• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Bad Guy V.I.I.P.E.R.--THIEVES!!

K

King_of_Colubrids

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The group VIIPER, Virginians Interested In Protecting Every Reptile, are a bunch of THIEVES!! They have stolen intellectual property from me, directly from my website, and used it to create stickers which I have available for sale, and sell them without my permission, and without even giving me credit. Here is my original artwork for the stickers:
Bumper_Stickers_Best.jpg


The VERY FIRST of these stickers created, on theback of my main herping vehicle:
bumper.jpg


And the sticker that they are currently producing and selling:
normal_2008068.jpg


This is the photo of me, taken by my girlfriend, which was used to create the original design of the sticker:
2008-06-03002.jpg


I have sent them an email confronting them with their thievery, but I thought everyone should know what kind of people they are dealing with when doing ANY business with this group. Any group that is willing to STEAL personal intellectual property does NOT deserve the help and support of the Herp community.
 
I can vouch that they are indeed selling these stickers. I purchased one through Cornsnakes.com from Chris...the original designer September. I went to the Richmond Reptile Expo on 10-26-08 and VIIPER was selling these stickers there. I recognized them to be nearly identical to the one I had purchased from Chris, but honestly I didn't think any more of it at the time.
 
The hardest part for me is that these people are presenting themselves as benefactors to the reptile community. They are displaying themselves publicly as pro-reptile, and interested only in helping animals and the people that love them.

But they haven't the integrity to, at the VERY least, give me credit for my work and effort. The person that presumably stole the imagery is claiming that he designed the image himself, and you can clearly see that the only deviations from this original graphic is the cut-off head of the snake, and the capitalization of the letter "f" in "For".
bumper_sticker_bw.jpg


The above graphic is the design originally digitized by the guy who made the first round of stickers back in May or June of this year. It is also the advertisement for these stickers on my website HERE...a page that was posted on September 1, 2008 at 9:44 am.
 
Is it possible that just ONE guy is a thief and the rest of V.I.I.P.E.R. didn't realize their graphic designer had stolen the artwork? Hopefully someone will get back to you and rectify the situation. The herping community has enough trouble with the general public without stabbing each other in the back as well. My hope is that it is just one rotten apple and not the whole barrel. :(
 
Yes, it is. In fact it is likely to be the case. However, until I find out who specifically has done it...I can only make referance to the sellers...the group.

However, I did just recieve an email Here it is, with my reply:

Re: Support your local hooker...Monday, November 24, 2008 12:48 PM
From: "chris morrison" <[email protected]>To: [email protected]
That's baloney, and you know it. I have the original design AND the original photograph that it was made from. I would be happy to show you the photograph that is OF ME that was used to make this graphic. An overlay of your image to both this and the original design graphic would prove identical.

I also want to inform you that I have a log of IP addresses that have visited my website. It would not be difficult to locate every IP that viewed my page with this graphic, and make some inquiries...It's easy enough to find out who, exactly, in VA has viewed that page to this date...

I am saving this and all future communication.

Sincerely,
Chris Morrison-owner
http://KingofColubrids.com
Captive Bred King and Corn Snakes


--- On Mon, 11/24/08, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:

From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Support your local hooker...
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, November 24, 2008, 12:08 PM


Chris it has been brought to my attention that we have a very similar sticker to yours that we had sold. Had no idea there was another like it out there. I was the one that came up with the sticker idea. I would like to talk to you more about this, and see if we can't come to some kind of solution.

Amanda

Viiper Secretary
Click to expand...
 
