Designer gets sued over © of his work
 

Designer gets bullied for © infrigment on his own designs... http://digg.com/d1nxBm lets show him some support!

Man. That just really stinks. I just read it, and it's awful. I sure hope the poor guy is able to get something done about it legally because this is just plain wrong.

I posted this info over at an SEO forum I belong to also. There's a lot of professional photographers that are members there and maybe they might be able to offer this kid some help too.

I never knew people could sink as low as that (oh wait a minute we *are* talking about lawyers here aren't we, silly me. That's a joke btw so any lawyers here don't flame me plz :-P), that's just plain awful, I mean contacting the guys previous customers without full evidence and proof that they are stolen is just slanderous and totally out of order.

I hope the guy counter sues them and right royally takes them to the cleaners.

I'm guessing its attracting a lot of support and or attention, his website just started 503'in, well hes got my full support.

This is a HORRIBLE story.

You know, I hope the court favors the artist, it really depends on how good the attorney's are unfortunately and how liberal the judges are.

Of course, if this case gets enough TV time, then the artist will win out due to the bad PR that company will get. That is probably the only way he can win.

I hope that is at least partially my fault. Not that I want the site inaccessible. I did the research and decided his case has merit. So I made the case known to several much larger communities that I am active in.

Good old fashioned public outcry will ruin those that are trying to ruin him.

That's because you're a really good person, Krik. :-)

@All -- his site started throwing errors 2 days ago. His story is frontpage on slashdot and the traffic from there is bringing down the house.

I buy a lot of stockart photos to use in my web designs, but have never bought any from stockart.com -- and I'm glad I didn't.

Over at ihelpyou forums (where I'm a member) we're discussing this story too. We have a member there named IncrediBill and he's suggested quite a few things that this kid can do to find all instances of his stolen work online.

Anyone have any idea how to get that information to the kid?

BTW, does anyone know if he's setup a PayPal account to accept donations to his legal fund? If so, I'll donate some money to him too.

Looks like the article has over 3600 Diggs now! I was actually one of the first 30 something to digg it... Does that give me bragging rights? Lol, jk

I don't have his email address... so idk...

@LMAO!

OK, thanks anyway. :-)

yes Krik is a GREAT person, and he's very patient with certain members around here.. :-D

I use iStockphoto.com, I hope there is no affiliations.

Does this kid want help? Does anyone know the latest on his topic?

Perhaps....but at least we know you are on the ball....^^

LOL. Yep, I read that thread too, and I agree with you. He is very patient, and a very good teacher. :-)

I don't have any idea what's the latest on this issue. I read the original digg article a few days ago but it was a chore to just be able to do that. Digg isn't compatiable with screen readers, and FF seems to choke and die so I had to disable JS and then load it in Opera just to read it.

If anyone wants to read IncrediBill's suggestions, they're over here:
Designer getting sued for infringing own work

Seems to me I remember some online tool that gets the meta header (output) from websites and you can get it from images too. Then, it could be pointed at the image url on stockart.com and it'd prove the timestamp dates for the kid.

I'll see if I can find it. It's in my bookmarks somewhere.

Was trying to track down some contact info for this guy and it looks like blue host has has his site, Relevant Studio, shutdown even the ICANN information is no longer references him as the owner so no luck on phone number or email address.

But at the bottom of that story there looks to be some round about ways to get a hold of him.
Note the links on Mike, Kode, #SaveJon, Twitter, and Logopond.

And there has been an update to the original article at the bottom they have a link to SAVEJON.NET for those that wish to contribute to his legal defense fund.

Yep, looks like relevantstudio.com has been shut down. I wonder if those guys [the ones suing him] had anything to do with that?

I checked whois.sc on his other domain (jonengle.com) and there's a @gmail address listed that he can be contacted at.

Thanks for the other info you provided, Krik.

Hey I use Bluehost!!!

Google "stock art", yes it has grown that big.

That would be no.

I contacted someone I knew of that knows someone over at blue host. Blue Host is small hosting company they rent their server space and bandwidth from a server farm. Basically they don't have the bandwith for the level of traffic that Jon was getting.

Apparently LogoPond is going to put his site up on their server. It just takes time to get everything moved and to get the new IP address to propagate through the internet.

Yeah, I read the update on that over at the LogoPond thread after I'd asked about that here. It's really nice of the owner of LogoPond to help him out like that.

He should speak to these guys to represent him!
Dozer Internet Law - Copyright Lawyers

Those guys really know their stuff. They specialize in Internet cases dealing with copyright infringement, among other areas.

Here's the link for donating to the guys legal fund: http://www.fundable.com/groupactions...-06.6402295564

Looks like the guy pulled down the legal fund, could be sign that he is guilty after all... Plus an interesting response from stockart:

http://forum.freelanceswitch.com/top...e=2#post-60623

Looks like he's guilty to me. Totally stupid going to the public about this.

In his original digg story he mentioned the Chef Hat. He said he had an account with stockart.com and bought one image a very long time ago -- that of a Chef Hat which he'd used in a logo for a client.

Interesting that the stockart.com email mentions the Chef Hat too. Honestly, this whole thing makes no sense to me.

Why would someone with his educational background, and high-profile client portfolio risk 10 years of trusted & earned reputation in the professional community over 65 pieces of stolen stock art?

Further, if you're guilty, why would you make such huge public noise over the fact that you're being wrongfully accused?

If he is guilty, and has pulled down the legal fund site for that reason; I hope he returns the money to the persons that have donated thus far.

If he does not, he will be in more hot water for other illegal activities such as accepting money under false pretenses and wire fraud.