CC0

"My Art"

Since the beginnings of the Steem platform a cancer established itself in it: the cancer of art plagiarism. Art plagiarism is a disease of this platform and Jaguar Force is a part of the cure.

Source

How Did We Get Here?

This tumor progressively grew, metastasized, by a mechanism of action that involved mainly 4 factors:

1. The initial art plagiarists were rewarded handsomely, these rewards reinforced the practice, fed the tumor and thus promoted it's growth. These initial plagiarists in view of the rewards then created large rings of accounts to exploit this vulnerability.

2. Many users that were not initially art plagiarists saw this phenomenon unfold and in view of the profitability of the scheme mimicked it, replicating the behaviour and expanding the problem.

3. Real artists that refused to engage in art plagiarism fell into a disadvantage by not being able to compete with those plagiarizing, and thus most of those real artists progressively left the platform.

4. Antiabuse initiatives maintained their scopes regarding art plagiarism static after a certain point in time, which resulted in art plagiarists perfecting and sophisticating their art plagiarism techniques, transitioning from mostly art theft initially (directly stealing images of somebody else's art) to mostly art paraphrasing (reproducing somebody else's artwork with slight modifications, change of medium, etc.). This inability and/or unwillingness to dynamically adapt the scope allowed art plagiarism to remain unabated and thrive in the platform.

Source

The Good Fight

In all fairness there were, at the beginning of the platform, great cleaners like @pfunk and others that addressed and fought skillfully against art plagiarism in all its forms, including art paraphrasing. Those great cleaners were temporarily able to contain art plagiarism and at one point went so far as to halt account creation from the whole country of Ukraine and parts of Russia in a measure intended to neutralize and contain the largest art plagiarism ring Steem has seen, the Yanik art plagiarism ring, which still remains active to this day.

Those cleaners that at one point were able to contain the cancer of art plagiarism then because less active in antiabuse initiatives or left the platform, which led to the rampant state of art plagiarism in Steem today.

Source

Be The Change You Want To See In The Platform

A few months ago Jaguar Force decided that enough was enough. That the issue needed to be put back on the table, that art plagiarism in all its forms needed to be fought, engaged, reported and exposed. That it was time to fight the good fight against art plagiarism in order to turn Steem into a platform that rewards and welcomes real artists and not art fraudsters.

"First They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You, Then They Fight You, Then You Win."

In these months since we started engaging art plagiarism we faced a multitude of problems, complications and obstacles, most of which coming naturally from art plagiarists themselves, their supporters (i.e. major stakeholders and witnesses that could not admit they were duped by these fraudsters) and those in the platform that benefit from it (i.e. Art dapps that benefit from the apparent value that art plagiarism provides the content they curate and reward) but some of it coming from unexpected sources as for example otherwise competent cleaners that allegedly act in the name of logic and reason.

Jaguar Force overcame every single one of those obstacles, complications and problems. To mention just a few of the victories in this not yet finished campaign we can mention the point in which @ntopaz instituted a new set of rules that reflected exactly the rules Jaguar Force was advocating for.

Another significant victory was the institution by @steemflagrewards of the art paraphrasing category, which allowed for an initial and provisory flagging capability that was deployed during the engagement of some of the cases detected.

A more recent and crucial victory in this campaign is merely days old, when @steemcleaners adapted their scope to include art paraphrasing, considering it a type of art plagiarism.

During this process Jaguar Force undoubtedly established itself at and as the vanguard of art plagiarism antiabuse engagement. We served as an arrowhead, as the small element that makes contact and pierces through first, then to be followed by the long shaft of the metaphorical arrow.

Source

The Way Forward

Make no mistake, this campaign has just started, the night is young and we are aware that many more obstacles will emerge in the way of its completion. We are ready, prepared and determined to overcome each and every single last one of them. We will cross those bridges when we get to them, even those that don't exist yet, for where a bridge is needed that is not there, we will build it.

We will continue on this full spectrum campaign of detection, engagement and neutralization of art plagiarism by any means we deem appropriate until we consider that the situation has been contained.

This is Jaguar Force,
Reporting directly from the Jungle.
Onwards!