An Important Warning to Handmade Artists & Crafters! Please Read and Pass it on...

Well, to make a little bit longer story shorter, I was contacted by a lovely fellow Flickr user to let me know that there's an Etsy shop stealing copyrighted images to use in their products.  Here's the short of it...

This Etsy shop makes what are called Lomo Photo Stickers (among other photo products).  Apparently, the stickers are quite popular in other places, but I had not heard of them before being informed of the theft of my photo.  Although the actual for sale listing has been removed (it is an error message now), you can see my ripped off image in one of the shop's sold items.  My felted heart flower rings photo is being used (without permission!!) in the last product image, second photo to the left on the top row.  It may be a tiny sticker print, but it is still my image and my property.

I'm assuming, from the look of their stickers and postcards, that most of the images are being taken from Flickr or perhaps directly from Etsy sellers' listings.  Considering the shop in question has sold over 7,000 items, there is no telling how many copyrighted images have been violated.   Since the for sale listing was removed, I am also assuming that either Etsy made them take it down, or they were warned some other way and chose to take it down.  Either way, in my opinion, the entire shop should be shut down for their blatant copyright infringement and profiting off the work of others.  I have reported the shop to Etsy, but since the shop is based in Shanghai, China, there's probably not much else that I, or others based elsewhere, can do legally.  This is very sad indeed!  I guess the ball is in Etsy's court now, and hopefully, they will rectify the situation.

There are some things that I would like for my readers to do though (that I really beg of you to do)...

1)  Check the privacy settings on your Flickr account and anywhere else that you might store photos online.  I would highly recommend that you edit your settings to the most strict copyright statement as well as restrict who can see and download your images.  Will this solve the problem of stealing (a.k.a. copyright infringement)?  Unfortunately, no.  I have had all my Flickr settings very restricted for quite some time.  Sadly, it is very easy to take a screen shot of your image or copy it to a desktop.  That is why ethics has to come into play at some point.  Unfortunately, some people don't have any ethics to speak of.

2)  Look out for each other!  If that lovely Flickr user hadn't decided to message me, I may have never known that my image, and very possibly other images, were being stolen.  All it takes is keeping your eyes open and caring enough to act.  As independent handmade artists and crafters, we need to look out for one another and help when we can.  I know that many of us are competitors, but I believe that as ethical artisans, that competitiveness can be set aside at times to benefit the arts and crafts community as a whole.

3)  Take action and PLEASE pass this on!  I'm not asking you to post about this on your own blogs, although, you are welcome to.  I am asking that you go to the the shop in question and browse their products to see if  you recognize any images of your own or from fellow artists and crafters.  If you do, please report the shop to Etsy.  (I am not asking you to report the shop without reason, but please take action and at least check their images for yourself.)  Lastly, if you don't want to blog about this, I completely understand, as it is my matter to sort out, but I do respectfully ask you to pass the information along to your fellow artists and crafters via your email newsletter, twitter, or other social network so that they can be aware of possible copyright infringement.  If you'd like to simply link to my blog post here, that would be fine with me.  I just want to get the word out in case any other fellow artists and crafters are affected.

I am not nieve and know that there will probably be future occurrences of similar copyright infringement of my images and the images of fellow artists.  (I came across another instance of copyright infringement with one of my scarves photos just the other day!)  I just think that if there is going to be any real change, artists and crafters need to speak up and look out for one another.  Do I always do this?  Honestly, no, not as much as I should, but I am slowly working on that and hope that you will too.  I sincerely appreciate my online community of artists and crafters!


Have a superb, fun-filled weekend with lots of crafting if possible!

A Photo Storage Site, Copyright Infringement, and Unprofessional Professionals

As the saying goes "When it rains, it pours" so did my eye opening experiences last week. Over the weekend, I posted a recent experience that I had while doing market research. Shortly after that, I had another experience pertaining to copyright that really opened my eyes once again to the presence of other businesses and some of their practices.

Here's my recent tale of a photo storage site, copyright infringement, and unprofessional professionals.................

