Dear POVers

Some time ago, Jaime Vives Piqueres, Chris Cason and myself were informed
that a senior student in a technical academy had appropriated our "Reach for
the stars" image and a few others. He had removed the copyright notices,
replaced them by his own name or initials and put the "new" images on
display on his personal website, which was publicly open. He claimed the
images to be his own, and may have used these fake credentials to obtain
graphic-related jobs in his school.

After investigating his website, which looked like a poorly done portfolio,
it appeared that around 50 images were there, taken from various sources. A
good number were POV-Ray ones taken from the IRTC (prize winners). Some had
been taken from the websites of famous professional 3D artists (including 5
from the same artist). There was also a demo picture for a major 3D
application, a real space photograph and screenshots of games (all supposed
to be POV-Ray or Max images according to the text).

None of the images were credited. In some cases, he crudely photoshopped the
images to erase the copyright. In other cases, he just put a black box on
top of it and wrote his initials, or his full name if there was enough
space. Also, he created new titles for the images and renamed the files: for
instance, my own "Wet bird" became "The Blackbird in New York". By browsing
through the IRTC and other 3D sites, I managed to identify 25 images out of
50, including 11 that were now signed by him.

As I was busy tracking down the images to identify them, he suddenly shut
down his web site. We believe that he may have noticed the unusal activity
coming from unfamiliar, overseas locations, and freaked out. We had had the
time to back up most of it anyway. With the site closed, there was no longer
need for sending a C&D letter, but since several commercial artworks were
concerned (and thus involved other parties), it was necessary to make sure
that his actions were not left unnoticed. As this appeared to be mostly an
internal affair, we chose to contact the school authorities, who took the
matter seriously and immediately had a meeting with the student and his
parents.

We consider then that the case is closed and hope that he has sincerely
recognised the error of his ways. Therefore, we won't disclose his name or
his school's. Let's say, however, that the culprit's chosen nickname ("god")
seems to have reflected some self-aggrandized notion of himself... He isn't
a POV-Ray user, by the way ;-)

However, since his website was open for everyone to see, it's not impossible
that some of the images turn up in the future to embarrass him, since he was
foolish enough to put his real name on them and boast in public. We'll
inform the other "victims" in private (most of them being regulars in these
groups) of the copyright theft of some of their images.

G.

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http://www.oyonale.com
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