I know this has been brought up time and time again about stolen designs here on Zazzle, but I spent several hours day before yesterday and today already hunting down and reporting artwork stolen from my shop and have 12 tabs with products currently open waiting to be reported. Not only are they selling my stolen art on products, but they are undercutting my prices (that I already lowered quite a bit last month in hopes of making more sales). I don't know if their stolen art is selling, but mine is barely selling- maybe in small part because I am being undercut on my own art. One shop has my Santa on 6 shirts (3 white, 3 black) in the same basic tee style so they are also spamming the marketplace.
I just happen on these stolen images when I see them come up under "other designs you might like" because all the metatdata is also stolen. Then end up down the rabbit hole trying to hunt down more. A good many even have my name in their tags (again). Some of the designs have been listed for the better part of a year so it's just dumb luck that I find them.
I don't understand why there isn't a zero tolerance policy against intentional art theft here. There is no good reason that a seller should be allowed to continue when the only way to get my art to put on products is to steal it in some. way. This isn't a case of buying the same clip art and someone copying my arrangement, this is art that I have painted with my own hands. I wasted so much of my limited design time and more trying to chase down thieves this week and I am beyond frustrated.
Please Zazzle, shut down these shops and do not allow them to continue to operate with ill intent! They know what they are doing is wrong and it is not happening by accident.
ETA- I would bet that my designs are not the only stolen ones in these shops,
Update: It looks like most if not all of the stuff I reported this week was taken down. I think the stores are still there, but I didn't save all of the links so I don't know for sure if they all are. I'm glad the products are gone, but I think the sellers should be banned as well.
Yes, I did mean once we report them and they are caught. I just didn't make myself very clear.
I could not agree more with everything you said! The main offenders that I can find of my stolen designs seem to be leggings and t-shirts. One of my colorful whimsical abstract leggings designs that was stolen comes up in one of the keyword bubbles at the top of search as well as the first page of the search. It was lazily done with the design not going to the top or bottom of the leggings.
I have been culling my shop and retired a bunch of designs over the last couple of months, and that pair of leggings in my shop was deleted. But, I have other products with the artwork on it so I can prove it is mine.
The audacity really boggle me too. Especially to claim your work as theirs. But honest people have a hard time understanding how some people just don't care what consequences their actions have.
That had me worried as per my recent post about the issue trying to search for 'tie-dye leggings' I noticed that a pair of yours (your art is very recognizable) was the 4th result out of 289k+. I just checked and it is yours, not a copycat.
That's some good news! lol
I just happen on these stolen images when I see them come up under "other designs you might like"
I absolutely hate that they took away the ability to see who the design is by when you mouse-over the items in that scroll. You have to actually click to open the product page to see who the designer/store is. Of the 25 items shown they could all be by the same designer or 25 different ones but unless you click to open each one there is no way to know. This is now another reason I hate it - it lets actual thieves blend right in where no one but the orig artist is going to notice and even they might not notice if they're using the same in-situ as the orig.
We aren't allowed to post links calling out other Zazzle members regardless of the reason.
I am 100% sure that they are stealing the art right here from Zazzle's site because they have used the same style item as well as my titles, description, and tags. There are ways to view the image and download it or screenshot it easily. The art they are stealing is only available on products on Zazzle.
Unfortunately, that is just one of the stores that I have found. There were at least 4 more that I found and 2 of those stole multiple designs. Plus 2 or 3 designs that had absolutely nothing to do with my art that were text based that were using my metadata with my personal name in the tags. Sigh.
* I just went and looked before I posted this and the items that had my name or store name in them are already gone...or at least they took my name out of the tags. A lot of the items that were using my metadata months ago are still there, because they come up under my products, but someone just erased my name out of them.
Update: It looks like most if not all of the stuff I reported this week was taken down. I think the stores are still there, but I didn't save all of the links so I don't know for sure if they all are. I'm glad the products are gone, but I think the sellers should be banned as well.
Aaaaannnnddd....just reported 2 more from one store using just 1 stolen design.
