You know by now after reading my blog, that the violet wand world is a rough one.  I've called it highly competitive and that's an understatement.  When there have even been death threats involved, you know it's rough.  I've pointed out thieves, exposed charlatans, and called trouble makers to task.  

Sadly, I have a new one to add, though it may not be a big one.   But this one I find personally a little disheartening.

It's the newest seller on the block, a new guy, new website, barely out of cloth nappies in spite of an old-fashioned perception...a quaint 'doctor'.  His contribution to the cutthroat competition seems small perhaps... merely passing off another manufacturer/seller's photographs of their products, as his own photos representing his commercial products.  So neither the photos are his, nor the products in them.  Put another way, the photos belong to his competitors, and the products in the photos were made by his competitors. 

In the end, what harm does it do, really?  To steal a competitor's pictures and pass them off as his own?  To imply that the photos show his product rather than the original company's? All's fair in business, right?

Well, I find it personally disheartening as the top-hatted gent is an officer in the International Violet Wand Guild-- an organization attempting to set standards among its members.  No, this indiscretion is by no means as ex-treme as those of the Guild's ex-tortionist ex-Chairman, but this 'X' is still from the leadership body. 

On his site we find a smattering of photographs, 'borrowed' in spite of their copyrights.  

 We won't call the photos 'stolen'.  Ix-nay, m8te.  The good doctor perhaps merely forgot that he didn't take the photographs himself and then disremembered that he got them from a competitor's website.  He forgot they show someone else's stuff too.  Perhaps due too many shock treatments at Wellville.

From

Here    Here   Here And   Here

where they've been originally since as early as  2000 as the web archive confirms.  I offer this tidbit of insider knowledge only as an excerpt -- make of the entirety what you will.  I would suggest in my opinion though, that this form of filching flattery is because the original older company has the better product - and that you're meant to see the better product, and to think you're buying the better product, instead of what the new guy is actually selling.

We'd like to submit our entry for his 'suggestion for a new electrode' contest.

In a previous blog post, I gave a bit of an admonishment to Mjolnir for delaying their product launch while they wait for a patent.

I am going to take that back, as perhaps trying to get a patent is worthwhile in the hope of preventing stealing of business designs or properties.  But, In my experience, even patenting your violet wand product will prove useless.  The electro-fetishists are, as I've said before, fringe... the violetwand-ers more fringe yet, and the violet wand business is still populated with questionable ethics, so a patent will likely prove to mean very little to some of them. 

 Whatever Mjolnir comes out with, someone will likely steal its design or concept, patented or not.  And they'll certainly steal the pictures.

 Photos used here are defined by law as fair use under the scope of transformative and limited use strictly pertaining to criticism, commentary or parody.

click if looking for the actual products shown in the photos at left