It has nothing to do with big words like "globalization". Globalization is the reason why we can sell our stuff across the world, and not just in the local shop, and the reason we can afford to buy cameras and other equipment we use to generate content.

Anyway, for now, Etsy is free from those several hundreds of listings that illegaly used my work.

I also encourage everybody to file those complaints since those thieves will be banned from selling if they receive multiple DMCA take-down requests.

It may even be advisable to file individual requests when the same seller has multiple listings using your work because they will add up. I didn't do that anymore because there were way too many. Doing them in bulk for multiple sellers and multiple listings was significantly faster.

Here is what one of these illegal sellers just messaged me:

We did not know that these are your pictures.
Please contact us directly if there is anything else that needs to be deleted.
We received a second infringement from etsy, and this reflects very negative on our small family business.

Thank you for your understanding

I can't empathize with that since these thieves are also impacting our small business.

So these DMCA reports will have an effect if enough people will take action to protect their stuff.

Just do it! (instead of just complaining )

I appreciate your optimism and i wish you good luck, sorry if i was a bit pessimistic.

My new composites will never be sold on stock agencies or as a digital download so hopefully nobody will/could steal the hi-res images and resell them as POD/merch items, at best they could grab some 1000px preview file in my portfolio or whatever, sure they could resize it in many ways or take a photo of a physical print but why bother with me when there are billions of stock images around ?

My feeling is we reached the point where anything digital will be pirated, no matter what, so our only defence left is to exclusively sell physical goods.

I've nothing against Etsy but it's an american company, i can't sue them easily from europe while they can easily sell pirated items worldwide
with the excuse of the US' "Safe Harbor".
The US also enjoy the "fair use" concept, unheard of in the rest of the world.

I agree we should not go into politics but all these huge marketplaces are operating outside our laws because they're protected by US laws and because all the other countries are not moving a finger to fix the problem and never will, if even the EU is ok with this situation who will ever defend our rights ?

At this point it's legal or barely legal to steal pretty much anything digital, resell it, repackage it, rebranding it, and if you get caught you can get away saying sorry just as the thieves on Etsy said to you because they know the whole situation is a joke as long as they operate outside the West they'll never pay a fine or suffer any punishment.

Sending DMCAs will certainly help your situation but overall will not change much, still better than nothing.

Vector artists also, please do a quick search for "svg" and "vector" on Etsy and get these dirtbags making thousands off your work shut down. They bundle hundreds of stolen vectors together and sell the files for a couple of dollars, which they can do because they haven�t had to put in the thousands of hours to produce the work.

I disagree with you @stocksaurus.

Evil prevail because good men like us do nothing. I have been joining forces to file copyright infringement of my artworks (Etsy, Shutterstock, etc), and I have successfully closed down many stores and portfolios. It does work.

Do take 1 day (or a few hours) in a month to browse through and see if your works are stolen at Etsy. I feel so good after filing these complains and the infringements were taken down the next day. It gives me peace and justice.

I know many of you prefer to close-one-eye on this matter because it felt troublesome or fear of being revenged. But you are being violated. You need to do something about it. Don't let them getaway this easily.

We are good men but the international laws do nothing to help us and protect us, and that's why there's a neverending debate about how to properly tax the american BigTech companies doing business in europe and paying almost no tax at all, Amazon, Google, Apple, Ebay, Facebook, Twitter, and many more and this is a real problem if you consider their monopolistic position, the only country that had the balls to ban Google and Facebook was China, go figure.

If the big guys are untouchable what can we expect to be made minor players like Etsy ?
And yet Etsy is europe's nr.1 craft/handmade marketplace, is operating in EU territory, grabbing fees by european sellers, collecting EU VAT on their buyers., all while allowing the sale of counterfeit items and stolen photos/designs laughing all the way to their (offshore) bank.

Takiong 1 day a month to fight all this is the only thing we can do, as you do, but realistically it's not going to change anything, even proper stock agencies have been caught selling stolen items no matter if they ask IDs and model releases, there's always a way to get in.

