Theft of Intellectual Property (Stolen Artwork and Designs)

[TAngelone]

I feel this is  a topic that needs to be discussed and addressed. The thought of having my art and designs stolen from me is infuriating and upsetting. It seems that theft of intellectual property is becoming rampant. I have been told by other artists/designers on Zazzle and other POD platforms that we just need to resign ourselves to the fact that this happens. Do we NOT have legal recourse? I mean what is the point in having a copyright  if anyone can steal your art and designs?  Yes I know we as artists and designers own the copyright once a work or work(s) are created. Why go into business if anyone can help themselves to your hard work? It makes no sense. I myself have spent years crafting and developing my art and designs which have NOT even seen the light of day yet. Now I am being told that if I open a store on Zazzle or Redbubble in my case, that I should just resign myself to the fact that someone can and will steal my art and designs. I would like to see more proactivity on the part of Zazzle and other POD platforms to safeguard artists and designers from being robbed essentially. This is almost like legalised robbery. We as artists and designers and consumers alike need to do our due diligence to combat this and put intellectual property thieves out of business as well. I recently received a response on this very forum from someone who shall remain nameless who stated in a roundabout way that if ones designs and art are successful and generate sales or look like they could potentially be successful and generate sales there is a good chance that the art and designs will get stolen and I need to just take it lying down essentially. That is absolute rubbish. I sincerely hope that all of us collectively can work together to prevent this and make a viable steady income doing what we love to do.             

I would like to draw your attention to a thread titled "Stolen art and designs" which illustrates my point. 

How do we collectively stop this from happening? 

Any one who tries to steal my art and designs and is caught will be added to a very public BLACK LIST which I will post on my website. 

Any thoughts? 

[PenguinPower · Accepted solution]

The best you can do is DCMA /report them when you find them. It definitely is whack-a-mole, but yes, your other option is to just never put anything on the web bigger than a postage stamp, because yes, it's not difficult to steal things that are electronic. Zazzle cannot change this, nor can Redbubble. You are free to turn on watermarking here, but realize that it will put you at a disadvantage as you likely will not appear in search engine searches and also it offers minimal protection as watermarks aren't impossible to remove. And look to the consumers too..... they are the ones buying cheap knockoffs... other than small items, like postcards and invites, even the highest resolution images stolen as a screen shot here are definitely not going to be very good quality - stolen pillows, tees and the like are going to be blurry/pixelated and look as cheap as they are... 

[princesspatch]

I no longer use Redbubble they said somone may be interested in a design not to worry next thing they suspended my account you cant get in touch easy then I went online and found dozens of people had same thing near enough no explanation cant get an answer so I went through a site that proccesed my case now Im thinking it all just design theft I finaly got a we will lok into it and then again no way to contact them at least Zazzle does reply I still get redbubble in my inbox mail with the usual blurbs eventually I will unsubscribe but I was gutted had loads of designs dident sell anything either and if I watch another stupid video about how you can make money I will slap myself never again my time is too precious I could sell better on a street corner than all this nonsense about share with social media sitting online half the day engaging with people who are saturated already..Its a load of hype

[TAngelone]

Thank you PenguinPower. We need to band together to stop this. It is wrong, it is infuriating and needs to NOT happen. You are right about this. If consumers are loyal to a certain artist/designer and their respective brand then they too need to be the ears and eyes to detect "counterfeit crap products" that do NOT reflect the artist/designer and their vision and cut into their profits. Thank you for your pointers. I have counted your reply as a solution and my sincere hope is that other artists and designers who are faced with this will read this thread and gain some insight as to what steps they can take. But just resigning ourselves to the fact that this happens is pervasive and is why this is happening with increasing frequency on Zazzle and other POD platforms. I greatly appreciate your reply and wish you the very best in your endeavours PenguinPower. 

To intellectual property thieves. If you are NOT talented and creative enough to build and promote your own brand and ideas then don't take it upon yourselves to steal what is NOT yours to give or take. There are repercussions and you will be caught and put out of business. 

In closing I would like to suggest that there be a BLACK LIST which is made public on websites and in online stores  to dissuade consumers from unknowingly shopping bogus websites and stores that sell stolen intellectual property and profiting from counterfeit crap products. 

Thanks again for your response. 

