In essence, what Finglerific has said on a shorter note is: You're wrong, you're an idiot and you have no idea what property rights or copyright law actually is.

Not to mention what the dA rules you agreed to abide by are, either.

Fact 1 - The account currently speaking with me was made within minutes of him having a large confrontation with people who were accusing him of stealing images. Upon its creation, it immediately came to his rescue in said conversation, as he became unresponsive and this "second opinion" tried to back him up. This, combined with the fact that you're kind of beating a dead horse here (every pun intended) and apparently feel particularly strongly about defending him, does not lend good light to the nature of it. Namely, I see absolutely no reason to believe that this account is not an alt, and it would be very difficult to convince me otherwise (please do not try). However, everyone else may feel free to believe as they will on this issue, and this post brings up some good points that should be addressed.

Fact 2 - The definition of art theft that you gave me (exclusively relating to the physical act of stealing fine art) does not touch on the issue of digital art; specifically, art that is posted on the internet. Understandable, as it has been an issue of late, but it cannot be relied on for this purpose expressly. However, I will address where it does make points relevant to here.

Fact 3 - He has been shown to claim images as his own that he has used as stock, with no empirical evidence to support his claims. He has also been seen to have no knowledge as to the types and creation methods of these stocks (such as fractals, C4Ds, spacescapes, etc.), and has been unable to explain problems such as .jpeg artifact and pixelation of raster images that would in no stretch of the imagination be present if he had the expertise necessary to make them.

Fact 4 - Copyright law dictates that, under most forms of licensing, users are not allowed to abscond with images that are not their own and put it into a piece, regardless of whether or not there are other things present. The example given is an instance of him taking an image that he could not verify had a "free to use" form of licensing attributed to it, and used it anyway. Under federal law, this /is/ theft of intellectual property.

Fact 5 - It is true that people use premade stocks and images very often. However, in most cases these are given credit to their due owners, and in the cases where it is not, it is also art theft. In reference to these images, I would bring up the question of "If everyone else was jumping off of a bridge...". Regardless of the nature of his error, it is irresponsible and childish to fall back on instances of people employing these methods correctly, and even more so to fall back on others making the same error.

Fact 6 - It is good to see that he made something that does not rely on the theft of stock images (as it would seem), and it is even better to see that he took down the offending image in question. I respect him greatly for that. However, one instance should never be used to set the average, and this applies here as much as it would anywhere else. Specifically, I refer to the multiple instances in the chat files avaliable for download where he strongly stays by the statement that he /NEVER/ uses stock images, despite all evidence pointing in another direction entirely. However, he admits to having used a stock image the moment one is found, even though he didn't give any credit or indication otherwise (as we accused him of doing earlier, and he denied with no evidence).

Fact 7 - This image was posted to the deviation in question before it was posted here, and he responded by attempting to cover it up (namely, deleting the post) and disregarding it with some condescending statement (haters gonna hate). That is the entire reason that it is here; he cannot delete it from here. Then the question becomes this; If, in this one instance, he confessed to doing something that he said he never did, why should we believe him in any other similar situation? The logical conclusion to come to is that he did in fact steal images where accused, and his tendency to dismissively delete all evidence to the contrary and block all people implying this does not lend him good light to this theory.

I will not immediately block this account for pointing out things detrimental to my point. Rather, I will give you an opportunity to respond, and ask any questions that you might have had about this whole situation.