Artists Using Doll Likenesses without Crediting [Mijn Schatje discussion]

I second that! Thank you for all the hard work and fielding of emails. I am sure it is a tireless job and you have gone above and beyond!

 

First of all, this woman on etsy sounds genuinely shocked and sorry, and has immediately taken steps to remedy the situation. And also, since she does represent herself as a collage artist, I'm not sure that what she has done is actually wrong. To me- it is as if she had a catalog she cut up and used images from to paste into a collage. Remember, collage IS a viable and respected art form.

But mainly, the point I want to make, is that we do not want to start a witch hunt here. Please be very careful with accusations and don't start looking for excuses to go after people.

 

I completely agree with cirquemom. We don't want to go attacking everyone that is selling their art with a doll in it. The problem with Mijn is that she is considered professional, is very successful, but is very deceitful about what she is doing. Unless someone is making a significant amount of money off of something they didn't have permission to use, or if they are not crediting something they are obviously using, it is probably best to leave them alone. Above all try to be polite - don't go crazy making accusations until the person has a chance to explain him of herself. The biggest problem is Mijn is how she reacted - not everyone is going to be like that.

 

Honestly, ever since I saw that picture of her WIP (the one that was provided by lime) I'm pretty sure she uses some kind of vectorizing software. Just look at that excessive amount of paths defining the mouth shape . You can get the same effects with less if you use the right kind of gradients to fill the shapes. :-/

 

Mods, if it is possible you could make a sticky out of this post, it would be VERY useful.

Artists and Doll Company owners: This is what you or your designated agent (you can only have one person representing you and you must create some form of agreement or contract naming this person as your designated agent for this purpose) must do the following:

ONE: Identify the sites hosting your stolen images

TWO: using these procedures--

http://www.google.com/dmca.html

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html

http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyrtInfrg.htm

Contact Google, Yahoo and MSN. Identify the hosting site as one in violation of the DMCA. Identify your stolen image there. Ask that the site be blocked.

THREE: Go to Facebook, Myspace, Photobucket, Picasa etc. Identify your stolen image. Notify the service that this image is in violation of the DMCA and ask that it be removed.

WHAT THIS WILL ACCOMPLISH: By having the sites blocked in the major search engines, 80-90% of online business for those sites will be blocked, and until the images are removed, will remain blocked. This will ensure that online businesses carrying Mijn's work, and galleries that advertise online carrying her work, will no longer want to do business with her. I am not altogether certain of this, but she might actually lose her Facebook account (and her online "voice") due to violation of her terms of service.

This will not stop her from selling artworks offline, but it will bring home to those that are otherwise ignoring the issue that there are consequences to hurting the "little guy" after all. This will hit them in the pocketbook, almost as effectively as a suit and with FAR less cost and effort to you.

I know this is going to be wretched and tedious, but you might well get some volunteers to help you do this, and once you put together a form letter, it will go faster. And as word spreads that this is being done, other hosting sites could take notice and remove the images themselves.

I cannot emphasize enough that for online purposes, this is the best possible use of your time and effort.

(I really hate, loathe, and despise the DMCA, personally, but FOR ONCE being able to use it will protect the "little guy.' The Law of Unintended Consequences, I suppose.)

Quick edit: If that Sony ad is still being used online anywhere, blocking it will hit Sony right in the nose and bring immediate attention to the fact that the person they paid to create the ad is a plagiarist.

Bah, second edit: If whoever has been identifying these images to the various companies whose company photos have been used could copy this and send it to their reps, it might be useful to them. I am sure that this is a FAR superior solution for them than a legal battle.

 

Victoria Victrix, I'm afraid that this procedure will only work if the other party really uses your images as are? Mijn reworked them a little bit, so I'm not sure here if this all applies to derivative artwork as well.

 

If the work in question wasn't released under a license that permits derivative works then yes, it still applies.

 

Arkady, that's good. Best news in this thread for a very long time ^-^!

 

I've noted a lot of people saying about adding watermarks to their work...you think a watermark is going to stop a tracer? Never stopped any of the art thefts I've had, and it sure as anything would not stop anyone tracing over an image of yours. This is one reason why I rarely watermark my images apart from maybe a name in the corner (though not my photos, because my photos are awful), it will not stop anyone who is determined.

