COPYRIGHTS...is it stealing when you want to use an image?

The Equine Arts Protection League was formed to serve the Equine Visual Arts Community, this includes Photographers, Artists, Sculptors, and Craftsmen.

Members of this League will find strength in numbers within a community
that bands together to enforce their copyrights in online venues such as eBay.

The Equine Arts Protection League is free to join. Our only requirement
is that each member join the members board which is found at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eapleague

At this time Ebay is the primary venue that many of us have experienced
theft of our livelihood. With such an unguarded venue to sell wares,
infringers abound. Our groups main mission is to work with ebay and VERO to get the selling accounts of copyright infringements suspended from Ebay for life, and also to collect and share information that can facilitate our members in lawsuits against these sellers...

The motivation factor for organizing a group of artist's and photographers of equine art to put a stop into the stealing off the internet copyrighted artwork and photography.

It began with a fellow Equine Art Guild (EAG) member Sherrie Engler, who had her artwork, design and layouts stolen on ebay, even her HTML codes. Because the offender ignored Sherries warnings, she went on a warpath to shut her down or Vero her on ebay. Sherrie contacted me and Sheri Gordon (originator of EAG) and asked if we could get together with a plan of organizing a group to monitor ebay and the internet for copyright infringing.

Sherrie designed the EAPL logo (by the way this logo was stolen for embroidery and we caught the person).

Our members have grown to about 140 members, some have had their images taken and manipulated in Photoshop or painted to resemble an original painting, quite a few of these done in China, yes, they are the biggest offender, whether on ebay or a starving artist show at a Motel, they outright steal the image and reproduce it in paintings. China does not adhere to our copyright laws, however they post the copyright notice on their websites, an oxymoron.

If you find the artwork from China on ebay attractive, ask yourself "is this stolen?" Most likely it is, and when you buy it, you hurt the original artist and support illegal Chinese sales.
Here are examples that appeared on ebay, these are copies of Elin Pendleton(an EAPL member) artworks...shown in the picture on the left side are the stolen ones, the right side are the originals...(unfortunately these are very small images) one being a Chinese copy the other looked like it was lifted off her website, they did not even take her name off. This can happen to any artist on the internet or from magazines, books, or anywhere you have your art printed...the best thing to do is save the image in a small format and or use a copyright logo on the image. Of course if someone wants it bad enough they will not be bothered with either, as was with Elin's art. Be diligent and watch the internet and ebay for your artwork. The best way to do this, is to apply for membership at the Equine Arts Protection League where this type of activity is monitored.