This is a worrying tale for anyone who creates art (or any other “intellectual property”) and posts it on the internet. Graphic designer Jon Engle is being sued by a site that sells stock images for stealing from them. The problem is, the images he “stole” are his own works and the person or people who submitted them to the website stole them from him. He has time stamps for the creation and uploading of his originals that could be checked against the images he allegedly stole from. But the site and their lawyers won’t release that data. Which, to me, sounds like the actions of folks who know they’re in the wrong. To try and distract from their dubious behaviour they’ve started contacting his clients and repeated their ill-founded assertions to sour his working relationships.

There’s not a lot that other creatives can do for Engle apart from publicising his plight and maybe Google bombing the lying, dodgy site that is suing him.