Sunday, September 23, 2018

MASSIVE COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS ON MINDS

massive copyright violations on minds

Minds appears to be a haven for some copyright violators who scrape images off the internet and post them without attribution, trying to profit from other peoples work.
If you want to know about Copyright and related issues, I operate a website, Visionary Art Gallery, where I dedicated a page to this issue. Also, a link to that page appears in the footer and thus on each and every represented artists page (there are well over 500 artists represented). Check it out here: https://www.vagallery.com/copyright.html

About the specifics

The above image is a painting by MARTINA HOFFMANN,
a friend and fellow artist whom I published in my VISIONARY ART GALLERY
This painting, along with many others, was found on MINDS Visionary Art Channel without any attribution, posted by the user Ricky168
After this was initially discovered by @libaws and posted on her Facebook page, a discussion ensued, and Martina Hoffmann posted the following on Facebook:
I usually dislike getting involved in this sort of a thing but was made aware of this site (https://www.minds.com/) that is ‘The CRYPTO SOCIAL NETWORK”, which states: “We are an open source and decentralized platform for Internet freedom. GET PAID IN CRYPTO FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION to the community”. Someone, unknown to me, (https://www.minds.com/Ricky168) created a page called “Visionary Art’…”https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/666722386204172306” and posted my work as well as the work of other artists without asking permission nor giving us proper credit. So I tried to post the following comment below my art on his page: “This image was published on this site WITHOUT MY CONSENT, and while I really do appreciate that the creators of this page did mark the fact that ALL OF MY WORK IS COPY RIGHTED, which makes it subject to my specific consent for any form of usage or second-party publication, they still did not respect it. They also neglected to add the proper title and name of artist next to my GODDESS TRIANGLE BY MARTINA HOFFMANN. My work is all over the net and performing a google search in order to gather all necessary information is not rocket science. Thank you for rectifying this on all of my images as well as on those by all other ‘un-named artists’ published on your page!”When I tried to post this comment below my art, I received this message: “The comment couldn’t be saved because @Ricky168 has blocked you.”
WOW!
So to make my complaint very clear: I DO APPRECIATE people sharing my art but I’d l’d like to be credited appropriately and feel ripped off when my art is used, without my consent to collect voting points to earn crypto currency while I’m (the artist) being compensated for the publication of my art….Thoughts anyone?
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS WITH YOUR COMMUNITY and DOWN WITH THE PIRATES!!!

I have an account on Minds as well, which until now, is mostly idling: https://www.minds.com/TheMystic, but following this, I began some research, and after exhaustive scrolling came up with a large list of violations perpetrated by the user Ricky168.

MINDS – COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS:

The first link on my list below is the Austrian Artist Fritz Aigner

FRITZ-AIGNER-xlarge.jpg
and the second one is by my personal friend Vesna Krasnec, and I own this painting:
VESNA KRASNEC -xlarge.jpg
This list contains just the artists I know and, for the most part, are personal friends of mine.
The list covers less than a 3 week period of September 2018, and the ones I list are among hundreds of other scraped images that are also uncredited rip-offs.
▼ from here: Sep 23, 2018
1. https://www.minds.com/media/890029295642038272
2. https://www.minds.com/media/890029159744851968
3. https://www.minds.com/media/890029120531816448
4. https://www.minds.com/media/889670518419279872
5. https://www.minds.com/media/889670407218237440
6. https://www.minds.com/media/889670365456543744
7. https://www.minds.com/media/889670317322711040
8. https://www.minds.com/media/889305367580147712
9. https://www.minds.com/media/889305243505991680
10. https://www.minds.com/media/889305194935386112
11. https://www.minds.com/media/889305367580147712
12. https://www.minds.com/media/889305243505991680
13. https://www.minds.com/media/889305194935386112
14. https://www.minds.com/media/888581373451661312
15. https://www.minds.com/media/888581263227121664
16. https://www.minds.com/media/888217116297048064
17. https://www.minds.com/media/888217050189352960
18. https://www.minds.com/media/888217010683203584
19. https://www.minds.com/media/888216978588225536
20. https://www.minds.com/media/887866803700887552
21. https://www.minds.com/media/887866719928373248
22. https://www.minds.com/media/887866680364937216
23. https://www.minds.com/media/886767987505967104
24. https://www.minds.com/media/886767951707582464
25. https://www.minds.com/media/886767920991469568
26. https://www.minds.com/media/886408233675812864
27. https://www.minds.com/media/886408177170149376
28. https://www.minds.com/media/886408084391739392
29. https://www.minds.com/media/886044952985726976
30. https://www.minds.com/media/886044902725382144
31. https://www.minds.com/media/885680633379975168
32. https://www.minds.com/media/885680590805651456
33. https://www.minds.com/media/885320424943898624
34. https://www.minds.com/media/885320376699731968
35. https://www.minds.com/media/885320336035016704
36. https://www.minds.com/media/885139274604474368
37. https://www.minds.com/media/885139131251552256
38. https://www.minds.com/media/885139080219455488
39. https://www.minds.com/media/885139041273368576
40. https://www.minds.com/media/885138998732517376
41. https://www.minds.com/media/884948155648339968
42. https://www.minds.com/media/884948115938725888
43. https://www.minds.com/media/884595462099320832
44. https://www.minds.com/media/884595412018556928
45. https://www.minds.com/media/884595367626817536
46. https://www.minds.com/media/884232904194514944
47. https://www.minds.com/media/884232866814877696
48. https://www.minds.com/media/884232828348915712
49. https://www.minds.com/media/884232766833123328
50. https://www.minds.com/media/884232672009244672
51. https://www.minds.com/media/883869716368154624
52. https://www.minds.com/media/883869666518851584
53. https://www.minds.com/media/883869629200064512
54. https://www.minds.com/media/883869547885092864
55. https://www.minds.com/media/883662058251968512
56. https://www.minds.com/media/883661967671779328
57. https://www.minds.com/media/883661905946333184
58. https://www.minds.com/media/883661874694578176
59. https://www.minds.com/media/883542016491347968
60. https://www.minds.com/media/883541832174788608
61. https://www.minds.com/media/883540522708885504
62. https://www.minds.com/media/883540396217065472
▲ up to here: Sep 4, 2018, 4:34:05 AM
Reacting to Martina Hoffmann:
https://www.facebook.com/martina.hoffmann.547/posts/10158205260354896
My Facebook comment:
Martina Hoffmann if you are a member of Minds (I don’t know if you can if you are not), you can flag each individual piece – down arrow drop down menu – and mark it copyright violation. What happens next is that they give you a e-mail address:
Please submit a DMCA notice to copyright@minds.com
Anyway, I scrolled around for a while on that users account https://www.minds.com/Ricky168 and between Sept. 23rd and September 4th I found 62 copyright violations of artwork by people I know very well – not counting oodles of photos and tattoo artists. It seems he is scraping a eclectic variety of websites to steal images, i.e. those 62 I copied the URL’s I must have scrolled through hundreds of images within that short time period, so we are looking at the tip of the iceberg!