Just do it, instead of using defeatism and ideological sophisms to justify your lack of action.

I'm all for low taxation, law, and order.
And that means counterfaiting/stealing/robbing photos or designs sold in PODs should be seen as a proper crime rather than a minor nuisance.

Again, i don't want to go into politics but as the topic evolved into DMCAs let me underline that if Etsy is allowed to run their business with total impunity is exactly because in the US they apply "Safe Harbor" provisions to the DMCA freeing the platform (Etsy) of any legal responsability towards their sellers userbase.

In other words we have all these nice IP/copyright laws but once a thief is caught the law can easily become unenforceable and unaffordable unless there's a lot of money at stake which is never the case with the Etsy/Ebay/Amazon crooks selling items for as low as 20-30 bucks.

I'm not defeatist, just being realist.
I'm also not blaming you for filing DMCAs, i'm just saying that because of the actual legal situation it's a total Wild West for content creators and there's no reason to expect any improvement unless the ISPs/platform will be legally liable for what is sold on their marketplaces, just as they would with a normal brick/mortar shop.

Another PM I just received, I can't empathize with:

I am writing to you because Etsy took down one of the listings from my store due to copyright infringement.

 I want to personally apologize to you for this. It was not my intention to have your photo without your permission or rights, I had no idea that this image belonged to you and thought it was a public image, as you can see we don�t sell these type of photos we sell more of �street art and graphic designs�. I am very, very sorry.

We are a very small business without employees, it is just me. I run everything from my parents home and we have never sold your actual print it was in our store and I didn�t even notice until I got the email from Etsy.

 Etsy is my family�s main source of income, and I would never do anything intentionally to affect this or other artists as it is what allows me to provide for my family. We don�t even have it that art listed on our website, it was a mistake.

We will not be listing this image or any city images as we only work with free stock images for street art. I apologize once again, as an artist I understand how frustrating it can be for people to try to sell your art.

I am very sorry, it won�t happen again. 

Quote from: Stocksaurus on June 10, 2021, 10:16

there's no reason to expect any improvement unless the ISPs/platform will be legally liable for what is sold on their marketplaces, just as they would with a normal brick/mortar shop.

While I also believe that Etsy could do more to maintain a good reputation and protect other honest sellers from unfair cheap stolen goods competition, your analogy is not so straightforward.
The equivalent of the brick-and-mortar shop you mentioned is not Etsy, but the seller using Etsy.

You can't blame the postal office for carrying packages with stolen goods, but you can blame the thieves using the postal services to ship stolen goods.
You can't blame the paper manufacturer for the content of newspapers printed on their paper.
You can't blame the wireless carrier for carrying calls made by criminals.

Having said that, I agree that Etsy could be more proactive in making sure that the users of its platform are respecting the laws.

Yes, the seller is the problem here, but there's no political will to change anything about it, so far only China and few others took a protectionist stance against some foreign BigTech corporations.

Soft crimes like copyright infringement are seen as a nuisance, but try doing some hard crime like selling drugs or explosives on etsy/ebay/amazon and the cops will knock at your door the next day.

Problem is, POD items are too cheap to bother our governments and nobody has any respect for creatives and artists in general, piracy is so widespread nobody would care if we end up under a bridge and some would cheer at the prospect of us being forced to get a "real job".

The only factor that could damage Etsy is a serious loss of reputation, their buyers must realize that Etsy is barely one step above Ebay and act accordingly.

This is a win. The reward from doing this is money, justice, peace of mind, and most of all... satisfaction.

I'm happy for you !

I don't think the proper term for the protection of websites is safe harbor and how they pay taxes or what anyone's political views are, has nothing to do with the issue either.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has been interpreted to mean that operators of Internet services are not "publishers" per the letter of the law. This means that unlike publishers, site owners are not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their services. Likewise sale or trading sites, like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and many more, including the Microstock agencies, are not responsible for what the users put up on the site, if it is stolen or misrepresented. They do have a responsibility to monitor and correct illegal use, or issues with the laws, but the site is not liable.

"Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of online services for copyright infringement by their users.

The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copyright is the exemption from direct and indirect liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries. This exemption was adopted by the European Union in the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000. The Information Society Directive 2001 implemented the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty in the EU. "

Quote from: Stocksaurus on June 10, 2021, 14:26

Yes, the seller is the problem here, but there's no political will to change anything about it, so far only China and few others took a protectionist stance against some foreign BigTech corporations.

...and that's bad.

I don't see why you wish for some authoritarian government to limit freedoms, by allowing only their preferred companies to operate, by limiting the choices their citizens could have, by eliminating the competition and making things more expensive and worse for everybody...


Again, you bring ideological arguments in a discussion that has nothing to do with ideology.

It's about ordinary theft, nothing more.

Globalization and open doors among western countries is mutually beneficial for all, the problem here is opening the doors to the millions of digital thieves operating in the third world.

Yes, their freedom to upload 100K stolen images and designs to Etsy or Ebay must be stopped because apart for being illegal it's also totally unfair to us, not only the PODs don't move a finger against piracy but they also allow these gangs to rank higher in their search, to flood any keyword with their products and therefore to gain a commercial advantage.

A real competition is good for all, but the kind of unfair competition we see now will kill the POD industry for the small honest and law-abiding players.

So, it's not ordinary theft, that would be true with our local common thieves, here instead we're witnessing the direct result of political decisions imposed from the USA to all of us. 

So back to my question. How do I find these people on Etsy, do I have to go through every listing?

Etsy marketplace is not flooded like stock agencies. Usually a simple keyword only have a few pages of listings. So, for my case, I try to search for the keyword of my bestseller and browse through the listings.

Quote from: Zero Talent on June 10, 2021, 17:26

.... and giving China as an example to be followed, when we discuss copyright protection is very precious!

I mentioned China just because they defend their national interests.
Allowing american multinationals to operate in their country and in their markets and eventually reaching a monopoly status as they do in the West is obviously a loss for their national interests.

The US did the same with Huawei and other chinese manufacturers, they also banned several russian news site and TV channels, Trump even tried to ban TaoBao, Alibaba, and Baidu.

Last week Nigeria banned Twitter, see it's not hard to make things better when there's the political will.

The only companies really caring about copyright infringement are the RM stock agencies and art galleries, anything else is a joke.

"National interest" is another big ideological word.

Rest assured that those politicians who claim to defend the "national interest" are not doing anything more than defending their own interests and their cronies'.
They only use big words like "national interest" to justify their grip on power and economy in front of gullible followers.

Allowing real competition to flourish is in the real interest of all individuals in a country.

And yes, unfortunately, even the US took action against its own citizens, by banning some companies to compete in the US market, or making it harder for some.
Trump excelled with this anti-economical policy hurting the American people. It's sad to see that (although to a lesser extent) even Biden continues some of them.

Anyway, are you are now giving Nigeria as an example to follow? Seriously? Banning Twitter because their president was criticized? That's for sure in the name of the "national interest", and clearly not in the personal interest of the Nigerian president! 

Talking about ideological brainwashing! 

Having said that, you are again blaming the world for your failures, expecting others to protect your interest, instead of taking action and just do it.

BTW, I just submitted a new DMCA report for another batch of 34 listings.

Look, i fully support your DMCAs but the problem here is we can only stick to DMCAs and nothing else, it's an uphill battle, the governments don't care, the ISPs don't care, the platforms don't care, the banks don't care, even the buyers don't care.

Explaining even basic economics to people with preconceived notions is a futile exercise.

Therefore I am only asking (again) what are you doing about it, instead of this sterile bitching and moaning against private companies while praising authoritarian leaders and wannabe dictators?