Blatant Fractal Art Theft!

by MarkJayBee, Aug 5, 2015, 6:27:49 AM
Journals / Personal

Hi there folks,

Thanks to a recent post on facebook by one of our members, I thought I'd make you aware of someone called Zelda Kurowski, who is currently showing many fractal images on her page at 'ipernity.com'.
These include pieces by some very well-known fractal artists; many of whom are respected Mandelbulb3D group members of long standing.
She appears to be claiming them as her own works, with absolutely no credit to the original artists appearing anywhere on her pages!

I'd suggest signing up to the site, and making her aware of your feelings in no uncertain terms!

www.ipernity.com/doc/643659

**UPDATE 7/8/15: After many complaints to ipernity.com by those affected by this, I'm happy to say that Zelda Kurowski's page has now been taken down! But I still wonder how many of her ilk are still out there waiting to be uncovered.... **

Surely there must be something which can be done to stop this happening; perhaps it's time dA starting using an image protection feature to disable right-clicking on images? Although I suspect this is highly unlikely to happen!!

55 Comments

Blatant Fractal Art Theft! by mandelbulb3d

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aRTWORKbYgnbARNES Featured By Owner Sep 13, 2015 Professional Digital Artist

You may want to remove Jean Milout from your friends list and groups at Facebook. Received 3 complaints of him posting other peoples works from the actual artists. Had to remove and block him from several groups.

www.facebook.com/jean.milout?f…

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Sep 16, 2015 Professional General Artist

Hmm, had a good look, but don't see anything familiar on his page Geoff?

Where did he post these exactly?

aRTWORKbYgnbARNES Featured By Owner Sep 16, 2015 Professional Digital Artist

Among some facebook groups- had to remove him from a few. He is more a fractal 'collector'. Have been finding he has also posted them to a page called blue planet, fractals belonging to Barbara (pamonk), Andrea1981g, mark (element90) and a lot of items from Jason Rampe's Softology/Visions of Chaos Page.It is more like a fractal discussion/project page, using these fractals as examples without credit and most likely without permission.

theblueplanet.graphforum.com/s…

Facebook Posting by Jean Milout Example- no credit given to Mark
www.facebook.com/groups/Peacef…

Mark's Fractal on Deviant Art
www.deviantart.com/art/An-Othe…

ninsk1030 Featured By Owner Aug 9, 2015

good!

GrahamSym Featured By Owner Aug 8, 2015 Digital Artist

Good work by all, well done people.
I think that's the way to deal with numpties like this.
Mass onslaught of outraged artists.
I have an account there, just to keep an eye on it www.ipernity.com/home/1817810

AnnaKirsten Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 General Artist

The update is good news!! Excellent and thanks for letting us know

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Professional General Artist

Yup, it seems that all your effforts have paid off folks - Zelda Kurowski's account has been closed!!

But I suspect that she may pop up again under some other guise, and god only knows how many others
are at the same game out there?

SteveAbell Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015

I can confirm that the thief and plagiarist Zelda Kurowski's account on ipernity has been closed.
Well done to all who took actions to stop this criminal.

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Professional General Artist

From what I can tell Steve, the whole thing was concluded within 2 days! Not too shabby eh?

C-91 Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

The account seems to be closed now. Thanks for reporting!

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Professional General Artist

Great news Sylvia!

bib993 Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I sent a note to the admin of an ipernity group where some of these images have been posted. The admin replied that she has removed all images from the group and also removed "Zelda" from her contacts.
Still no reply from ipernity site moderators...

Aqualoop31 Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Artist

Le même je devais.

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Professional General Artist

"They think it's all over - it is now....!"

SteveAbell Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015

Thought I might send Zelda Kurowski an ipernity email.......

"It has come my attention, and that of the global fractal art community, that you have stolen fractal artworks, and published them on the Ipernity website, without permission or accreditation of the talented artists. An act of theft.

You then have the audacity to pass these artworks off as your own work. An act of plagiarism.

You then lie to the ipernity community commenting about the artworks. An act of deception.

The fractal art community does not take kindly to theft, plagiarism and deception.

You have 10 of my copyrighted artworks published on your stream. I will be taking legal action against the infringement of copyright.