as I said, this list is just the tip of the iceberg, it is just ONE OF THE USERS ON MINDS that stuck out like a sore thumb, but a cursory scrolling of the posts on this MINDS Visionary Art Channel would reveal several more.

I also posted my 2 cents worth on a blog post discussion on Minds:
How to kill MINDS beauty
how to kill Minds? by having users on there that blatantly violate copyright, scraping images off the net and posting without attribution. Here is a comment I added to one post (you can see the post, I shared and pinned it to the top of my page) – and this is my comment: “a quick search between 22.9. and 4.9.2018 I found 61 copyright violations alone of artists works that I know personally, not counting possibly hundreds of others, photographers, tattoo artists etc. within just such a short time period alone. There appears NOTHING to be the work of the user @Ricky168 himself. None of the posts bear any attribution! Even so, copyright work can only be displayed with the permission of the copyright owner, particularly if the use of it is monetized! To clarify: If the artist himself posts a image, you are allowed to “share” it by re-blogging because then the image link will point back to the artist, but you are NOT allowed to scrape a image from the internet, even if you credit the artist!
This blog was originally posted to my profile on the Steemit Blockchain:
https://steemit.com/minds/@thermoplastic/massive-copyright-violations-on-minds
and re-blogged on my Wordpress blog:
https://ottorapp.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/massive-copyright-violations-on-minds/


Sunday, September 16, 2018

VISIONARY ART GALLERY – UPDATE

Initially posted on Steemit, this VISIONARY ART GALLERY UPDATE is the first in a series to highlight the changes to the Visionary Art Gallery Website. Artists featured in this blog are the tip of the iceberg – I had fixed many more pages (but still many more to do) and will publish additional pages in the next series of updates.
screenshot new VAG website 2.JPG

VISIONARY ART GALLERY – UPDATE


Seven months ago I posted about VAG ARTISTS ON STEEMIT, such as Peter Gric
This post is about a small selection of over 500 artists from my network. The main website is the VISIONARY ART GALLERY, which I am currently working on changing the look and artist pages. This because Flash is history and the Flash features such as embedded slide shows do not work anymore, since the host site on Ning has done away with Flash. Read more about it: THE END OF FLASH. So I am working on installing HTML 5 slide shows and at the same time updating the website to a more modern look. This will keep me busy for a long time.

some ARTISTS PAGES fixed:


ASSOCIATED ARTISTS

Some of our artist friends were not members of the private network on Ning, and they are listed under associated artists:
there are several more you find under that heading Associated Artists but I am also working on some of those pages that still need to be fixed.

We also have a section called Hall of Fame where we showcase some artists that were influencial to many of us:

EXAMPLE OF A HALL OF FAME ARTISTS


I blogged about this cooperative project, where artists affiliated with us had worked on:


VISIONARY ART EXHIBITION

VAE-banner.JPG

A spin-off site from the Visionary Art Gallery is the VISIONARY ART EXHIBITION, where we showcase exceptional content, but there are also guest-blogs such as DREAMS & DIVINITIES (see below about affiliated sites), and ARCHAIC VISIONS

Some of our associated/affiliated sites:

Liba WS organises exhibitions and publishes books, her last Steemit post:

we maintain a page for D&D on our Visionary Art Website:

and this is the link to the official website:

VISIONARY ART AUSTRALIA

VAA website

BEINART


Jon Beinart, the founder, is also on Steemit:
Last but not least, the oldest site of our genre:

SOCIETY FOR ART OF IMAGINATION

As you can see, I am not idling – got much to do:
NO REST FOR THE WICKED


Visit my website

ART OF THE MYSTIC OTTO RAPP-web350.jpg

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Exhibition Anderswelt und Zeitenwende


Pünktlich zu Halloween - am 25.10. bis 9.11.2018 ​
just in time for Halloween  - coming up 25.10. to 9.11.2018

ANDERSWELT UND ZEITENWENDE

Ausstellung mit Werken von Otto Rapp, Klaus Schöberl, Demetrius Staykoff und Anna Wischin
Picture

SOME OF MY WORK I WILL BE SHOWING IN THIS GROUP EXHIBITION

...these and several more...
Picture