While trolling the internet over the weekend (one of the few things that I can still do pleasantly while hugely pregnant!), I came across an instance where a commercial blog had used one of my Flickr account photos in an article they had posted a few months ago. It is not terribly uncommon that my product images be used on commercial and personal blogs since I and my work have been very fortunate to be featured on dozens of blogs, big and small, over the last few years. Ordinarily, those who do use my images ask my permission or notify me in some way. On the rare occasion that they don't, and I run across a featured photo online on my own, it has never been a problem because the use of my photos have always been directly related to myself or my work and have been very, very complementary in the past. In every instance that I remember previously, having my photos featured has been a pleasant surprise and great publicity too which I have been thankful for...... until now.

The site that had decided to use one of my Flickr account photos, without being too specific on details, is a commercial blog for an established U.S. based media business. After looking through other blog articles of theirs, it appears that they often use Flickr photos in their postings. Unfortunately, the post where my photo was used had nothing to do directly with myself or my artwork, and the photo that they chose from my copyrighted Flickr photos was a personal photo of me working at my computer - not a product photo of any kind. Worst of all, the blog post was essentially about the setbacks of hiring amateurs or DIY-er's to do media work for you! The fact that they were using me, an independent graphic designer and fiber artist, as their poster child for this negative idea about DIY was quite insulting. After all, I have a degree in graphic design, have been a professional graphic designer in publishing, and also taught college level graphic design courses for the past several years, not to mention my experience as a fiber artist. "ARRGGGHHH!" to say the least! Although, in their defense, I don't think that they had bothered checking up on who I was or anything about me. To them, it was just a filler photo that they snatched from Flickr for their blog article post.

So what did I do? Well, besides getting rather annoyed about the situation, I calmly contacted them with a short message to remove the photo immediately because they did not have permission to use my personal photos, nor was I ever contacted for permission or notified of its use. Since they provided no direct email address on their commercial blog or main company site, I left the message in the form of a comment on the article as well as sending it via their main website's contact page. To my surprise, within a matter of hours, the photo was removed, and I received an email from the head of the company. I had a sigh of relief to see that the photo had been removed so quickly, but I was very frustrated by the unapologetic email that I received from someone who claims to be a professional. Essentially, I was told that if I didn't want my photos being used by others to delete them entirely from Flickr, and I was given the link to Flickr's community guidelines for reference that they had permission to blog my photos for their "personal" use - only it really wasn't for personal use at all! This well-established, so-called professional company, had basically just told me that they could use any of my photos that they wanted to (who cares about copyright infringement), and that they only removed the photo as a courtesy. Once again, "ARRGGGHHH!"

I replied to the abrupt email with a more lengthy explanation of what copyright infringement really was and tried to explain that Flickr was not a free stock photo gallery. I even explained that there were privacy settings in Flickr and clearly displayed copyright permissions on every photo page. Then I pointed out Flickr's Creative Commons area where there were photos that people were willing to share for others to use more freely. After all, copyright considerations is a subject that I have taught every semester to my intro level graphic design students - it is basic knowledge in my field, but it is also a very important part of the media and graphics community that any professional should already know! As of the time of this post, I did receive one more email communication about the matter from the media company. I was informed that they still stand behind their actions and believe what they did was okay because, according to them, it falls into Flickr's guidelines since my photo was not used for "commercial" purposes (even though it was on a blog directly linked to and related to their business website in a post about a subject matter related directly to their business services). My response to that is "Huh?" It just didn't make a lot of sense. Sadly, I believe that they probably do not care what this professional has to say on the subject of copyright infringement and will probably continue to use whatever photos that they want from Flickr and perhaps other online sources - regardless of any full-disclosure copyright statements that may exist. Since they obviously can justify their actions, in their mind, their actions must be okay - at least that seems to be their current reasoning.

After this incident, I recently double-checked and changed some of my Flickr settings to the most private possible so now no one can hit a "blog this" button and blog about any of my photos easily (even if it is truly just for personal use), nor can anyone download different sizes of my photos for digital or print use - not even my contacts. Prior to this incident, I had already made most of my privacy settings as strict as possible including an "All rights reserved" copyright along with putting a clear copyright statement in my profile, but apparently, this was not and still may not be enough for those who don't understand what this means or just don't really care which is more often the case, and seems to be what happened in this instance. I still feel a little like someone stole my wallet or another tangible, material item from me, and I finally got it back, but I will always feel robbed in a way. That is what copyright infringement does - it robs you. Whether those who so idly do it want to admit it or not, copyright infringement is a form of theft.

