Online theft of photography has been discussed so much by the blogosphere in the past month or so. Because of this, I decided to profile Only-Dreemin, arguably now the most notorious online art thief of recent memory. Last I blogged about the subject, Only-Dreemin gave a paltry response to the online outrage over their shady dealings with Iclandic photographer Rebekka. Let me take you back through the events of last month. Rebekka is an art student and single mom living in Iceland. She is one of flickr's most popular photographers. In addition to doing interesting and provocative self portraiture work she also does some amazing Icelandic landscapes. Back in January, a friend of hers noticed one of her prints on Only-Dreemin's ebay store. After further investigation, she discovered 7 more of her photos were being sold there. She goes on to say:

"...the images had been given new and exciting titles, like "Seraque II" and "Attica", "Dawn expander II" and " Joga" (barf). I spent a good many days researching, going back thru their customer feedback, and was able to track back the sales of at LEAST 60 prints made from my images. These prints sold for a total sum of 2450 british pounds (around 4840 US$ )"

After doing research and gathering online evidence, she consulted a lawyer in Iceland. (Only-Dreemin is based in Britain.) Rebekka states:

She was confident that by sending them some well-phrased letters i'd be sure to get some damages out of them. After all, i had tons of incriminating evidence. The letters did nothing other than make them take the images down from their site. Further letters got no response from them.

As you can imagine, this was not OK with her. She decided she would tell the world about it, and on May 14, 2007 it hit the blogosphere. Thomas Hawk, another hugely popular Flickr photographer, posted about it on his blog. I did too, as did Stephen Perez. I'm sure others did as well, since the story was dugg 5,058 times at Digg.com. Many angry e-mails were sent to Only-Dreemin (info@only-dreemin.com if you're interested). A blogger contacted them wondering about their side of the story. Here was their response:

Many thanks for asking for our side of the story rather than simply offering more death threats... In August 2006, we were contacted by "Wild Aspects and Panoramics LTD" a company based here in London, they offered to show us some imagery, that they stated would be high resolution and we would have sole reselling rights. We were visited by a salesperson from the company and we liked what we saw Anyway 2 weeks passed, emails were sent back and forth, basic research was done by us to enable us to resell them and then the paperwork was signed and a considerable amount of money was paid (£3000.00) by us , for us to start selling these images in the form of canvas prints. 6 months later we had a letter from a law firm in Iceland, stating we were using someone's images, we Googled the claimants name, lo and behold we found we had been duped! As requested, we immediately removed the images from the internet and destroyed any copies of the images we had. We emailed the law firm to state we had dealt with these requests and to apologise to their client. We took legal advice, they told us say nothing more than we had, not recommending we contact the claimant and tell her what had happened, by the way we were very keen to do that, but we were told to avoid all contact. In the meantime we started our own investigation into the above company's contacts and sources but have since found nothing more because the telephone doesn't get answered, mobiles are permanently off and emails are getting bounced back, it seems we were conned too. As Rebekka has now decided to make this public, we can set about explaining to her why this has happened and of course, to apologise.

As I said in a previous post, there is a problem with that defense:

Their defense: "In August 2006, we were contacted by "Wild Aspects and Panoramics LTD" a company based here in London [...] basic research was done by us to enable us to resell them ..."

One problem with that research; it takes no time to check online and find out on Companies House (http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk) that the company does not exist. Since when is ignorance a valid defense or excuse? It didn't work for Paris Hilton, and it won't work for them. In the comments section of that blog, rustylime.com, Only-Dreemin responded to the negative publicity they had been receiving. (The points I'm about to make were made by a commenter named Jason.)

only-dreemin writes: "If this apology wasn't conveyed to RG, then for that we had no control over and we considered the matter as concluded. "

Convenient! Ill-gotten money = matter concluded.

"Once contacted, we researched RG, yes it true, we had been inadvertantly been selling her images, we dealt with that in a constructive and timely manner, at no point had we denied anything else, we apologised and acceded to her requests and from that moment on those images were never again shown in any way, shape, form or format."

They just gloss over the fact that they made money using Rebekka's work. For whatever reason they believe a "sorry" is adequate compensation. It really is a genius business model, albeit illegal. Use works found online and for the 20% or so of the owners that find out, apologize and wipe my hands clean. Only-Dreemin, claims that they were duped. Do they have ANY evidence? (As of 6/9/2007, they have presented none but unsupported claims.)

only-dreamin writes: "Death threats, profanity, acts of cruelty and abuse to my kids, posting of personal information, corrupting code on the website, abandoned shopping carts and countless other things are not helping to resolve matters but then thats to be expected from incitement i suppose."

Not satisfied with the self-imposed "scammed" label, Only-Dreemin goes for "martyr" status. "[...] i suspect any such offer would be rebuffed in light of the witch hunt that is going on around us at the moment, hence my earler point with contacting RG after the "tide" has receeded." I find it awkward and illogical to blame something that happened in May on something they failed to do in January.

"I appreciate your frustration, but your demands far outstripped our means and still do in respect of what was a genuine error that was dealt with at once and with complete respect."

Only-Dreemin now asks for "respect" instead of payment of that which is rightfully Rebekka's The law does not take into account "means" when tabulating damages. Hate-mail I, admittedly, sent Only-Dreemin some hate-mail. As did many others. I'll quote my e-mail below, so it does not appear I am leaving anything out of this.

Subject: Thieves I hope you're getting a lot of hate mail, criminals. Pay Rebbecca what she deserves! You all are no better than a mugger in the streets. Sean

I admit, I did call them "criminals" and infer that they were comparable to a "mugger", but I'm sure this wasn't the worst piece of hate-mail they received. Well, yesterday, 6/8/07, I received a response to my e-mail I sent them. Here it is, and I apologize for the foul language (I'm just quoting the e-mail.)

Subject: cock..... Title says it all really...Bandwagon anyone?............

Short and "sweet" huh? This latest chapter in this saga just shows what kind of people they are. Far from classy, jerks, thieves, scum of the earth.