[princesspatch]

You wont stop it I found out after years they were misdirecting my store I tapped it in myself and it went anywhere other than my store I found someone else using part of the name and they came up ok I then tapped it in Zazzle and again it went to somone else one Item of mine came up out of hundreds not counting the ones they put as private if not ever being sold which they expect you to delete or renew you would spend a lifetime at it Im closing my store the main think is I feel pig sick I never took real trouble to use search engine lots..using my store title.. pintrest come up as saved on there and more crap I pressed my items on pintrest and again they just went to general zazzle.I feel like a fool bigtime.

[Towanda]

I love the blacklist idea.  I had my pics stolen in under 24 hours of opening store 

[KeegansCreation]

You can turn off access to the design tool so that customers can only customize your design by using templates you made. I have done that with a few of my designs because they were made with purchased graphics and one of the license conditions to be allowed to put them on PODs was that customers couldn't access them.

When the design tool is inaccessible to customers, screen capture is greatly degraded because they can only screencap the distorted image projected onto a product.

The catch there is that disabling design tool access also disables design transfer for customers (but not for you) so you lose any sales you would have made that way. I only did it where it was required in the licensing terms of the graphics I bought.

If you would like to do this, you do it during product publishing. It's the last step after adding tags. There is a tick box that asks if the Customize button should be enabled which defaults to yes, you tick it to no.

I know it's infuriating. And the resigned attitude of designers is doubtless puzzling. You can do proactive and reactive steps but you can't stop it entirely. It's best to fight it in the places you actually can, such as Amazon. Amazon will respond to takedown requests. The demoralizing thing there is that the thieves often pop back up with a different store name even if the first (or 100th) store name gets banned. So it's a constant struggle. That's the problem with a blacklist. The store names are like sock puppet accounts, just endless and nearly random collections of letters and numbers. It's like trying to stop spam phone calls by blocking individual phone numbers. It's exhausting and doesn't stop the problem because they have a generator that cranks out new combinations as fast as you can block them.

In the end it's a cost/benefit analysis. It's worth it to take down certain thieves. You probably saw the thread about the thief who made a youtube video with instructions on how others could also steal invite designs. That was well worth taking down. But if you try to fight every single one of them, you won't be a designer anymore. You'll just be a guy who spends all his time sending takedown notices for the designs already made. The film and music industries have been fighting this for decades and yet there is still pirate music and movies out there. So pick your battles.

[Towanda]

I will click the no button for customizing.   Thanks for the info.    I had clicked yes you can customize.   Maybe that will help future pics not get stolen 

[Windy]

It was I who said something like that, however, my point was that it is not entirely likely that a thief will steal designs off a new account  full of new untested and not-yet-popular designs, and that therefore, new shopkeepers probably don't need to go to great lengths to keep their stores private during the time of setting up their stores. 

[CreativeLeahG]

@Windy 

I would concur, the first page products are the ones that mainly get copied (not always of course). And they don't just take the screenshots of products they take the titles, description and tags. I've found my stolen designs because in some cases they've added my name to the titles on their counterfeits. 

It is possible to get them taken down, I've had success doing so, but it is time-consuming. There was a period in Zazzle history where many of us had hundred or more stolen items appearing on Amazon. We had many threads re this and Zazzle did take steps to assist, with a link specifically for Zazzlers to report multiple items. Others went a more legal route. It took a toll on some people's mental health and they had to withdraw from Zazzle. It was very painful period and very dark which is why some of us as you recommended, try to be more pragmatic now and not let it get so much under our skin. That doesn't mean we are letting things slide.

On Zazzle specifically the best way to protect your work is to have a template field on every product because even though the thieves still publish the screenshot with the template fields, they most likely can't actually produce the product at the end with the template 'altered' for the customer. So they won't get any sales or the sales will result in returns. That is some small consolation.

I have submitted a report to Amazon only yesterday re such a product. There is NO WAY the seller can edit the template fields, NOR can they recreate the particular design they chose to steal with any accuracy.

