Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/27/amazon-marketplace-seller-swip.html
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Marvora Biomes antibacterial toilet seats, and Marvora Biomes bikinis.
Previously I would never have thought these two things belonged together, but I was wrong.
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It depends on the hygiene habits of the wearer. 
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I had the same thing happen with an old image I posted to DeviantArt. Someone used it and a bunch of other images they randomly scraped to generate Zazzle products. I issued a takedown and started a Zazzle store for myself. Haven’t made enough to get a payment yet, so I’m guessing these people work on volume like spammers hoping that someone will buy something.
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This is all fine and good, but now I really want some Dwarf Fortress ☼fabric gas masks☼so I can keep the miasma out in style.
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Yeah, that’s the only way something like this makes sense. What’s weird is that mass, indiscriminate copyright infringement is apparently a winning strategy for these dudes.
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I stand like that model when ordering coffee and get lots of looks. I think it conveys a confident and yet somewhat carefree vibe. And you don’t need to be a fitness model with bronzed skin. I’m a 53 year old bald and slightly paunchy white male wearing jeans and an old Grateful Dead T-shirt. And yet somehow I make this work.
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Contrapposto. Pelvis and shoulders slope in opposite directions, see David by Michelangelo, he would probably get a few looks too.
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And free coffee.
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I’m pretty sure these items are not actually made - they just generate the images for the store, and produce the items as they’re bought. It’s likely some Chinese company that can create products fast and on the cheap (and on the lower end of quality). The image creator should probably check eBay and Aliexpress too.
Eh, I’d bet anything this is a Chinese company, so copyright infringement is not something they’re particularly concerned about. I find large fashion companies’ tendencies to swipe or plagiarize art from indie artists a lot more worrying.
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Fashion, especially fast vs. slow fashion, is a minefield. There’s nothing stable about this industry at the moment. Every player big to small is just trying to survive. My family owns several clothing stores. This issue of copyright infringement affects us directly. My employees take 2 to 5 hundred pictures per week of models in our clothes which are posted in our online store. These pictures end up all over the internet. I keep thinking maybe I should sell the pictures. What’s a good price for a jpeg of a pretty model in really unique clothes? a nickel? If I had a nickel for every time this picture was stolen, I’d have a lot of nickels.
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Yes, Zazzle is print on demand. The volume I’m referring to is not production of material items, but the volume of copyright violating image used in the catalog.
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I’m not disputing that, I’m just saying that for sellers like this “copyright infringement” is more or less a meaningless concept. Nobody’s going to hold them legally to account, especially because the creators whose works they swipe are indie artists not exactly rolling in money.
The problem is, how are you going to stop people from stealing and reposting pictures on the internet? If you put trademarks on it they’ll cut or photoshop it out. If you use a small/LQ version, they’ll just blow it up and use it like that. I mean, take a look at all those fashion/accessory listings on Aliexpress or eBay.
To digress a bit, this has been a problem in the art community in my internet spaces since I’ve been on the internet, and one that I’m fairly passionate about - people taking fanart and original art by Japanese (and Korean, Chinese) artists and reposting them all over the internet. Image boards, message boards, MySpace, then Livejournal, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook (and then there’s bloody Pinterest) without as much as a credit or a link back to the source. Even a little while back this was treated as completely normal, as if all this art was public property that somehow magically appeared on the internet free for taking - since then awareness has grown, but all it resulted in is some people faking permissions from the artists, while others deliberately mislead artists, exploiting their limited knowledge of English. It’s incredibly problematic (sorry) in so many ways - exploiting the language barrier, cultural barriers, being ignorant and deliberately staying ignorant of different fannish cultures, different ways of participating in communities, potential repercussions for the artists, etc. But every time someone raises this issue it gets buried under “THEY SHOULD BE HONORED THAT WE LIKE THEIR WORKS” and “IF THEY DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO LOOK AT IT THEY SHOULDN’T POST IT ON THE INTERNET” and “WELL, THEY PUT IT ON THE INTERNET, WHAT DID THEY EXPECT?”
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Without a doubt. And yeah, it’s clearly a “create on demand” company (so little if any actual copyright infringement may be occurring in terms of products sold). Still, as a strategy, randomly scraping other people’s graphics to print on your products seems both risky (even if it just results in a lost listing) and not likely to be successful, given the total lack of discernment in terms of what graphics they’re ripping off. It’s quite unlike a fashion company seeing a design they like and making a knock-off copy.
(Of course, I’m assuming the products even exist - there could be a whole other level of fraud going on.)
And crafts like typefaces and texts or anything that is not nailed down.
DRM is dumb. It would be a voluntary nickel … Just take it for free, or maybe how about a nickel mate? We took this picture and used it for what we wanted to use it for. What will you do it with it? Hopefully something cool!
The clothes are already knocked off by zara or h&m, so there’s no reason to suspect people of trying to copy the clothes. The images are of paid models in credited locations usually. Like, I think it would be cool to credit the model and the location, if they were going to credit anything. Even though we bankrolled it, I think it means more for the model’s image to be out there, they will get more work. Perhaps just submit it to the overlords are google analytics and track it that way, use it as bragging rites instead of a monetization tactic.
honestly this has kind of been our attitude. we don’t make money off our art directly, we make money by selling clothes in retail stores. our vibe is artsy so too are our customers and photos. We’ve seen our photos on etsy, on ebay, on imgur, on reddit, on every social platform, in memes, competitor websites (this is where we send mean letters).
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That’s great for you, but you’re a business. Fans trying to participate in fandom by creating art are an entirely different thing, never mind artists creating original art. For them it’s not about the money (although for freelance artists it kinda is), it’s about not being respected by the people who claim to love what you create, being treated as some sort of art-creating robot instead of a human being, and very valid concerns about losing control over where your artwork shows up and how it’s being used getting dismissed… just because other fans 1. want to earn Internet Points by posting art that you made, and 2. they’re lazy and find it more convenient to just steal your art rather than directing other people to it, or inviting you to share your art on their platform under your name, etc. (The same people also exploit the language barrier between you.) And when you try to speak up you’re ridiculed and made to look like an idiot who “doesn’t get it”.
“That’s Okay, You Can’t Afford A Lawyer”. TOYCAAL.
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