Why am I surprised?
These days, most fanartists has run into their own thieves in one way or another. Sometimes it ends well and sometimes the thief turns into a stalker (*waves to my stalker*). Usually they only repost the work on different generic sites which doesn't matter much compared to the fact that others either use cafepress or ebay to make a profit on the work by someone else. The last part irks most people and pisses them off - today I got to see a whole new level of it!
Went to Collectormania in Denmark today, which was a hoot thanks to the Q&A with John Rhys Davies, Robert Englund and Bronson Pelletier. However, the rest of the con was a pure disappointment. There wasn't a lot of sellers, they didn't even fill the room and there wasn't that much people visiting either (which was good in one perspective because then the signings wasn't hurried and you could actually talk to the celeb :)) - but unfortunately that WASN'T the biggest disappointment. There was one seller fully focused on The Twilight Saga. Selling autographs, pictures, posters and some frames that spelled the word "Twilight" and had pictures within the letters. My eyes almost fell out of their sockets when I began to actually browse the merchandise. 50% of the posters and unautographed pictures was STOLEN FANART. One of them even had half of the URL to the artists livejournal account (unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to pull up my phone and snap a pic). I got pissed, and wasn't quiet when I told my friend what the hell was going on and also let one of the other sellers know what was going on (my friend and I are regular buyers of his since a few years back, he also sells autographs and I meet him at every "con" in Sweden) who also got pissed about it.
This is beyond low. I can "understand" selling on ebay but to actually head to a convention where fans WILL ATTEND (esp. when one of the guests are from the same fandom) and blatantly stand there and sell their works just pisses me off. However, I can't tell you who the artists are because I don't know (it's not one of you guys that I know personally), I just recognized the works from seeing them around the net/livejournal. All I know is that the seller is german and an asshat. My friend had planned on buying a Peter Facinelli auto from him but upon this discovery we boycotted and coughed up an extra 50DDK for the same pic/auto to another seller.
I think this is the lowest of low that I've seen so far. However my reaction after getting pissed about this was basically "Why am I surprised? *eyeroll*".
Went to Collectormania in Denmark today, which was a hoot thanks to the Q&A with John Rhys Davies, Robert Englund and Bronson Pelletier. However, the rest of the con was a pure disappointment. There wasn't a lot of sellers, they didn't even fill the room and there wasn't that much people visiting either (which was good in one perspective because then the signings wasn't hurried and you could actually talk to the celeb :)) - but unfortunately that WASN'T the biggest disappointment. There was one seller fully focused on The Twilight Saga. Selling autographs, pictures, posters and some frames that spelled the word "Twilight" and had pictures within the letters. My eyes almost fell out of their sockets when I began to actually browse the merchandise. 50% of the posters and unautographed pictures was STOLEN FANART. One of them even had half of the URL to the artists livejournal account (unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to pull up my phone and snap a pic). I got pissed, and wasn't quiet when I told my friend what the hell was going on and also let one of the other sellers know what was going on (my friend and I are regular buyers of his since a few years back, he also sells autographs and I meet him at every "con" in Sweden) who also got pissed about it.
This is beyond low. I can "understand" selling on ebay but to actually head to a convention where fans WILL ATTEND (esp. when one of the guests are from the same fandom) and blatantly stand there and sell their works just pisses me off. However, I can't tell you who the artists are because I don't know (it's not one of you guys that I know personally), I just recognized the works from seeing them around the net/livejournal. All I know is that the seller is german and an asshat. My friend had planned on buying a Peter Facinelli auto from him but upon this discovery we boycotted and coughed up an extra 50DDK for the same pic/auto to another seller.
I think this is the lowest of low that I've seen so far. However my reaction after getting pissed about this was basically "Why am I surprised? *eyeroll*".