@TAngelone @KeegansCreation @PenguinPower 

[princesspatch]

They take your store name too or part of it I used all search engines and my name came up either just direct to zazzle or to a zazzle in UK France with my title in search so a customer would not even be directed to USA so I gets to zazzle and typing in search brought up one item of mine search again with my store name it went to others.it would be near impossible for friends or social media pintrest ect I had shared my items direct with store address on to reach my store pintrest just went to zazzle even though I had shared my item direct to pintrest from zazzle..nothing would take anyone direct to my store and i have a t least a thousand zaz items on pintrest

[TAngelone]

First off I need to apologise for some of what was stated in my rather lengthy post regarding theft of intellectual property and stolen art and designs. What was stated was and is NOT a personal attack on Zazzle, Redbubble or anyone for that matter. I need to make this clear. The respondent I referred to as "nameless" was very right in terms of what they stated and again what I stated in my post was and is NOT a personal attack on them either. That all having been stated, I did NOT have the correct assembly of facts when I wrote and left that post. Having received very helpful and very knowledgeable replies from fellow artists, designers and shopkeepers on the Zazzle forum I now have a clearer perspective and I have gained a deeper insight into how I and others can safeguard our work. 

I personally would love to to see software invented that makes running dodgy bogus sites and stores with crap counterfeit products under different names impossible. Intellectual property thieves are a scourge to social media and the internet as a whole. They also make it harder and in some cases impossible for some of us to make a viable steady income as creatives.

In closing there is someone on YOUTUBE whose design was very successful on REDBUBBLE and was stolen by a site that is still in business and operates to this day topping GOOGLE search engines with their design. This individual made it known that they were quite aware of this and stated that they didn't care because they couldn't do anything about it anyway. Furthermore the site which is lucrative has NOT once offered to compensate the original designer and artist behind the work. That is infuriating to me. 

That is in part what prompted me to write the post in the first place. Again my sincere hope is that anyone  who is faced with this now or in the future can read this thread and these posts and benefit from them. I am still learning myself. That is why I pose questions in this forum NOT to upset or instigate anyone. 

Thanks for all of the responses. I now know who to follow on Zazzle when I am open for business which I hope generates new and repeat business for all of you. 

Cheers. Thanks. 

[princesspatch]

No your too soft mate this is a persons time and their life in which job could you say oh go work for me bring me lots of customers and I may pay you a dollar a day come on artist are the most exploited people on the planet and its time it stopped 

[Connie]

I think it's not a matter of designers "not caring" if our work gets stolen, but it's a determination that our limited time is better spent making and selling products than going after the endless thieves. It's the nature of the internet- the only sure way to protect your art is not to put it online at all. It depends on how precious you are about your art. If you have enough time and money, you can certainly try to prosecute the thieves, but the chance of success is very low, being that they are mostly international. (There was at least one Zazzle seller in the old forums, that claimed she had gotten more money from copyright lawsuits than from her actual Zazzle store. So I guess if you live in the right country, it might be worth it. But it the US it's not).

[princesspatch]

I think your missing the point artist make zazzle thus zazzle has an obligation to make some decent effort that the artist gets seen its not good enough to direct people to zazzle through promotion on a personal social media thats exploitation the person should be directed to the shop of the artist who shared it direct.That wasent happening with me and I got a silly answer from zazzle customer service that made no sense about they cant control what people search for .well yes they can if your store has a title it should go direct to your store if its your advert...Mine did not it went to zazzle in general how many more poor fools are not realising this and thinking they had no sales as store no good as in how many others is this happening to

[chefcateringbiz]

Since you're an independent designer it's on you to assess risks, assess costs, and deal with individual problems. The risk assessment for myself is that there's a low risk of anyone making a bazillion dollars off my images. I don't make so much money that anyone's going to profit more than a few bucks here or there even on my best-selling stuff. So the costs of registering images for copyrights (at $35 a pop last time I checked, probably more now), and possibly hiring a lawyer should I "need" one is out of the question. So, the last thing would be why would I spend my time sifting through hundreds of images here or elsewhere looking for thieves over a few bucks here or there? What a great waste of my time. These things are my version of "I don't care". Now, if I was making $100K per year I would certainly re-think all that, OR if I had a style that was unique, like an actual artist or cartoonist (which I am not). Zazzle, or Amazon, or whatever site that has items for sale are quite reasonable about taking down stolen copyrights. They can't police everything, there's not enough time in their day, either. But you can contact thieves directly and tell them to remove your images, and report incidents involving your own images to the site(s) involved and they'll try to help you. That seems fair to me.

