Justyna Dorsz

Copyright

Fighting copyright infringement

A while ago, I hired an attorney in Poland to deal with people who stole my designs. Some of them paid me compensation before I had to sue, so that was fine. But some refused. Unfortunately, then the pandemic happened and also my attorney got seriously sick and couldn’t work on my cases anymore, so that slowed things down.

I bet some thieves thought I forgot about them. No such luck.

Anyway, I hired a new attorney. He prepared and filed the lawsuits. And there will be more cases to follow.

(This is just a quick update to let you guys know that this is all still in progress in case you were wondering.)

DMCA takedown notice – form vs. email

My artwork is stolen so often that I need to send thousands of DMCA takedown notices each year.

To make the process as fast as possible, I use email templates. But most websites prefer to receive takedown notices via their forms. For example, every time I email a takedown notice to Etsy I receive an email asking me to submit future notices via their form.

Do they not realize that their form takes a few minutes to fill? Sending an email takes just a few seconds. I don’t want to waste my time filling out forms. I prefer to send emails wherever possible.

I can understand that Etsy prefers to receive filled out forms. They are easier to process. But I calculated that if I keep sending forms to Etsy, I will waste over a day of my life per year. And that’s just on Etsy. There are many more websites that I need to send takedown notices to.

If you need to send takedown notices, send them via email, instead of via form. Don’t waste more time than you need to.

Etsy accepts fake DMCA counter notices

The problem is:

  1. Someone is selling my art illegally on Etsy.
  2. So I file a DMCA takedown notice.
  3. Then Etsy removes the listings that I reported.
  4. But sometimes the infringers file fake counter notices, claiming that they have the rights to sell my designs.
  5. Etsy accepts those fake notices and restores the illegal listings.

I don’t yet know how to deal with this — I will need to consult my attorneys. Etsy is clearly accepting fake counter even though the notices are clearly not valid — for example, they don’t contain an address.

I don’t have a solution for this issue yet. I am simply writing it here to rise awareness. I know other must be facing the same problem.

Register your work

If you are an artist/designer/photographer, you likely had your art stolen and used illegally. If not, it’s just a matter of time. Every day thousands of thieves try to sell artwork they have no rights to. This is an ongoing problem, and it isn’t going away anytime soon.

But one thing that’s been changing is that more and more artists are fighting back and suing the infringers. Even if you don’t plan to sue anyone yet, you can still prepare for the future when you can invest some money in lawyers.

And the first step is to register your artwork in the US Copyright Office. You should think about it even before you publish your artwork because this way you can save a lot of money. When I started making designs, I knew nothing about registering copyright. And even when I found out about it, I still hesitated for months because I thought I couldn’t afford it..

Now, when I am finally registering my designs that are already published, I need to pay $45 for each design registration. If I’d registered them before publishing, I would have paid $85 for 10 designs.

Register your work.

“I stole your designs but I demand your cooperation”

I found my designs sold illegally on Amazon. I didn’t bother contacting the sellers who listed my designs. I simply reported the listings to Amazon, and they were removed. As a result, many of those sellers have had their whole stores suspended for copyright infringement.

I’ve been getting emails from those sellers. Some have threatened me with legal actions, some have wanted to officially license my designs from me. Others have written me dozens of emails begging me to retract my complaints. Just today, I’ve received another of those emails. An Amazon seller had their store suspended, and they want me to withdraw my claim of copyright infringement. They hired a lawyer who keeps writing me emails like this one:

“In the attorney letter (I attached it one more time here now), we officially confirm, that our client has deleted the listings with your images and will never list them again in respect of your intellectual property rights. 
The client was educated on IP law and will be more careful with his future listings. 
Please kindly withdraw your claim“

The thieves, who stole from me, want me to help them have their stores — full of illegal designs — restored. I want to be clear on one thing.

I will never withdraw any of the copyright claims.

If you are one of those thieves or their lawyers, then please do keep sending me those pleading emails. You make me smile every time.

If you are an artist and had your art stolen, then never retract your claims of copyright infringement. If you retract your complaint, they will have their accounts reinstated. They might be careful and not steal from you again — they will instead steal from other artists. The only way to fight them is to have all their stores permanently removed.

