Somewhere in china...

10.21.2013

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. 

4 comments:

M.M.E. said...

Lisa Congdon has been making a BIG splash in this area when Cody Parker stole her work. She's started the discussion on the LA Times, Jezebel, and a lot of other sites. Hopefully it gets a lot of companies looking over their work and analyzing their procedures.

Unknown said...

I don't know if this will help...
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/11280481/

Anonymous said...

Wow, so weird that I'm reading this the very day I had to reach out to a shop 10 states away and ask them to stop selling reproductions of my own work. Ridiculous how many people this happens to. I'm sorry this has happened to you. And unfortunately, you are just one of the many, many artists this is happening to! The internet is so great for exposure, but so dangerous because of immoral people. :(
Your work is beautiful by the way...
Megan
www.makewells.typepad.com

KV said...

Hi Megan- thanks for the comment. So sorry that you're dealing with it too! Boo!

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