[Van]

Copyright infringement is an absolute nightmare. A lot of these thieves hide behind Cloudflare and other such services - and some are out of the USA. On top of that, a lot of these thieves are starting to file counterclaims insisting the design is theirs, without providing a lick of proof other than "because I said so." The only recourse for a designer at that point seems to be to file a lawsuit - which costs $$$ - and let's face it - in some countries they can't be touched and they know it.

I've been dealing with big batch of connected Vietnam websites infringing on a particular design that isn't even a big seller - not for me, anyway, although maybe they are making $ from it. There are over 100 sites that I've found so far and slowly but surely these thieves are filing counterclaims. (Funny that they claim to be US based but even geolocation shows they are in Vietnam)

Too many laws as written do very little to help the 'victims' and everything to protect the criminals.

[Marcia]

I have a new design that's starting to sell (yay!) and getting a lot of views. However, when I see it actively being viewed on analytics & see the views are in Vietnam I just cringe. It's been happening quite a bit lately.

[Elagirl67]

What about if you receive a DCMA from Zazzle that was reported and the design they are claiming is a selfie of myself which I created on a product that apparently someone is claiming is theirs? I am new an opened a store after I used Zazzle Template Inc. to create a tote bag with my photo and I purchased it. I also used the same design of mine on some playing cards that I also purchased. I posted my first product on my store and received an email a few says later stating that it was removed due to me not owning it. This is absurd that my selfie art is being claimed by someone else without showing proof of ownership. I contacted Zazzle some days ago but have not had a response. I am seriously having second thought about keeping my store. Any ideas as to what happened?  It is very frustrating not being able to talk to someone and get clarifications. Thanks

[princesspatch]

I have hundreds of stuff on there and ive sold very few I know my stuff is good as ive seen some bland stuff on other stores point being something is not right and Zazzle wont address the issue in fact many print on demand sites come out with the same old chestnut if your stuff if fantastic it wont sell unless you promote it what they dont tell you is you are promoting them more often than yourself.people arrive on Zazzle through your promotion on your social media then buy off someone else and its unlikely to be you as they have top sellers as in not artist of talent but experts at paid promotion who will be at the top of the views.so little talented people direct folk to anywhere but themselves in many cases

[ColsCreations]

 I am new an opened a store after I used Zazzle Template Inc. to create a tote bag with my photo and I purchased it ...

Just a guess, but that might be the key there. You used one of your own images to create two private products you purchased yourself. Same as any Zazzle customer might do. Then you decided to open a store and used that same image on public posted-for-sale products. My guess is the system safeguards recognized the image as having previously been used on someone's privately purchased product but wasn't able to tell that that customer and the Creator now publishing the same image is the same person. So I don't think there's actually someone out there claiming the image is theirs; I think the system just thinks it's someone else's image since it can't tell that you the designer are the same person who previously used it first in a private purchase.  This is just my guess. You need to respond to the email you received to get more info on just why they took it down.

[Elagirl67]

Thank you! This is what I was thinking, however, I thought the email is because someone made a report. It's been 7 days when this all happened, and I am still waiting. I sent a few responses and just waiting to hear back.

[Towanda]

I had some photos stolen in under 24 hours of opening my store that I was making note cards with. Aug 11, 2024.   I  ve reached out to Zazzle by email.   I will call as well      I think I’ll just delete my store.  Every photo I uploaded had another creators name.  Even the one of my mom and my cat.  Not just the scenic vacation pictures. Then that name went away when I tried to again to sell one particular picture again and it let  me put my name on it again   Then I tested again and a second store name was claiming it.   I tried to report it as a violation and the submit button wouldn’t work . I  tried emailing one place and the robot check just kept circling.   Finally a third email attempt got through.   They will get back with me and I have a case number.  This is very disheartening  thank god I never typed in my URL address.   I just thought it might be a fun way to be creative and sell some cards.  Wasn’t planning on making much money.   But pics stolen in under 24 hours ? Really ???    I was so proud of the five cards I listed I took a screen shot.   You can clearly see the card that I first noticed stolen under my stores name.  I messed up entering a lot of descriptions so I deleted my cards and as I was putting them back up that’s when it didn’t want to let me sell the third card. Said someone else had made it     It’s such a personal violation. Total Bummer.