Let the shit rain down!!"

I would encourage the fractal community, also send Zelda a special message!

DsyneGrafix Featured By Owner Aug 11, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Good for you! I hope you mail her to the wall!!!!!

SteveAbell Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015

I was a little pissed off to find 10 of my Artworks on the thieving, plagiarist, Zelda Kurowski's Ipernity photostream.

How she has the audacity to claim the artworks as her own is beyond me!

I signed up to Ipernity, and posted the 10 stolen works on my Ipernity photostream, adding the following description...

"This is one of my original artworks. It was created using Mandlebuld3D software.

This art work was stolen from the Fractal Forum website by ipernity user Zelda Kurowski, and published on Impernity. An act of theft!

Not only did she steal my artwork, she also had the audacity to pass it off as her own work. An act of plagiarism!

She then lied to people who commented on the art work. An act of deception!

If you feel that theft, plagiarism and deception are unacceptable, then please let Zelda know!
www.ipernity.com/doc/643659

Many thanks."

I then added all Zelda Kurowski's Ipernity contacts to my Ipernity contacts, hopefully they're looking!!!!

0Encrypted0 Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 General Artist

Fractal Forums thread: blatant art theft !

SteveAbell Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015

Just spotted several of my works there too. F*cking sycophant plaguiarist!!! Will be reporting!!

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Edited Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

I was just about to note you funnily enough Steve! I really cannot believe the audacity of some people mate! No, I disagree!

lyc Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015

i think i saw stuff by C-91, pillemaster, tatasz, SaTaNiA and some others, not 100% sure what's whose...

bib993 Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

And people still get angry when I say all flames look the same

lyc Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015

i'm not sure how you get this from what i wrote, and i would disagree with you, with plenty of evidence

meanwhile, every single bulb render still looks like 80s pov ray stuff (cheapo phong specular), like i complained at the symposium last year... only a few experiments by syntopia, and still no one doing full path tracing like my very first render on FF all those years ago... i don't think it's the "flame" fractals that suffer a lack of progress and diversity

bib993 Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

That's right, it's just a matter of taste. And after a while, innovation in design gets more and more difficult.

lyc Featured By Owner Aug 7, 2015

I had the pleasure of meeting zy0rg in Amsterdam recently, you should check out his work: zy0rg.deviantart.com/art/Lizar…

That you think all flame fractals are same-y is hopefully mainly because you're also not really in the scene... and indeed too many people spam stuff from Apo scripts and presets etc. But is the MB scene really that different? And if you think about it, is it even possible to comprehend the truly colossal space of interesting fractals the IFS ("flame") algorithm can produce?

Those points are quite objective I think, and subjectively there's a certain raw geometric beauty that 3d phong shaded stuff will never capture in the same way as a strong 2d fractal design (such as the example earlier). There are many other super skilled and varied Apo/Chaotica artists making crazy new stuff, discovering new frameworks... and have you seen the chaotica videos page?

Having said all that, I'd like to work more on my toy DE fractal renderer this weekend, not like I'm against them in principle, just different tastes in shapes and materials / rendering

bib993 Featured By Owner Aug 10, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

zy0rg is already in my watchlist

pillemaster Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015

thank you my friend! I opend a ticket...

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

There's a thread in the 'Mandelbulb Maniacs' group on facebook discussing this as we speak Thomas.
See: www.facebook.com/groups/amande… and search for Graham Symmons.

3dickulus Featured By Owner Aug 5, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I used my webmaster account to voice my disapproval of this activity with ipernity.com, hopefully as the complaints pile up they will start to weigh heavy on the proprietors.

Watermark is the only preventative measure available that will work, I think?

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

Well done Dick, I hope so!

But a big watermark surely defeats the object of displaying your work online?
I will shortly be adding a lot of my own work to an up-coming new site which guarantees the authenticity of each
edition electronically. See: www.facebook.com/groups/265842… for more info.

My own website has a copy-protection system which prevents context clicking. But what to do about all the
other sites where work is not copy-protected? Personally, I'll probably close those accounts....

