Somewhere in china...

Literally right after reading Lisa Congdon's post about being plagiarized I received an email alerting me to this...

So I sent the seller a message letting them know that if they wanted to purchase the rights to my images we could talk about that- if not, they would need to take down the listing. The seller was shocked and very apologetic- turns out they thought they were buying usage rights to the images when they purchased a group of png images from a wholesaler in China. They sent me the link at Taobao and you scroll down through a bunch of images and get to this...

So with the help of google translate I click and click and go back and click and click and go back and try to get to customer service. No luck at first- so I click and click and try to message the seller- success- though who knows if they got the message and if they'll respond. So I do a little more clicking and find some links specific to what to do about intellectual property plagiarism. I go down that rabbit hole and it leads me to the mother company- Alibaba where I need to submit a copy of my passport to assure them that i'm a real human. This is where I stop. In the grand scheme of Alibaba and Taobao sellers- this is miniscule. Yes, I am frustrated that someone is profiting from my hard work- and hopefully that seller will see my messages, but I feel like uploading my passport doesn't seem worth it. 

If anyone has advice on how to proceed I'd love to hear your thoughts. For now I am going to take it as a compliment and keep moving forward.