I received a few favorites from someone I'd not noticed before in my favs, devwatch notices, or comments. As I had a few moments, I checked it out.

Strange. It was a stock account. "Gift Giver."

But I couldn't figure out the gallery. There were sets of photos, but you could not see without downloading the packs. There were no individual images in the gallery.

But the favorites gallery was overloaded. Hundreds of favorites, added in stacks and stacks. My images were buried, and yet they'd only been faved a few hours ago.

I kept the name in my misc notices for a while. I was curious, and a bit concerned.

Today I checked back on this individual. Banned.

Is this a new kind of thief? One who favorites images and creates sets of stock for download from stolen images?

Were they stealing images? Is that why the individual banned? And if so, how many manip artists downloaded those packs?

Perhaps DA should consider stating the reason for a ban if it is related to copyright violation. This individual may be gone, but those images may already be downloaded onto PCs the world over...