Content Review letter from France

[LDS222]

I received a letter from the Content Review letter from France (didn't know they existed, I've had my stores since 2011).  It  referenced a design which is 100% my design created in 2014 and I have not added any new products for this design and in this store for many years; so why this review.

I looked yesterday briefly, just to see what was up and noted that I had 96 products with this design.  Today I looked it up so that I could address this email and there were 95 products with this design.

#1 _I wasn't sure if this email was a scam or not 

#2 _Should the creator have an opportunity to review the issue and determine if it's correct or not, without the product being immediately deleted?  And, creating these products take a lot of time;  I currently have 6 stores with a total of 14,600+ products.

Anybody else have similar experience or advice...

[Scott]

The email is legitimate. It sounds like the removal was applicable to certain European domains, which is why the email was generated in French. Content Review should be contacting you soon via email.

[Fantabuloustef]

Hi Linda,

I live in France, and we have a lot of administration constraints and binding laws here. In fact, I don’t know how Zazzle deals with local differences, as we can’t choose to select the countries where we publish our products. A simple example would be products illustrations around cannabis. It’s totally illegal in France to promote cannabis, and consumption is prohibited, but in other countries or states it’s authorized. Personally when I have a doubt I prefer not to  create the design , but it’s very difficult to acquire all the legal knowledge for all the countries.

[Barbara]

Given there are a lot of cannabis designs on Zazzle, I assume they must be deleted only on the French iteration of Zazzle because, otherwise, things would be in quite a mess.

@LDS222: When you find out what caused the problem, and if at all possible, could you let us know what it was?

Colorwash's Home

[SimplyDesigned]

To answer your #2 no, when we click that checkbox and post a product for sale we will never be able to "review" it if it violates Terms of Service, copyright issues etc. Why? Because that's how Zazzle, Ebay, Amazon, YT and many other platforms can operate. These websites can run under the guise that if there is any "issue" they will handle and remove it off their platform so they will not get sued themselves. If someone submits a copyright complaint, that starts a dated paper trail. If Zazzle sends me a complaint "hey this is copyright fix it or something" and I don't, and Zazzle doesn't remove it because they are waiting on me, they open themselves to legal action and nobody wants that.

[Barbara]

The caveat (for Zazzle) is that a design may not be caught for copyright infringement until a customer tries to buy it. Designs are reviewed at that point too, and if there's an issue, the customer's order is cancelled and the designer is notified. I've had this happen where I used the word "Olympics" in the design on a mug. The algorithm can scan all kinds of text, but it can't recognize text when it's within the artwork. I also had it happen with "Martin Luther King," and when I checked the marketplace, I found it all over the place. Why? Because the algorithm isn't 100% and because customers hadn't tried to buy them. I think, however, that Zazzle has what might be called a grace period where, if a copyright owner sends a take-down notice, Zazzle has time to delete the products in question. In the end, both Zazzle and we are kept somewhat safe from lawsuit. Then there are the unexpected things such as what happened with the font a few years ago.

Colorwash's Home