I guess it should also be pointed out that she is a cornsnakes.com member....under the name "bityrock"
 
We did not steal his idea I was the one that came up with the idea back in March of this year, the group had 10 made and that's all, we sold them at cost as I thought it was something fun and cute to do, we have not had any more made and now plan not to either. I had no idea there was anything like it out there already. I have already told the web master to remove it from the site as we have been out of them for a while, and seeing how I am now being blasted and labled a Bad guy before I was even asked about where I got the idea, it's not worth it to me to keep going with them I will do a totally different design and copyright it next time. The fact that I have had the idea since march and had the design here at my home since then just didn't have them made until later in the year to make sure there would be an interest in them, we had them made and sold them at cost. Like I said we had only 10 made. We are a small group only in the state of VA and only in the Richmond and Hampton roads area. We have rescued a few snakes and taken in ones of the deployed miltary. we get together to talk about snakes and educate the public about why they should know about what they are buying in a reptile before they do it and give advice about how to care for them the correct why, but I guess that makes us bad people and love how we get blasted for trying to help the herps and keep them from just being turned loose or killed.

Amanda
Viiper Sec.
 
And Drew I can point out that you are a member of Richmond Viiper as well.

Amanda
 
Come on...that's ridiculous and you KNOW it! If you overlay "your design" on top of MY design and even on top of the ORGINIAL picture, it is identical!! It's not "similar". It's not "close". It's not even "uncanny"...it's identical. The ONLY deviations you made were to capitalize the "f" in "For", and shorten the length of the snake's head.

I told you...it is a no-brainer for me to get all of the logs of IP addresses that saw that image on my website. And I'm sure if I asked, I could get the listing for the advertisement I posted at cornsnakes.com, as well.

You stole from me. If not your group, than you, personally, stole from me. And you are now feigning ignorance, and making it seem as though I stole the image from YOU, trying to damage MY reputation and hurt MY future sales of this image.

That is unforgiveable. Man up, admit you were wrong, stop lying to cover a theft, and make it right...
 
If necessary, I will contact my friend that digitized my graphic and made the original stickers, at the end of August 2008. I can get the exact date that my original graphic was uploaded to his computer, and the date that it was first digitized for sticker production.
 
I'm sorry Amanda but those pics say it all, there's absolutely no way you came up with the same idea photograhed it and had it made into a sticker EXACTLY the same as chris. So just apologise and work it out with him it was all for the benefit of reptiles in the first place, so no harm no foul. Unless you continue to bear false witness and build it up bigger than it is.
Phil R.
 
I'm not saying you took my design, all I said was I came up with the idea back in March. I also said we no longer are selling the sticker. There were all of 10 stickers made up. They where all sold and we are not having any more made up, we didn't plan to have any more done before this came to light, and with out a question will not have them done now. Say what you want Chris, I can't change th fact that we sold 10 stickers and I'm not sure how I can made this right to you.

Amanda
 
I'm sorry I had offered that in my e-mail to him and I keep getting blasted by him so I can see he doesn't want to work something out. He came to this site before even talking to anyone in the group about this and trying to come to reason before blasting a group that is only trying to do good.
 
Personally, I'm not buying the story that 2 different people came up with the same image, with the same phrase.....methinks somebody is full of it.
 
You wont do ANY good to lie about it. If its admitted right now, youd probably save alot of face for the group you are here to represent. Id play this game wisely.

Selling an item,created from a stolen image is copyright infringement. It isnt a "small little thing" when YOU try to make profit from it. It can be brought to court. and has before.
 
You can start by knowcking off the baloney, and admitting what you did. There is no WAY that the image "you designed" for your stickers was created before that original picture of me was taken...in early May of this year. There simply is no way around the fact that it is humanly impossible for you to have created an identical graphic before the original photograph was taken.

You may have had the idea. You may have wanted to design it. But ultimately, you skipped the step of designing and chose, instead, to alter an image you found on the web. MY image.

You want to make it right? Admit what you did, PUBLICLY. Post a public admittance, giving me PROPER credit for the original artwork. Post a public APOLOGY for what you did. Post it here. Post it at Cornsnakes.com. But most of all...Post it on your group's website. Make it front page news, so everyone who visits your group's page knows who you are, and what you did, and how you are now trying to lie about.

That's easier to do than creating the original graphic was...
 
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