Website With Tons of Infringements

[Van]

I have found a very large number of my images from Zazzle and other pods being offered for sale on Printerval. So far I have been unable to find them using assorted Google searches - *****you need to go to the website and search for the shirt by title as you listed it in your store.***** I also see a lot of use of mockups from at least one pod = background, models, etc. Focusing on my images, I haven't dug around very much for that kind of thing.

I've been sending dmca notices to legal@ - and the image links are removed and they say the seller accounts have been suspended. Responses have been fairly fast. Sadly, I suspect I'll never find all my infringements, there are just too many.

Copy/paste of email from Printerval:

"Dear, Sirs!
We are a third-party website where artists upload their designs and get connected with customers.
We have checked your report, the reported products were uploaded by artists on our site. We have reviewed this case and taken down all the infringement designs as they are not authorized by the copyright or intellectual property owner.
Aside from this, we have suspended the violation seller's accounts related to this case.
If you find more infringement designs on our website, please contact us. We will review your report and take action accordingly.
For further information about DMCA and Intellectual Property Policy, please check this link: https://printerval.com/dmca-n12.html
We appreciate all contributions and comments of users and customers. If there is anything we can help with, feel free to reach us.
Sincerely,
Printerval Team"

[alissag]

Thanks for the tip. I did a couple of searches and right away found three items with my stolen artwork. I sent notices. I also noticed a passport holder right on the homepage with Mickey and Minnie on it that was brazen enough to use the word "Disney" in the title and which was clearly not an officially licensed product.

[Marcia]

Thanks for the heads-up! Doing a quick search on one of my most popular designs, I found 4 t-shirts. I just shot them an email.

4 colorways of the same design, 4 different "designer" stores. The most absurd thing is, is that this design is customizable. Who would even buy a shirt with a fake store name, website & phone number???

When I have more time, I'll search for other designs of mine on there.

[Marcia]

Doing a few more searches on their site, I see every t-shirt of mine has been pirated. I don't really do t-shirts, but there's still probably close to 75-100. Do I ignore it? It's going to take me forever to report all of them. (There's so many that have never even sold for me.) What do most of you do when this happens to you?

[Van]

Trying to keep up with infringers and report them can sure be overwhelming and sometimes I feel I spend more time reporting than creating. Still, I try to report as many as I can, especially those that are hosted by sites that actually do something, for example, Etsy, even Amazoin. When it's what is probably a 'bad actor' website, or they hide behind Cloudflare (who I've found less than helpful) I dmca Google to get them dei-ndexed - sure the product is still there for sale but at least it won't turn up in search results. I find it beyond frustrating when a thief steals my image then ranks above me in Google search results. It's definitely a whack-a-mole game.

[PAZP]

I remember doing a search on the BIG A and found quite a number of baby birth announcement pillows and wondered why would anyone steal and sell this type design with a name, weight, date of birth. length etc. 

[Barbara]

---

@PAZP wrote:

I remember doing a search on the BIG A and found quite a number of baby birth announcement pillows and wondered why would anyone steal and sell this type design with a name, weight, date of birth. length etc. 

---

Dollars to donuts, the sellers don't speak English and therefore don't know that their effort to steal is fruitless.

Colorwash's Home

[Van]

This "company" is in vietnam.  I just found something that made me almost throw up so I closed my browser, but it looks like there may be more websites using the same address - found one of my designs there that I haven't found on printerval...will update if I get the energy to look again.  That said, in addition to this mess I've been fighting with other vietnam thieves - don't know if there is a connection - for almost a year.  Over  100 of them.  Can't touch these thieves and they know it.  All I could do was get my infringements de-indexed by google - and three of the thieves had the audacity to file counterclaims - written in vietnamese.  As far as THEIR proof of ownership it was things like "I am the owner."  Add to that, one of them is using what I'm almost positive is fake contact info - outright identity theft.  

[Ellvineblue]

They seem to put as many as fake ID as they can. If one is taking down, the others go on. Christopher Smith or Chris Meyer or Israel Gonzalez or Insurance. Here are the names of my thieves. I wrote to this Printerval about my stolen designs.

[CrazyMermaid]

There aren't enough hours in the day. My time is better made making Zazzle products. There is no proof that the products on that site are selling or hurting mine right now.

[Marcia]

@CrazyMermaid that's what I was kind of thinking. It would take hours upon hours to deal with this that would be much better spent on my store.

[chuamishael]

yeah, I never heard about this printeval until now, according to my research, this website isn't exactly popular. might as well find ways to improve my store.   But I do think that zazzle might want to do something about expanding marketing by creating more blogs or website like this to connect to zazzle. besides, if we earn they also earn.

[PAZP]

Thanks. I stopped chasing all the stolen designs I found at Amazon because it was non stop BUT I took a look here.

I don't have a lot of tee shirt designs but found my best seller (which is also on a number of other Z products) on there plus a couple of others. I've sent a take down notice for all those and will see what happens. I did mention that the titles on all were the exact same as my Z titles especially where one mentions a "back" side tee design yet it's on the front of the tank top there. crazytown!

[Van]

UPDATE:
I am finding infringing images on artrworkcraft.com that use the SAME PRODUCT NUMBER. There's no telling how many more sites are connected. Different phone number and email address BUT THE PHYSICAL ADDRESS IN HANOI VIETNAM is the same.

[PAZP]

All the tank tops I reported with my designs are there with the same names publishing them and claiming to have designed them. GRRRR!

[PAZP]

Got an email that all the designs I reported were taken down. Received the same response as you @Van. I checked and all those designs are gone at least from the Printerval site. 

