We have been experiencing a serious uptick in copyright violations recently, specifically in advertisements from “Fans of…” Facebook pages.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been playing whack-a-mole with a Dark Tower “community” that has been ripping off Michael Whelan’s KA symbol. I suspect this is the same group of thieves I had banned from Facebook last year for rampant copyright violation.
The ads in question are for t-shirts, mugs, etc printed almost exclusively through Teechip, a campaign driven t-shirt printer that has a disturbing number of alternatively branded websites out there.
If you see a Michael Whelan product that doesn’t look legitimate, please let us know and we can confirm whether the product has been properly licensed. We have a lot of fans doing this already and the extra eyes help enormously.
Was your artwork ripped off?If you are an artist with a similar experience, please reach out and share the details of the copyright infringement.
I’m trying to open a dialogue with Facebook’s intellectual property department to see if we can find a better way to protect artist rights on social media. The more evidence I have, the easier it will be to get their attention.
This is something I’m doing on my own time as a fan, and I’m happy to share my experience to help others navigate the process.
Signal boost please. Thank you!Mike Jackson
webmaster@michaelwhelan.com
P.S. If you see a cool shirt out there, find out who the artist is. Then you can make sure you’re supporting their work.
Since some of my designs have been stolen (in the past, not at the moment <- that I know of), I’m reblogging this.
I know there are also a lot of Supernatural fan pages on Facebook who are ripping off designs on Teechip and similar sites.
In 2011, I drew a “Iron Giant” commission for a client and posted it on my website. Last year, a very vigilant friend noticed that someone had swiped the image, pasted it on a t-shirt, and tried to sell it on TeeChip. My art rep and I alerted TeeChip of the infringement, but due to their rather fussy “Take Down Request” procedure and slow response rate, it took them 3 weeks to actually remove it from their site. Thanks for taking charge on this, Mike!
Always happy to fight the good fight. 3 weeks is horrible response time on a DMCA request. It should take less than a day, but I’ve heard 3 weeks quoted by too many of the artists who have reached out to us.
That’s why it’s really important for artists and writers with large audiences to get behind this on behalf of others who don’t have such an influential platform. For example…
Yesterday, Stephen King’s Facebook page which has about 5 million followers addressed the issue. Many of those “fans of” pages are now banned thanks to SK’s pull with FB.
Huge tip of the hat to Jordan at StephenKing.com for amplifying this conversation. ~MJ