“We are doing you a favor”

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.