Thieves

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.

There’s a curious thing happening with some of the thieves.

It goes like this: my lawyer sends letters asking the illegal sellers to cease infringing on my copyright and pay me compensation. Some pay, some try to negotiate, some will be sued. But often, we receive the following kind of response:

“We haven’s sold any items with your design, so we won’t pay you, but we can let you sell your design on our website if you want.”

or:

“We sold only a few items, so we won’t pay you, but we can let you sell your design on our website if you want.”

or (this is from today, slightly paraphrased):

“We will pay you 15% of what you asked, and we can offer you an opportunity to sell your designs in our store. And, of course, we didn’t even sell that much and didn’t make a profit.”

Why do all those people think that they are doing me a favor by offering me the chance to display my designs in their stores? From what I gathered, they all don’t even sell things. The designs are displayed on their websites, and Facebook pages, and Twitter, and advertised on Instagram, but nope, we haven’t sold a thing with your design, or at most, like, 5 items, but send us your designs. Forgive me guys, I am sort of not seeing the point of working with someone who: steals designs or works with suppliers that do, refuses to compensate the artists, and implies that it can all be fixed if I just send them my designs, oh and by the way isn’t it an excellent opportunity for you, you poor artist, you get to sell designs in our store, one of the thousands of online stores on the Internet.