My best friend and awesome artist Lindsay Podd is in the middle of something that is a colossal headache and extremely upsetting to any artist, especially one just out of college who’s starting to make a real name for herself:
Someone ripped her work off and stole her identity.
I’ll use her words to better explain it all:
“from now on my artwork cannot be public for a while. unless i watermark it and put locks somehow in the photos to prevent them from being stolen.
i have witnessed a disgraceful act of copyright infringement against me as an artist.
someone decided to create a fake account in my name on this selling website called redbubble. com.
this person stole my bio picture from my website some artwork of mine from either here or my official website. and also stole another artists work who is similar to mine and put my name on theirs.
this other person found this account and assumed that i was stealing their artwork and posted a huge thread about it here:
http://www. gigposters. com/forums/anything-goes/68047-lindsaypodd-sells-stolen-designs. html
The things that people have said about me when i had nothing to do with my identity being stolen was completely out of hand, offensive, and really upsetting. I know that as an artist i shouldn’t care what people say. But to be wrongly accused to stealing art and some asshole having the disgusting indecency to use MY NAME and create a false profile is not only sickening but absolutely horrifying and creepy.
If I have done anything to make someone so angry with me to do this, i apologize. But you have NO RIGHT to disgrace my art and me like this. I hope that someday karma will find a way to get back at you for what you have put me through emotionally.
I think it is so fitting that some jealous sonofabitch would do this to me in order that i get bad press when my toy release is on tuesday. Thanks for that. seriously.”
The toy release Lindsay refers to is the release of her Mimobot flash drive:
http://www.mimoco.com/shop/vdc/zombie-tiki-god-by-heyimlindsayp.html
Now, I know that as her friend, I’ll be biased in my defense of her. But, let me make his very clear: There is no way in Hell Lindsay would rip anybody off. No. Fucking. Way. Let’s face it, the girl doesn’t need to. She is enormously talented and productive and doesn’t need to pretend to have done things she hasn’t. I admire her and her work to the point that I’ve asked her to design a very personally significant tattoo for me. The idea of her ripping off anyone is patently absurd.
This is infuriating to me both as her friend and as an artist. The fact is, there really are few safeguards for artists to 100% avoid being ripped off. That someone would do it deliberately and make money off ruining someone else’s reputation is disgraceful.