As an aside, and to make things clear on the subject of Flickr......... The truth is that I really love Flickr and just renewed my pro membership there for another year. I do not blame Flickr in any way for what happened to me regarding the above incident, nor should I. Obviously, Flickr can not control who searches their site and what their intentions are. Flickr is a wonderful photo sharing and storage service that is well worth the money. I will continue to store photos of my artwork there for safe keeping as well as personal photos as long as they'll have me. And, I love the community there too along with my 2,500+ contacts and many groups that I belong too. Therefore, I will not be taking the unsolicited advice of the media business and delete all of my photos if I don't want them to suffer copyright infringement - ridiculous "professional" advice really!

The bottom line is that there are always going to be some very unprofessional "professionals" out there. There are always going to be individuals and companies who are obviously successful, but not necessarily ethical in their practices or understandings. I guess that I could stick my head in a hole and hide or be intimidated into doing what they want to impose on me because I am the little guy in business, but I will not. There is room for everyone in the business world. It is just that, unfortunately on occasion, not everyone in the business world respects your room in it.


**Just An FYI Reference: If you'd like to learn more about U.S. copyright, I highly recommend that you visit Copyright.gov and learn about copyright laws and considerations first hand.

A Very Random Friday . . . just some random thoughts and happenings of the week

I've found my thoughts to be a lot more scattered over the last month or so. I like to call it pregnancy brain and blame it on my ever changing hormones. Because of this feeling of disarray, it has been hard for me to post regularly here on my blog with main points and solid topics. Today I have decided to just give in to my "pregnancy brain" and write about a few random happenings of this week and past weeks. Hopefully it will still be interesting.

First of all, I've been really blessed over the past couple of weeks with good publicity and encouraging contacts. Recently a local Kansas City area newspaper contacted me about including some photos of my creations in an upcoming article. They did a phone interview and asked for some good quality photos. I was really happy and encouraged by that. I was also contacted recently by a local co-op arts and crafts gallery that asked me to join. Unfortunately, with a baby coming, I could not commit to the responsibility involved, but I was extremely flattered to have been contacted and asked. Then there have also been a few blogs that have featured my work over the last couple of weeks which is always a little boost of happiness to see. All of these little things have been a real God-send in some ways because I have felt so very tired and unproductive due to the pregnancy. These little bursts of publicity and validation really help to keep me going and encouraged in my artistic endeavors.

The next bit of randomness actually happened today. A fellow Etsy seller contacted me. They were very honest in expressing how they like a certain aspect of some of my item listings and marketing style and wanted to incorporate that into their own item listings and marketing. Essentially, they were asking me what I thought about the copyright and ethical issues of it. First of all, let me say that I was impressed that they actually contacted me and did not just copy without considering my side. This showed a sign of professionalism to me. That being said, as a professional artist and business woman, I am protective of anything that is my original design which includes not only my creations but also my photo styles, descriptions, titles, etc. Situations like this are difficult because as an otherwise civil and kind person, I don't want to come across as a dragon lady, but then again business is business. My response, in the most polite way that I could, reminded the other Etsy seller that all of my designs including photo styles, descriptions, titles, etc., were uniquely mine. I also mentioned the importance of professionalism and the consequences of copyright infringement. Their response was actually very civil and understanding with them agreeing to seek their own marketing path for their unique items. What I thought would be a considerably uncomfortable situation was actually not that bad. I think that being able to communicate with one another in such a way shows signs of true professionalism among colleagues. Unfortunately, I know that when it comes to copyright and ethics, that is not always going to be the case, but for today, I feel blessed with the outcome.

And lastly, I have felt in rather a creative funk lately. It seems that I have a strong desire to make art objects, but I don't have any energy for it. I like making my little needle felted jewelry creations which are quite popular in my Etsy shop, but I have felt the need to branch out beyond that with some creations that are just art for art's sake and not utilitarian in any way. This is quite unusual for me considering that I ordinarily like my creations to all have a "useful" purpose and therefore concentrate on jewelry and fashion accessories. I hope that I have the physical energy soon to start creating some art objects. It will be a bit of a new adventure for me, but I think that I need that right now. I'm ready to explore a new side of fiber art and feltmaking.

So you've made it through my random thoughts this Friday - congratulations and thank you! I hope that you have a splendid weekend and do many wonderfully random things!