Do NOT by from beadsportal.com! They have stolen my images!

Check out the blatant theft. I have no idea what to do, but I want to warn everyone away from these thieves. Every single link below contains my own copyrighted images of beads I made, and have in my gallery. This is a new one on me. There are other artists being ripped off as well - if you make beads or jewelry, you'd do well to peruse their website to see if you've been ripped off too.

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Kandice Seeber
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Reply to
Kandice Seeber
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Don't know how much help this will be Kandace, but I fired off an email to them - hope everyone who sees this will do the same - maybe if they get enough they will realize that people in our community stick together and get the word out when folks like them come against one of "our own". I am so sorry this happened to you!!!

Hugs Denise Glitzy Glass Studio

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Reply to
Glitzy Glass

Thanks, Denise!! It does help - at least it helps me feel better. :) I have been getting some great advice from people, and I plan to look into some stuff tomorrow when my head is not aching so much. Anyone know a good lawyer? Sooz? What kind of law does Kevin practice? Can I hire him? Anyway - I know there are some great lawyers who read this group. If anyone has any advice or suggestions, I sure would like to hear it. ((((((hugs)))))) to all - and goodnight!

Reply to
Kandice Seeber

I just sent them an email as well. There has to be something you can do because that's fraud, isn't it? They are offering your beads when there is no way they can sell them to anyone. It's false advertising. Couldn't you contact the Better Business Bureau? Or report them to their webhost. I thought I recognized another artist's work too and I'll try to contact her to have her check it out.

Cheryl

Reply to
chelyha55

I also posted a message on Just Beads to let the artists there know to check the site for their images. Who are these people and what makes them think they can do this?

Cheryl

Reply to
chelyha55

They're ordering info says they take Paypal. I'm guessing they should be reported there for fraud.

It really sucks that they would just steal the images directly from your site.

Cheers, Carla

Kandice Seeber wrote:

Reply to
Carla

Kandice, report them to every authority you can find, including the FBI who handle online internet fraud. Essentially it's identity theft, they're presenting the beads you made without crediting you. The fraud of then sending on beads you didn't make and using the US mail to ship them is also actionable. Buy a set via Paypal of the beads that show your picture and then send the whole shooting match off to the FBI.

Judging by the language used it's Indian rather than Chinese, but the sad fact is that the lampwork market both online and on eBay are being flooded with cheap knockoffs of quality work.

I have nothing against cheap lampwork itself, there are some great companies out there that work in poor countries to help raise the poorest people out of their poverty by showing them how to make beads, but this sort of action using images from other artists is simply and totally unacceptable, and needs to be dealt with.

Only the artists whose images have been used can file complaints but they must do so with the proper authorities or else nothing will be done. This issue is rampant in the needlework industry, think of how awful it is to produce a needlework chart and within hours of it hitting the shops it's scanned an uploaded internationally for people to download for free?

The saving grace in the glass world is that the people who want good lampwork know who to buy from, they can only get your beads from YOU, a needlework designer doesn't even have that saving grace.

If you want some more links or advice from someone who's been through the copyright wars, drop me a line. I'm not a lawyer but I do know what can be done in some areas.

-Su

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Reply to
Su

I reported them earlier last night to PayPal. It looks like they have removed the images for now....although they still have some other artists up there.

Reply to
Kandice Seeber

I'm not sure that the FBI or the BBB have any way of doing anything, since the company is in India. I did report them to their ISP and to PayPal, though. :)

Reply to
Kandice Seeber

You might want to contact the USPS to see what they say about delivering items that are sold fraudulently too.

The FBI may not be able to act directly but reporting the internet fraud might give the company a bit of a scare if they think they've been reported for it.

-Su

Reply to
Su

None of those links worked for me. Sorry this happened to you.

------- Barbara

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Blog at
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eBay & Justbeads:penguintrax

Reply to
Barbara Forbes-Lyons

Kandice (and all),

If you haven't done so already, make sure you digitally watermark your images, disable right-click menus for your website and enable hot-linking protection if possible.

This company is based in India, there probably isn't a legal outlet you can take that would be effective, unfortunately.

------- Barbara

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eBay & Justbeads:penguintrax

Reply to
Barbara Forbes-Lyons

Wow! I'm understanding more and more why artists put their name through the middle of their pictures.

Reply to
Beadbimbo

Kandice, I'm so sorry this happened to you. It looks as if they have removed the links, all I got was "invalid item" when I clicked on them. This really offends me. You are such a great bead artist, I cannot believe the nerve and dishonesty of these people trying to rip you (and their customers) off by this fraud. I hope you are able to pursue this with legal action. I'm glad you are getting such great support from other beadmakers on the various forums. We must stick together to fight this kind of dishonesty. Patti

Reply to
Beads1947

Reply to
Cheryl

Everyone should also check the category "lampwork bracelet" beads -- as I thought I recognized some sets in there too

Cheryl

Reply to
Cheryl

Yep, they have removed the images - thank goodness! :) Thanks everyone!

Reply to
Kandice Seeber

Congrats, Kandice.

It's a shame you even have to do this but at least it worked!

-Su

Reply to
Su

Here's the response I got to my email to these people:

Hello,

We respect designers we would never have done such thing, we have more than 12,000 desgins on our website which are all created in house. This was a mistake by our web development department. Now we have removed the items from our website. Thanks for bringing the issue to our knowledge.

You can understand we would not have copied 1 designs when we have thousands of our designs which we have not included in our website yet. Keep browsing the website and give your valuable suggestion.

Thanks,

Beads Portal Team C 15/320-1, Lallapura Varanasi, U.P. India. Email: snipped-for-privacy@beadsportal.com snipped-for-privacy@beadsportal.com snipped-for-privacy@beadsportal.com Tel: 91-542-2403095

Whether it's true or not, at least they took the images down.

Cheryl

Reply to
chelyha55

I got that same exact response - I think most people did. I can honestly say that at this point, I don't think it was an honest mistake. The posts over at LE have convinced me. :)

Reply to
Kandice Seeber

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