they were respectful to her in turn.

She just lost her temper with people like InsaneKangaroo, and other people who were the more stereotypical unpleasant internet users. And unfortunately, those are the sorta people who start negative propaganda crusades, and go out of your way to smear you. Jack Thompson wannabes.

That being said, the new management is going out of it's way to be more patient with unpleasant individuals, so that such a negative reputation does not get spread.

Arcs reputation was undeserved, and she's a sweetheart, but it's something she'll likely have a hard time escaping :(

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

She? I thought Arcturus was male. Ah well.

I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. There have been so many accounts of artists here in this very comm that shared their experiences. I'm not going to believe every single one of them is going to lie about Arcturus talking down to them and ignoring their requests no matter how polite they were just because one person who is obviously their friend says they're nice. I don't mean any offense to you, but there is simply too much evidence to the contrary.

Unless you mean someone bothering to ask at all to have their art removed means they're 'unpleasant'. Otherwise, I think you'll need to accept that Arcturus really was nasty to at least some people, unprovoked. But you're free to confront all the artists that have spoken up in artist's beware and tell them they're lying, if you want.

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[bagheera.livejournal.com]

I dug up some pictures and Arcturus is a he... unless there's a reason he prefers to be called a she...

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Lets not get too off topic with a discussion on Arcturus' gender/sex. Its a touchy subject for many and A_B truly isn't the forum for it.

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[connorgoodwolf.livejournal.com]

Uhh...

Arcturus dug his own grave and he needs to lie in it. I know of a major incident where he acted insanely childish refusing to remove art of a character drawn in a harassing way, the owner of the fursona made the request. Arcturus... he went further and pulled a," you owe me money for consulting my lawyer as well over this issue."

So no, he is completely at fault for his own actions, no other individual created his own reputation, people are responsible on their own for such.