Beware Amelia411

A friend of mine recently had their copyright infringed by means of art theft.

Precaution regarding Amelia411UPDATE: Amelia has apparently taken down the journals, but im still blocked so im not sure whats been going on. (devianart refuted my reports so they must have deleted themselves either out of guilt or just to get rid of the controversy)
i dont have any more beef with them but ill leave this up as a warning if they tries anything similar again

similar journal regarding amelia411

so yesterday i was notified my art  was being featured and was being used in some kinda profile
not knowing what this was, i assumed it was someone trying to pass off my character as their own, so i left a comment asking what they were doing. while waiting for their response and hopefully an apology, i browsed around their other journals and found out they've been doing these, "review profiles" which looked more like a character feature with (in my case) wrong information. i felt squicked and wanted them to take down the profile<da:thumb id="707957775"/>

I will give you a rundown of what is happening. this user Amelia411 is posting journals of "reviews" of OC Crystal Gems. And by reviews, I mean a basic profile with false information most of the time. This person is using artwork without permission and is refusing to delete anything upon the owner's request.







And it is not just journal posts. After not much browsing through their deviations, I found much of the official artwork of Pokemon was posted under their name. They do not give credit, highly likely they did not get permission, and only claim to not have made them in the comments of the gallery folder. This claim is not made on any deviation. We are talking about a few hundred deviations that infringe copyright here.

And this is just in one of their pokemon folders.

Now because of my own history early on, I would be labeled a hypocrite because my early works have a 50/50 chance of having vectors used with permission. Once or twice I have been confronted about not asking permission. Most of which have had the vectors open to use as long as credit was given.

So to counter this claim, I will be browsing through my gallery of early works of things pony related and putting them in storage permanently. I will be doing this in the next few days, so if you want to hold onto those images, I suggest saving them to your computer or electronic device. If they are found on other sites like derpibooru, they will remain intact. 

But let me get back to the main point here. Using artwork that isn't yours is okay as long as the artist states it is okay to use it or you have permission by them to do so. 

Using artwork against an artist's request is ILLEGAL and is punishable by fines upwards to $250,000 USD and/or a prison sentence. It is essentially plagiarism in some sense if artwork is not credited, but violates the rights of the copyright holder. The creator ONLY has the rights to allow and deny use of their works. Amelia411 could be sued and be taken to court for their actions. 

I highly encourage you to find a way to report this person and get them off of deviant art. Likewise, if you see any artwork on their page that looks familiar to someone else's you might know, please notify the original creator so they can file a DMCA takedown. 

Talking to them does not seem to be working. Additionally nobody here should approach them and harass them over this. I have seen this in the past where people will tell the perpetrator to kill themselves and verbally abuse them. Do NOT do this as this could backfire against you and you might find yourself without a dA account. Be mindful of that and please help me spread word around that this person is not only using people's art without permission, but refusing any demands by the original artist to delete said work.

___________________________________

^{Journal Skin by: Zaellrin}