Beware Of Maltese Leather

[276ccm]

Yesterday I was tipped about someone called Maltese Leather on Facebook. He posted one of my leather seats on his site and pretended he made it and took credits for it.. he also posted a lot of others work, from people I know, pretending it was his work and he are looking for orders..

First I complimented the awesome work, and he proudly thanked me.. the ######er didn´t even know who he stole it from.

I told him to post his own stuff, and or/if posting others work he should at least link to the creator and let everyone know who made it. If not he removed the pictures I would notify Facebook about it ind in a little while quite a lot of it was gone.. or he blocked me from seeing it.

So beware of ordering any thing from Maltese Leather. You might get something else than you was hoping for.. or maybe nothing at all..

Edited July 22, 2011 by Johanna
strong language

[Scary Leatherworks]

I just went to Maltese leather facebook page. He is from Indonesia! not much work on there now maybe 4 or 5 seats. none that I recognized from here.

[King's X]

There are a bunch of other alleged makers from overseas on facebook. I believe they are hunting for projects and ideas to make overseas. Thanks for letting me know. This one hasn't made it to my FB site yet, but several are trying.

Thanks.

[276ccm]

Most of it is removed now.. yesterday there was way over 150 pictures there.. many of them seen here, but after I told him I´d also notify the leatherworkers I knew made it he removed them.

One thing is hunting for work all over, which is fair, but not with taking credits for other hard working people..

Edited July 21, 2011 by 276ccm

[Deb59]

I know they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery......but this pushes it over the edge!

[WinterBear]

A lot of those types of picture thieves don't edit or crop the pictures, which is how that sort of monkey business gets reported.

A good way to clue in potential buyers that they are looking at a stolen picture of another person's work is to put your website on the picture, especially where it doesn't interfere with the viewing of your item. Someone liking the work might decide to type in the address and find out that they were looking at someone who was pretending to do the work and will appreciate being able to find the correct source. It also makes it easier to get Facebook to have the account suspended as you can say "Hey! They are using my pictures of my work to entice customers to believe they are doing that work. See, there's my website/Facebook link on that picture."

If you do mark your pictures for use on Facebook, you can also add the website or logo where if it is clumsily cropped, it will be noticed that a portion of the picture is cut away--such as having your website name placed diagonally across the corner of a picture. Removing that sort of mark by basic cropping will leave "chunked corners". In order to remove the mark, they'd have to Photoshop it, and most can't be bothered as if they are lazy enough to steal a picture, they are often too lazy to photoshop and will look for an easier mark to steal pictures from.

For your blog, you can use some other tricks to make it harder for people to thieve pictures, depending on how it is set up. Some people directly edit the html to add java applications that prevent right-clicking, cover their pictures with a "clear picture", hidden-splicing the pictures into several pieces (so someone downloading and saving the webpage will only get a portion of each picture), and so on. None of these will prevent a screen capture though, so the watermark/website on the picture itself still can help there.

[276ccm]

Yea, watermark is a good thing.. I´m thinking of doing it all the time, but forgets it just as often when uploading my work to my Facebook site or blog :-) but defiantly a good way.. Java is way to slow in my opinion, and screen dumping too easy, so a watermark is a good idea :-)

[TwinOaks]

"Watermark" is definitely the best way to go. Anyone with a modicum of skill can capture pretty much any image on the internet. I use ImageXYZ and it's pretty user friendly.

[anne newkold]

Just wondering if any one reported this loser to facebook? I blocked him.

[Johanna]

Please remember that just because someone is from an Asian country does not make them any less respectable than anyone else, unless, like anyone else, they prove themselves to be frauds or fakes. We've had a few from North America and one I remember from Europe, so let's not stereotype anyone, please. Most of our Asian members, like anywhere else, are good honest people. As far as I can tell, Maltese Leather is not even a member here at LW.

Johanna

[WinterBear]

I've had more problems myself with stolen pictures by someone here in the States that from anywhere else. Not pictures of leatherwork, but of custom quilts, where they were trying to pass it off as their own work.

Generally, the local sharps are more of a nuicance to the people around here anyways.

For instance, in my neck of the woods, it's the start of Frontier Week and there are out-of-towners and hard-core tourists from all over, well, all over! There will be a lot of vendors and street-corner sellers who will be selling machine embossed belts as "hand tooled" to the tourists this week. A lot of laminated/bonded/poorly dyed leather/leather clone is going to be sold as high-end product. Jewelry too--a lot of "silver" isn't--nickle plate, electroplate over brass, and pot metal. And in the long run, that sort of product, and the seller who cheats the public, really hurts the local craftsfolk when they lose sales to tourists who wind up with an inferior product and then assume all of the products being sold are of that same low quality.