[Fiorenzo]

Had a quick look. definitely one of these Chinese/Asian dropshipping/POD sites based on stolen art. Often Chinese content factories flooding the web, Not different on YouTube. So many scams, it has become insane. A complete waste of time to deal with them. I have seen Disney designs, tho. You may want to contact them. Not said that it helps much, even the big companies have started just ignoring them.

[Barbara]

Some years back, a large number of us went on a witch hunt at Amazon, filing claim after claim after claim. Amazon would take down the infringements, but they always popped up again. We all ended up utterly discouraged, realizing we were miserable and were wasting our time. Zazzle tried to help after speaking with Amazon and developing our own Zazzle reporting system, but it still didn't help, not with the constant flow of thieves.

The internet is heaven for thieves, and we're helpless without any sort of big guns going after the problem. Back then, Amazon left an extremely bad taste in my mouth and the same for others of us, many vowing to never buy from the company again. Sadly, a small drop in the bucket.

Is there an answer? Not unless the internet were to be policed, and I'm not sure we'd be happy with that either. The world needs better ethics.

Colorwash's Home

[Van]

Ohhh yeah, I remember well the Amazon/Zazzle nightmare. There aren't really any answers but it would help if "services" like Cloudflare didn't make it easy for them to hide. Sent them a dmca with bunches of connected websites, asked for actual host names - they never had the decency to even respond.  A few, a VERY FEW of my designs. If it weren't for the fact I love working with graphics I'd throw in the towel - I don't make enough to count.  Lumen collects the data but there isn't any organization I know of that does anything useful with it.  Everyone looks for bargains and there is no way for places like Zazzle to compete with $9.95 t-shirts.  Yup, world could use some ethics, morals, values and such, seems like everything is just going to he**.  It's discouraging

[Barbara]

It's my understanding that the Safe Harbor Act was meant to keep businesses from being destroyed by bad folk doing bad things on web sites. We all know about unintended consequences. Amazon is a fine example. Lawsuits against them by people deeply harmed by the thieves have been, at best, rarely successful. Thus, they allow the thieves without concern while making money from them. Sad. Perhaps the Safe Harbor Act needs to be looked at again.

Colorwash's Home

[TinkTok]

You are right, there is nothing that can be done or will ever be done.   Fortunately Zazzle has a lot more customers than these people would dream of.      Internet has consequences 😁

[Andrea]

Sorry to be late in commenting on this but where can I find the ***Zazzle reporting system*** mentioned? Many thanks!

[Ellvineblue]

I have my Black Cat design stolen as well. Is Zazzle going to do anything about that website?

[Barbara]

Zazzle can't help much at all. They don't own our designs. We're the owners. I assume that, if it was worth it, they could get into reporting their insitu images being stolen, but it would likely be the same whack-a-mole situation and unending battle.

Colorwash's Home

[Ellvineblue]

The gang of rogues found in Printerval have taken a lot of my shirts designs. I sent them 2 emails with photos of the thief products and mine for proof of thieving. I don't know if it is worthy it. I would like the possibility to watermark my t-shirts. Is that possible?

[NHW]

Trying to eliminate all copies of your designs would be a full-time job, and an exercise in futility. I know it's annoying, but I'd rather spend that time on new designs that can generate income.

[PenguinPower]

Looks like they've skimmed most of my tee shirts too. I've DMCA'd a whole bunch, but I've got other things I need to do at the moment... 

[CreativeLeahG]

I reported the site to Disney

https://support.disney.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115005422546-How-can-I-report-piracy-or-copyright-infri...

"How can I report piracy or copyright infringement?

Thanks you for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention.

Please send an email to tips@disneyantipiracy.com to provide more information about a suspected infringement"

REPLY

"

Thank you for your correspondence.  We want you to know that we appreciate the time you took to bring this matter to our attention.  We protect our intellectual property rights vigorously and we take reports of suspected infringements seriously.  However, as you can appreciate, investigations are confidential.  We neither reveal our sources nor generally correspond further with them about any investigation. 

If you would like to provide additional information about the suspected infringement or to report a suspected infringement in the future, please feel free to contact us at tips@disneyantipiracy.com.

Thanks again for your help,

Physical Antipiracy Group, Corporate Legal

The Walt Disney Company"

with over 900 infringements, I imagine they will take action that will benefit us all.

[Van]

Woohoo, THANK YOU for posting that. I've got three infringers that recently  filed counterclaims with Google to get the designs they stole from me re-indexed never mind that they provided nothing other than comments like "it's mine" for their proof. Maybe Disney will smack them as well!

[CreativeLeahG]

The company messaged me for the links to infringing items, and I said "no, I'd rather Disney deal with you" and they will! Could result in a site take down.

[chuamishael]

yup, that's brilliant, let disney handle them.

[LMGildersleeve]

Honestly, chasing these sites and foreign adversaries is a big waste of time. It's a global game of whack-a-mole that never ends.

[Elizavella]

Found a whole bunch of mine on there and its all the ones I have on Zazzle. I messaged them and asked them in a not so very nice way to remove it. Im so tired of my art getting stolen it happens all the time 😞

[georgios_m]

I found out this happened to me also. I am trying to zoom in in my design thumbnails and I see there aren't getting any bigger. I am not sure that there are the high resolution files stolen or just the the thumbnails. They probably never deliver real product...!

[WBartworks]

There are so many images on that site that were copied from by store at Zazzle..  They are very bad copies, so thankfully, they probably won't sell well.  I noticed the creator/designer name is not listed. So there's no way for us to know, if it's only one or several persons on their site stealing images from us.

[georgios_m]

The stolen images are one issue, but there is also another issue. The way these sites cheat is that shoppers buy based on what they see, and likely the product they end up with is a bad printed product or no product at all. So we have to worry that this site is making money from our images and may not deliver any product at all. In the coming days I will try to contact Google and find out how this can be accepted by Google as the news about "printerval" is all over the internet world...