 

Victoria Victrix...it might be good to PM radiotrash and see what she thinks about forwarding the information you have collected along to the artists and companies since she has been in contact with them. I know that for blastmilk and other non-company artist, this might be really useful since they are not a big company and may not have the resources that they would. Also, I know that the facebook and myspace reporting features are pretty easy to use and it might be an easy starting place. They deal with this sort of stuff all the time and like to nip it in the butt so to speak.

 

Seconded....

Even if the information is forwarded to the companies, Radiotrash can act as a go between comments/advice in this thread and the BJD companies.

I am really wanting to see all the images blocked that Her name pops up.

Mostly I am curious on what legal action Luts or volks will take, I doubt that Mijin will survive with her reputation intact.

Even if she pays for the "damages" and refrains from tracing Bjds I am worried that she will go on to other Asian-inspired hobbies (Like Lolita-fashion) and steal images from well known clothing companies.

It's the type of thing she would do. If you think about it, the fashion is very sweet and childlike, something that Mijin would be eager to exploit for her own gain.

It wouldn't hurt to post radiotrashes website in other forums besides BJDs. In places where she might steal "inspiration" from

 

If you do a search on deviantART under "journals" for "Mijn Schlatje", you will get literally hundreds of results, all linking to Radiotrash's page; it's also featured in the signatures of hundreds of dA users.

 

True, but it can't hurt, either. And it deters other sorts of image theft, like people simply stealing the photo and claiming its theirs. I have actually had someone note me on dA ASKING for a non-watermarked version of Siberian Tiger V for some "school thing." Obviously I said no, but had the watermark not been there in the first place, he may have just snatched it.

Anyway the point is, while it may not help with Mijn-types, I think it's a good idea.

EDIT: I hadn't looked, but did anyone on deviantART do a news post about it as opposed to just journals? If no one has, I recommend it.

 

Radiotrash contacted, with the post copy-pasted into the PM.

 

Also, may I make a suggestion? Since the Etsy seller was so horrified that she had somehow NOT gotten the permission she thought she had, and immediately took down her images, some of you might want to contact her to make legitimate arrangements. It doesn't hurt us at all to show that when people are courteous and polite to us, we are courteous and polite and cooperative right back.

I'd offer, but my photography is crap.

 

I've invited her to take a look through my dA and Flickr stuff; there's a fair amount I license under CC-by-SA anyway.

 

I searched "mijn" on devart under news and nothing came up. I'd post, but I think it'd be better left to someone who knows a little more and keeps up with this more than I do. A LOT of people will see it if a news post is made.

 

What gets me is that Mijn seems to be an extremely talented artist - yet she's throwing it all away because she's copying like this. She seems fully capable of doing it herself, but at least to me it seems like maybe she just doesn't want to.

Reference is okay. Seeing a pose or a face and going, "Hmn, I like that style" and basing a picture off it is ok. However in that case, you're actually drawing it from scratch. But when you actually take an image and draw over it, that's wrong. It just seems extremely lazy to me. There are also a few extremely bad things in the Mijn case as well.

The first is that she's actually striking deals with companies, galleries, and magazines and making MONEY of this stuff. That's just rude. The second is that she seems to want people to kiss her feet. I went to her Facebook and she said something along the lines of she doesn't want anyone saying anything bad about her art. You. Are. An. Artist. If you can't take critisism about your art, especially when you're obviously stealing, being an artist may not be the career for you. I think she may be sour that she got called out. Thirdly, she's completely denything the fact that she's stealing and even after being called out on it, she's STILL doing it. If she took down the art and apologized for it, y'know what? I would be okay. She realized what she did was wrong. But she's still going around making money on this and having people kiss her feet for it. Even after being called out she's still got stuff in the works. Uhh....what? We know what your'e doing. Lastly, if you're not a BJD owner you would never notice! If you're a BJD owner, it's extremely obvious that it's an image of one. But if you didn't know, you would never notice so she's feeding of playing people for suckers.

I'm really glad for the radiotrash site. It's really bringing all this to light and hopefully will inform people not just about this particular artist, but to others who could be doing the same. People think they won't get caught? They will. As soon as one person picks up on it it's a domino effect.

 

I honestly don't think the girl has any talent, almost everything in her pictures is copied and the things she does seem to draw are pretty poor. I'd say that she was good at vectoring, but not a good artist... pretty sure most artists know that humans don't bend like Mijn's art.

 

Exactly. I lot of what she does, I have seen tutorials on LiveJournal for - it's not exactly rocket science. Some of her stuff reminds me of icon tutorials I use to try. The only skill involved here is compiling lots of stolen images and changing the colors around.