Bundles with stolen designs

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

What often happens: someone steals my designs and designs from other artists, then bundles them together, and then sells those bundles for pennies on Etsy, eBay, Creative Fabrica, etc.

People buy those bundles and try to list designs from the bundles on sites like TeePublic, or Redbubble, or Amazon. Then, I, or my lawyer, have to request for those listings with my designs to be removed. And then I get emails from confused people, who thought that they had bought bundles legally and they had their listings removed. And now they want to know what happened.

Thing is, a lot, maybe most, of those bundles are illegal. People who sell them didn’t make the designs and didn’t pay others to make them. They stole designs from artists like me and sell them without permission.

If you are one of the people who want to buy bundles of designs to sell them on apparel on various websites then sooner or later an artist will spot their design in your store. And you will be hit with a notice of copyright infringement.

How to avoid those situations? For starters, don’t ever buy bundles that are weirdly cheap. Think about it, creating a design takes anywhere from one hour to a few days. No artist would sell their design for $5. Some of those bundles cost $5 and contain 30 or 50 or even 150 designs! That’s just not feasible.

You, most likely, want to have a legitimate store with legal designs, not stolen from artists. But you can never be certain if designs that you buy in bundles are sold legally. To be completely sure that designs are legal you have to either make the designs yourself or hire an artist to make designs for you.

I hired a law firm (Update #2)

One thing that’s been on my mind recently is this whole situation with illegal sellers.

In December, I hired a lawyer and we sent requests to 19 people to stop selling my designs and pay me compensation. Recently, we’ve sent requests to 17 more people. But I’ve already found more. The most stolen one is: “Not Today”, followed by “Overthinking and also hungry”. Lately, people have been stealing my “All These Feelings” and “Vaguely Aware of Social Norms” too.

Designs stolen most often

This feels like it’s not going to ever end. As soon as we deal with illegal sellers, new ones show up. Some of the people contacted by my lawyer didn’t remove the listings with my designs. One person removed the listings, paid the compensation, and then started selling my design without permission again. All those cases will need to be resolved in court.

We have selected a few companies to sue first but one of them unexpectedly paid part of the money that they owed. That was a nice surprise — if they pay the rest, then it’s one less person to deal with.

Of all those people, the most upsetting is one company. I don’t want to say the name yet because it’s still possible that they will make it right. I used to buy clothes and shoes from them. I liked them! They are really huge — during Christmas when I visited my mom I saw their TV commercials. They can afford to hire artists and pay them. And yet, they stole two of my designs and didn’t pay me.

Adventures in Crime Fighting

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

My blog is becoming monothematic lately. I’ve been spending much of my time dealing with people who steal my designs and sell them as their own, and so I mostly write about that.

Two days ago, I reported listings with my art to Amazon. They acted on it immediately and removed the listings. A few sellers then wrote to me asking to let them keep selling apparel with my design. Here are some quotes:

  • “let us sell this t-shirt till they are sold out as we have massive inventory in Amazon”
  • “this t-shirt is the best seller in our store”
  • “the new employee listed it”
  • “in the future send your designs to us”
  • “you know sometimes we can’t know if we have infringed other’s copyright”

People don’t realize that what they did is a criminal offense. But when more and more artists start suing them over copyright infringement, they will soon learn.

Artists and lawyers

I hired a law firm a month ago. I wrote about it here and here.

On Monday, I spent two hours at a notary public office authenticating another bunch of screenshots of websites where my design was sold illegally. It will be used in court.

I thought it was unusual to sue someone over the use of your art. Before I talked with a lawyer in December, I hadn’t even been sure if my art was protected by law. Now I am much more informed about my rights.

And it looks like other artists are too! This past month I talked with others and it turns out that some of them have attorneys too. There’s greater awareness among artists now. Some have considered hiring lawyers, but are afraid of costs, and I understand that. I was worried too, at first. But my lawyer is excellent, and thanks to her negotiation skills, some of the sellers have already paid the compensation, so my legal fees are completely covered.

I talk about it with any artist who wants to know because it’s my hope that more and more artists will consider protecting their art through legal means.

One thing that surprised me after I hired a lawyer and we contacted the illegal sellers and asked them to pay the compensation — is that so many of them think that they did nothing wrong. In their minds stealing art is not a crime, some claim that it’s barely a minor offense. I wonder what their possible defense will be in court.