The Munin site is now down.
It went down last night as I was on it, gathering info. Good, that it's down. But let's not forget something here. The site being down is a result of a sudden and large attack on this person's online presence, character and possible copyright infringement threats. Before that, it was up and business as usual. Before this all happened at once, he gave no sh*ts. He was contacted (cease and desist) by an actual artists whose work he was boldly stealing, and he ignored it.
For those who missed it....
Yesterday, one of my favorite artists, Lori Earley posted on her FB, and asked us to spread the word, since her attempts weren't working:
We took to our FBs and Twitters to help spread the word about this guy. As I was browsing the site, I couldn't believe all the popular artists I was seeing! The dude has brass balls and zero shame. Directly from his site:
"Our images are printed on traditional canvas with the texture, look and feel of original oil paintings and, when hung, appear both professional and distinctive. The prints are stretched gallery-style over wooden bars, have no visible nails or staples holding the canvas, and can be hung unframed; our goal is to make them look as elegant and modern. All prints are wall-ready and can be yours at very affordable prices."
What an amazingly sh*tty individual. He credited no one and stole everything and charged a considerable amount of money for the prints of work belonging to other people. Glenn Barr said the guy was selling prints of work that he himself never even made prints of.
Yes, the site is down now, but how many months—YEARS???—has this site been going. How much money has this a-hole, dirtbag thief made off the hard work of all these other artist?? This is one of the things that pisses me off the most. Not a single frakking penny of anything he made from that site belongs to him, it belongs to the artist.
Alexander Munin/Munin.Co is down for now, but in my experience, unless legal action is taken and they really hit these people hard enough to make them wish they'd never even heard of art, then the stealing is only on hold. They'll pick another site, fake a new name, whatever, and continue profiting from piracy. Keep an eye out for Alexander Munin, people. (You know what he looks like, see above)
Here's the info Aunia provided yesterday, including his actual FB. I know. He's a complete asshole. You should see his pics, we all have.
Registrant Name: Alex Munin
Registrant Organization: munin.co
Registrant Address1: 172 Vagan Rd.
Registrant City: Toronto
Registrant State/Province: on
Registrant Postal Code: m6c3a4
Registrant Country: Canada
Registrant Country Code: CA
Registrant Phone Number: +1.647228475
https://www.facebook.com/
Here's a great blog post about it from Jeremy Riad: Stop This Canadian Rip-Off "Artist"
I only saw one Audrey Kawasaki there, but boy did this loser have BUNCHES of other people. He had a lot of Jeff Soto's, Lori's, Glenn Barr's, Dan May's and a bunch of other people. I was able to make a small list of artists that I found there, some that aren't listed in Jeremy's blog post. I don't know the outcome of this sitch, but feel free to contact any of these artist and let them know about this, link them to this blog post explaining things if needed. These were the artists I could find before the site was taken down:
James Ropar
Chris Buzelli
Ken Wong
Jeff Soto
Dan May
Audrey Kawasaki
Juan Molinet
Yoko d'Holbachie
Edwin Ushiro
Goni Montes
Yu Jin Sung
Yang Na
Xiaoqing Ding
Fuco Ueda
JAW Cooper
Martin Wittfooth
Sarah Joncas
Michael Whelan
Moonywolf
Tom Bagshaw
Edit: Just had a flashback on two more paintings I saw on the site! (I know, weird.) But another artist that had his work stolen was Mark Ryden.
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