Mermaid costume art theft on DA check for yours

[AniaR]

This user is ripping images from mer facebook pages and claiming she's made tails and tops that she didn't. I already reported the ones I knew to the original people so they could report it to DeviantART. Check and see if anything of yours is in her gallery. Make sure to check the side folders

http://x-tj-x.deviantart.com/

[AniaR]

UPDATE: she deactivated her account

[Ayla of Duluth]

I have screen shots of EVERYTHING. The emo looking girl that she claims to be is actually my friend Taylor Byykkonen, the creator of Byykkonen's Bling Bras.
x-TJ-x sent me a message shortly after I called her out, apologizing for stealing the artwork and she knew it was wrong and she was going to take it down.
I did some sleuthing into all the pictures [at least 20 I found] that she had of Taylor, and there is one of her in blue lipstick. The caption underneath it says something along the lines of "I shouldn't be posting this and maybe I should take it down." I took screenshots of all the artwork that was stolen and Taylor has now sent me a picture to send to the admins as proof of her identity. she is holding a piece of paper with her name, date, an explanation that she is NOT user x-TJ-x, and she is also holding the watercolor picture of her tiger as proof that she is who she says she is.

Anyways, I went to try and send a report to whoever is in charge of everything and I got all lost and scared so I just sent an email to the help desk explaining everything. At this point, Taylor wants to take some sort of legal action, and her and I are working together to get all the evidence we can, but we just need some guidance on where to go next.

I also took screenshots of my facebook page where I was alerted to the theft of my tail picture. It clearly states that I am the admin of that page, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Edit: I can't even grammar at 2 in the morning @,,@

[Ayla of Duluth]

We have just been informed that this person has also stolen pictures from a studio somewhere and that studio has informed the police and they are also taking legal action.

[AniaR]

well because she deleted her account deviantART can't do anything but prevent the person from making another account. Legally there's nothing else they can do

[Ayla of Duluth]

She didn't delete it. She just deactivated it. All the pictures are still there. For some reason, you can still view the pictures she posted using the right side bar, but you just can't comment. Doing a google image search helps you get to the page on deviantart where you can then access all the photos by browsing. I'm still finding a ton of pictures I didn't catch earlier and poor Taylor is finding more too. I'm thinking the admins can access all of her submissions even though her account is deactivated. And I have a screen shot of her admitting to the theft, which is nice.

[AniaR]

that's cache, it happens with every website, and will expire in a few days. Trust me, I'm a senior member who's been on DA for 9 years. I've dealt with this a lot in the past, they aren't legally able or obligated to do anything once a user splits. It's startling when it happens, but there's nothing else DA can do and they'll tell you that.

[Ayla of Duluth]

Oh. That's a bummer, this person should be punished for what they did. Nothing can be done even if there's screenshots? :(

[Mermaid Danielle]

Thanks for posting Raina! I hope everything works out Ayla...

[AniaR]

Nope, all they would do is remove the persons account if they didn't already deactivate and ban their IP address from making future accounts. In deviantART world deactivation= account deletion. They get purged after a while and the images will be gone from the cache.