Chad Love-Liberman’s Art4Love is a Fraudulent Plagiarism Peddler

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:43 PM on August 18, 2011 in Commentary. 17 Comments Tags: chad love-lieberman, plagiarism, wow people are dumb. Short URL: http://plankhead.com/sO

In case I haven’t made it clear over the years, I’m not a big fan of the copyright-lawsuit model of enforcing artists’ rights. When somebody decides to be a dick and exploit the free availability of culture in bad faith, I feel like it’s much better to try them in the court of public opinion than in a court of law. So let’s do that to Chad Love-Lieberman.

Art4Love.com seems to have been around since March 2010, according to the first tweet on its Twitter account. It’s a store claiming to sell hand-painted canvas art, founded by Love-Lieberman as some kind of social capitalism thing. I have no idea; it’s a press release.

Art4Love and the related MarkYourSpot.com appear to have been taken down as of this writing. So let’s Streisand Effect this shit.

Yesterday, Digger artist Ursula Vernon posted on her LiveJournal a link to an article about Love-Lieberman and his “artwork”. She found it odd that this piece was attributed to him:

'Naked Mole Rat Dreams' by Ursula Vernon

It is, of course, by Ursula Vernon. And all of the other pieces in the article are by other artists from around the Internet as well.

Unsurprisingly, as uncovered by Tumblr user Kittenball, Art4Love was similarly fraudulent.

Screenshot of Art4Love.com, captured by Daunt

This screenshot shows Art4Love allegedly selling “Honeycomb” by Julie Dillon. They claim that it’s “Liquid Oil on canvas”, and was painted in 2009.

'Honeycomb' by Julie Dillon

This seems odd, considering the fact that Dillon uploaded the piece to deviantART in 2010, under the category of “Digital Art”.

Hilariously, Art4Love was offering the “painting” with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Tumblr user Daunt has many more screenshots and videos related to Art4Love on her website. Many show more examples of misappropriated artwork, being sold as “original” for high prices.

It’s likely that Chad Love-Lieberman took down his network of websites because he doesn’t want this information getting out. This is precisely why it must. The threat of a copyright lawsuit does not protect the rights of artists to attribution and reputation; otherwise this never would have happened. The exposure of such exploitation on a massive scale is the best hope that artists have to be protected from it. Please, Internets: spread the fraud of Chad Love-Lieberman as far and wide as you can. Make his name synonymous with his crimes, so that anyone looking to commit such things in the future will think twice.

To the artists affected: don’t call this man an “art thief”. Art thieves are skilled, savvy professionals who bypass state-of-the-art museum security. Chad Love-Lieberman is just a plagiarist. And a dick.

Shadzii

It’s Art Theft when someone sells art that is already being sold by the original artists. The artists that created the art is using it to gain a profit to live. This man is selling the art at FOUR TIMES THE PRICE to try and show people up since certain (not all) professional artists make up to only $1500 a year.

Shadzii

This man may not have stolen from me, but I think I more more about art and art theft than you seem to :

http://plankhead.com Zacqary Adam Green

I’m on your side, don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying, why dignify what this jackass did with the term “theft”? Theft requires skill.

Fraud, on the other hand, is pathetic, sleazy, and cowardly. It’s worse than theft.

Chad Love-Lieberman is not a thief, because “thief” is too good a term for scum like him.

JGervais

Sickening. I knew that was Julie’s work the minute I saw it. This is goddam unforgivable and unforgettable. It’s RIDICULOUSLY HARD to get out and make money on our art these days and to have some jackass like Chat Love just take it like that? He could have made so much money legitimately if he had just gone through the proper channels and gave the artists their dues. Hope he rots in hell.
Nothanks

Fuck that lowlife asshole
http://redbeancookie.wordpress.com Redbeancookie

“Chad Love-Lieberman is just a plagiarist. And a dick.”

XD Agreed.

There is a drive to get this issue feature on the Colbert Report. If you can, encourage your readers to post there. If we work together, we stand a good chance of getting enough exposure for this that Chad won’t stand a chance of sweeping it under a rug. The Colbert Report thread is located on colbertnation.com, here: http://forums.colbertnation.com/?page=ThreadView&thread_id=28276
Mengasuki

one really has to wonder… exactly how long did he expect this to last?
the guy really underestimated the internet.
this man is scum, and i hope he gets sued into poverty.
Mengasuki

one really has to wonder… exactly how long did he expect this to last?
the guy really underestimated the internet.
this man is scum, and i hope he gets sued into poverty.
angry_deviant

actually I read somewhere that art4love has been around and ripping off artists since 2002.

Smadarm1963

Art4love started as a legit business in 2001, I was a co-founder with Chad. However, I realized that a) Chad was virtually illiterate, of his books that he claims to have written I know for a fact that they were both plagiarized and he got his assistant to write a bunch of it. b) he was not interested in helping artists and he and the entrepreneur fired me after I expressed my concerns to a potential partner. They then reneged on my severance package and proceeded to change art4love into a site that stole from other sites. Chad has the artistic skills of a 9 year old. I DID NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ART4LOVE FROM NOVEMBER 2002 ONWARDS WHICH WAS WHEN IT WAS A LEGIT SITE.
I am happy to help anyone in anyway with a lawsuit, I can testify that this man is a crook with no morals. I’ve seen an article on him where he claims that the rap song he wrote about 9/11 was dedicated to his girlfriend who died in the towers that day. I was with Chad that day and again know for a fact that he didn’t have a girlfriend who perished in the attacks.

Brian Sherwin

Such irony. This guy is scum… but I find it interesting how artists on deviantART are in an uproar over Art4Love when you consider that copyright infringement is clearly commonplace within the deviantART community itself. Just an observation.

http://plankhead.com Zacqary Adam Green

As is the Internet as a whole, and that’s okay for the most part. If you take a stroll through the rest of the blog, you’ll see that I’m not really a fan of copyright and its effects on culture, sharing, and repurposing.

Fraud, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. Especially for profit.

mrtamale

Copyright is an outdated form of ownership control, but what this guy did goes way beyond copyright infringement, it’s just ripping off people for your his own financial gain. there’s no post modernist critique of ownership in art4love, it’s just wrong.

evan

Hi, as an artist within the DeviantART community my reply would be this- art theft is sadly commonplace, but the community responds quickly, & assholes like Love-Libermann get banned quickly. It’s an entirely different matter when someone from outside the community steals art then fraudulently reproduces it & tries to sell it as their own. Arguments like “It’s the Internet” don’t hold water (not that you said that). It’s not the Internet, it’s pricks with no ethics or integrity with Internet access.

Fakir

here’s chad love photoshop fakery explained
http://i.imgur.com/NoOeY.jpg
Zash

What I love is that he still has profiles on places like LinkedIn which would give him credibility in the business, though at this point that credibility would be pretty small. Still, makes me angry to see scum like this managing to continue to resemble respectability.
Cranstonpeterson

It is a sad and pathetic situation, when some inexperienced, and untalented, “asshole’ come along and tries to make a “illegal profit ‘ off art that he has no “idea’ how it it was “created’ or what ” motivated’, us (we deviants), to come up with the “thought’ in the first place’…….”Apparently’……”Mr. Asshole’ didn’t consider’…….”Someone would blow him “right out of the “water’ so to speak’……….”Kudos ‘ to the “whistleblower’……”Way to go!’ artistnut64

Chad Love-Liberman’s Art4Love is a Fraudulent Plagiarism Peddler

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