Art theft online unfortunately happens all the time, people take images from websites for their own use without permission. Usually it's done without knowing that it's theft but then there's times where artists work is stolen and sold without there knowledge.
As a member of Deviant Art (http://www.deviantart.com/) I'm part of a massive community of artists so I didn't take long for me to hear of a huge art theft that was involving alot of great artists on the website. The story is that a guy called Chad Love Lieberman, nephew of Democratic Presidential Candidate Joesph Liebermann, set up a website named art4love.com and began selling artwork for hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Did he make the artwork himself? He sure didn't, he stole it all from DA members without their knowledge...
As you can imagine there was huge outrage from the whole DA community and the website was promptly shut down for copyright infringement. In fact 2 websites were shut down as he set up another soon after the first was taken down.
After reading this article I can honestly say that this guy deserves all he gets; http://sflchronicle.com/entertainment/2010/05/love-conquers-all-chad-lieberman-tells-trees-how-to-succeed-in-multimedia-art/
Even his house has stolen artworks on the walls, it's ridiculous and just a low blow to all the artists that shared the art with the world.
How did he think he would get away with it all? Nothings a secret online anymore.
Maybe there needs to be more awareness of this issue to people who post their artwork online?
Here's a few links if your're interested in reading into it; http://tompreston.deviantart.com/journal/Massive-Art-Theft-253737223
http://gene-ash.deviantart.com/art/Art4life-com-stolen-art-253359597 (Shows some of the stolen artworks)http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/journal/INVESTIGATION-AGAINST-Chad-Love-Lieberman-253514762
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