3dickulus Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

tnx mjb,

as a webmaster myself I know that context click prevention only works on newbs, and only works until they figure out the url of an image and grab it with wget or some such prog. if you can see it, it can be had.

watermark embedded in the data can be removed too, a bit more difficult but not impossible. even with a guarantee of auth it can still be plagiarised, the key is to make the act simply not worth it by spamming the hell out of it until the user is shut down.

I think the best solution it to talk about it enough that the bots register complaint pages wrt the username and IP and others start to ask questions eg: if DA was known as a site full of plagiarists would you want to join?

the bottom line for the website is clickthrough ads generating revenue, less traffic less revenue, they will either stop it or go away.

HairBrainedScenes Featured By Owner Aug 5, 2015 Professional General Artist

This really sucks that people do this kind of thing. But then again, there is very little actual creative thought, so some people feel they have the right to steal other people's dreams. Anyone living in America can apply for a true copyright of their works through the US Copyright office by filling out the application and paying the $35 per work to achieve better protection from art theft.

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

Yeah Ken, all the creativity is done by the artist, then some featherhead comes along and claims credit!
What kind of mind does that sort of thing? Mind you, she might just be a wee kid, playing at being
an artist?

HairBrainedScenes Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

That could be true, Mark. Still I agree that at some point there needs to be better controls on the Art work being posted to this site.

Aqualoop31 Featured By Owner Aug 5, 2015 Artist

Dito, and it is damn shame and rarely stupid!

Thanks for the post!

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

Absolutely Laurant, and you're very welcome!

Aqualoop31 Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Artist

I signed up on the side, to ask her some questions and know how she did the images.

But honestly! We're cleverly enough to expose her.

I wait until she write back and what does she'll write.

We'll see what happens.

bib993 Featured By Owner Aug 5, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I have opened 3 tickets on ipernity to report my stolen images.

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

Hopefully the site will take notice and actually DO something Jeremie - we'll see I guess....

bib993 Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I have little hope they'll take action.

AnnaKirsten Featured By Owner Aug 5, 2015 General Artist

Every time someone new watches me and I see they've been here a while but there are no images in their gallery I get suspicious.

Unfortunately even if right clicking was prevented, people can still do a screen print, and there's a little program that will capture a whole image, even the parts that aren't showing on the screen.

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

I know what you mean Anna, I recently got complimented on one of my pieces
by a dA newbie with nothing on his page. He actually had the audacity to give
himself the username 'koppiman'!! At least he asked if it was ok to use any of
my pieces for free! But worrying nonetheless....

I've now made all my images only 1024 wide, but you can still copy them from
here. I still occasionally consider closing my dA account altogether, as I've the
feeling it's all going rapidly downhill now....

AnnaKirsten Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 General Artist

I don't think any website can make images 100% safe; even Rednerosity images can be copied from full view by clicking on View Image then saving it. I just tried that with one of my own as a test.

But these "anonymous" accounts are very troubling and koppiman actually does ring a bell from some past history - can't remember what. For ages I would block anyone who saved half my gallery and had nothing in their own. But there is still the problem of Screen Capture if someone is serious about copying work. Of course these days, wallpapers are used for androids, ipads, iphones and anything else, as well as for computers.

Ugh not you too! So many people are considering this. Will you stay on Fractal Forums instead, or what?

0Encrypted0 Featured By Owner Edited Aug 5, 2015 General Artist

www.ipernity.com/help/support/…

I opened a ticket to report 4 of my images.

There is supposed to be a link " Report an abuse" at the bottom right of the relevant photo but I did not see it.

Use the Contact us to open a form for reporting.

Edit: It is possible that my 4 images were copied from Fractal Forums.

Sabine62 Featured By Owner Aug 5, 2015

Thank you for the heads-up, Mark

MarkJayBee Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015 Professional General Artist

You're welcome Sabine. Terrible situation, sadly I'm sure there are many
more - as yet undiscovered - culprits out there!

Sabine62 Featured By Owner Aug 6, 2015

Yep, it's a never-ending story...

Sinspunkt Featured By Owner Aug 5, 2015 Professional Writer

It's shocking that people have so little respect for artists as to steal their work and try to pass it off as their own. I'm not sure the problem is easily solved, though. For anyone who shares their work freely (offering it for download, for example) there's the chance that someone will steal it. Sad.