Psych-ops, freak flags, breakdowns and revelations...
Kevin Lewandowski, Discogs, copyright infringement, "fair use" and collector scum.
The parasitic anal-retentive collector scum of Discogs
Kevin Lewandowski is a parasite. He has built his empire by infringing the image copyrights of millions of unknown artists, under the guise of "fair use" flim-flammery. Kevin's business is not an educational non-profit one like Wikipedia or Internet Archive. It is exactly like Goodreads, IMDb or Mobygames, all of which make huge profits by using an army of unpaid volunteers uploading images they do not own the copyright to, and once the images are uploaded, they are locked in the database. In the case of Discogs, Kevin's unpaid army of volunteer users upload the images to which they have no copyright, and Kevin slaps Google AdSense ads on them. That's how he makes his millions of dollars a year, and that is why he refuses to remove listings and photos on request. He does not give his user mods the privilege of removing images either. The infringing images are his Google AdSense real estate. Kevin has paraded his empire of copyright infringement through the pages of Vice and Billboard magazines, like a pole-dancer in front of a crowd of Wall Street fat cats. Kevin is a thief and a whore.
Despite Discogs' parasitic business model (an army of unpaid contributors uploading images they have no rights to, and unmanned third-party distribution machines), Kevin still needs actual business people to enable this empire of infringement. Here is Discogs COO Audrey Rehbein, pictured with an ugly, sweaty, creepy little unpaid Discogs user, user name "Mr Slut", real name Karsten Rodemann. Audrey gets rich and posts selfies to Instagram of her luxury overseas vacation, paid for by the copyrights she infringed from poor unknown artists like me. Karsten is starving, an unpaid scumbag volunteer, like a MAGA idiot at a Trump rally.
Who would waste their life uploading tens of thousands of images as an UNPAID volunteer, images for which they do not own the copyright, all to make these scumbags rich? Brent A. Greissle, that's who.
Joshua C. Davis, aka Bit Shifter, discogs username Alphasuntory, uploaded my stuff to discogs without asking me. Karsten Rodemann, discogs username 'Mr. Slut', is a self-annointed, unpaid nazi hall monitor for Kevin Lewandowski's empire of infringement.
This screenshot from the Discogs' forum displays the Discogs users' ignorance of and contempt for not only Copyright Law, but for common place Trust and Safety issues. This is the lowlife scum of Kevin's "community".
Below are examples of my copyrighted images, uploaded to Discogs by people I don't know, people who did not seek my permission. The display of these images on Discogs is an infringement of my copyright. There is no "fair use". In each screenshot you will see the Google AdSense ads placed next to my copyrighted images.
If you send a DMCA takedown notice to discogs, as I did, you will receive long-winded responses from volunteer user mods about "fair use" etc. The truth is, neither the Discogs "community support specialists", nor the users, have been given the admin access to the database, they do not have the ability to remove images even if they wanted to. Kevin would never allow someone other than himself to remove his valuable, ill-gotten real estate.
Discogs is a parasite. They do not support artists. Collectors are not listeners. They do not support or patronise artists. Discogs and its users are Parasites. Leeches. Predators. Vultures.
The Discogs website says, "Information is taken directly from publicly available releases in the possession of one or more members of the site". My tapes, CDrs and vinyl 7" were never widely available, they were traded inside a private, underground network, I never sold any, and these items have now come into the possession of the Discogs members via the betrayal of certain members of that original network. All the music I ever made is available in high quality on my websites and the entire info for my output is there as well. The info and images in the Discogs database are redundant, and exists for two things only: To provide an advertising platform for its owners to make big bucks selling retail ads (for stuff that has nothing to do with music), and to allow Discogs users to sell copies of my tapes CDrs and vinyl, none of which ever had a "first sale".
The rotting corpse of the pre-internet cassette culture scene is crawling with these maggots, and nowhere in more grotesque abundance than on Discogs.
Kevin Lewandowski is a tricky little jesuit. He does not allow Discogs' sellers to upload a photo or image of what they are selling in their Discogs shop, like eBay would, they MUST create the databse entry first, or use the database entry and its image ONLY to list items in their Discogs shops. Even "variations". Then he refuses to remove the images. This way Kevin Lewandowski guarantees himself the Google AdSense real estate of the database AND the cut of the sellers' sales. Lewandowski is trying to create an empire similar to what Jeff Bezos accomplished with ISBN/Goodreads/Amazon. The new COO Lloyd Starr has ties the fucking Blackstone group, whose chairman Stephen Schwarzman makes $1.4B a year. The Discogs owners are not interested in music- they are money grubbing parasites.
above: a screenshot showing a public Discogs page containing my copyrighted tape cover. Kevin Lewandowski, Zink Media, Discogs and Google AdSense all profit from the sale of advertising, using my copyrighted artwork, despite the fact that they do so in violation of copyright law. Discogs is built on an un-tested "fair use" claim. My efforts to get my material removed from Discogs will include pursuing a class-action copyright infringement suit gainst them.
1) In the above screenshot, you will see Discogs user "Xpadrex" has created a blogpost at his Google blogspot, which uses my copyrighted artwork without my permission. Xpadrex has also placed two links in the post. One links to xpadrex's Discogs seller page, and one links to xpadrex's public DropBox.
2) The link to Discogs user Xpadrex's public DropBox connected to this zip file, a file containing an ILLEGAL mp3 rip of my vinyl single.
3) Discogs user xpadrex's ILLEGAL mp3 of my vinyl single contains metadata that refers to MY copyrighted music as being a "Discogs Release", with some kind of Discogs "catalog" number. THIS IS THE TYPE OF BLATANT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AND BOOTLEGGING THAT KEVIN LEWANDOWSKI ENABLES AND PROFITS FROM, AND I WILL NOT TOLERATE IT.
