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.

To reach the point where we have a proper "real competition" you need to reach the point where we have clear simple and effective laws that make punishment quickly enforceable.
Either that or all you get is the actual Wild West scenario where the scammers are winning their low-risk/high-gain game.

Nigeria is a great and funny example, Trump should have done the same to set the example.
Yes of course it's in their national interest because form now on the other US multinationals will think twice before f-cking with the nigerian president and their local users will now be forced to move on a local social network, again to the benefit to their local economy, win-win scenario in my opinion.

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.

Whenever you hear somebody lamenting that artists got scr-ewed again remember the DMCA has been designed exactly for this purpose, any kind of liability from the Platforms has been lifted and the gates have been flooded by worldwide sellers acting with almost total impunity.
Artists got scr-ewed already in pre-internet times, nothing new, but now we're really on a different level, if this trend keeps going on in a few years it will become impossible to live with your art alone or with freelancing in general.

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. 

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 !

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.

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.

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.

Most of the PODs top sellers are pirates and to top it off there's the whole industry of derivative works where they slightly edit the images or the vector design in order to keep a low profile, finally you've the usual cases of plagiarism and cheap imitations and let's not forget the harder to find cases of "appropriative art" and the unfair use of the "fair use" which only stands in the USA and nowhere else.

There's absolutely nothing we can do, it's literally the Wild West and it can only get worse, just as next to nothing is being done against fakes and counterfait items sold in stores worldwide.

While for serious crimes you've nowhere to hide, for digital piracy you're totally at the mercy of these gangs of thieves operating outside the West and good luck suing somebody in India or China.

This is the result of the ongoing globalization.

Oh you can buy them, that's OK!

That's what i was trying to discuss here but i can't even open a new topic.

I'm doing a set of collages each made of minimum 5-6 different objects and a maximum of 40-50, all cutout from my own images, but in many cases i need other stuff (an iconic monument, the face of a specific ethnicity with their local dress and in a specific lighting, rare objects that i can't find here) that i don't have in my archive so the only option is buying them with EL licence but it's overkill to pay 30-40$ each considering i need many of them and in the final composite they will just take a small space, i cannot post an example but basically the central subjects of my composites are the faces of girls i shot here surrounded by several other objects, most of them are also blurred or faded and barely visible so the price/performance ratio is definetely not worth it in my opinion, the only solution i see is buying the cheapest EL Subscription for 70-80 images/month but i'm open to other legal options if you know any.

waiting to be moderated but let me tell you this strict policy makes it hard for newcomers to enjoy being here.