We've all read about famous art heists, where the Van Gogh's and Picasso's go quietly missing into the night, often to never be seen, and appreciated in person, again. While these of course deserve and get a lot of attention, this has also been a year of spreading recognition of another sinister, and much more common form of art theft — the online theft of intellectual property and copyrighted artworks, images, and words.
At PromotionalKeychains.biz, we have an understanding of the feeling that an artist, of any medium, gets when they realize their work is stolen and exploited by others for profit. Because we are a true production facility, we take our own photographs of our products. In other words, we're not just an "order peddling middleman" like most promo sites online who use images provided by Supplier X, then buy your order from that Supplier X, and then has them drop ship that order to you, without ever so much as seeing or controlling the quality of what they are selling you). And we’ve seen our images used on competitor’s sites literally the world over for more than a decade, thus allowing others to appropriate our quality, implying they have the same high level of product and production standards as we do, by proxy by appropriating our images.
We first noticed our images appearing in overseas web sites, primarily in China, as early as 2005. Beyond image theft, we have experienced whole site theft in China as well. Indeed, a customer called us to place an order, and insisted that we were a Chinese company because the web site they found us on was a Chinese web site, with our logo and all — we asked the domain name, and we went to it and yes, there it was: basically, our web site (just using a different domain name of course), our site fully copied, all the way down to our phone number in one place that the perpetrators forgot to change and the customer found. Then we started noticing them used in Russia — we even saw a Russian web site that use our web 1) colors, and 2) images, and even our 3) exact copy (translated, of course). It looked like a mini Russian wing of our company might appear… if we had one. Even more sadly, we see this happening here in the US.
Why does this happen? Often times, the theft is done because the offenders do not have the budget to create their own imagery. Or, they lack the creative and technical expertise. If they lack the expertise, of course, that says a lot about their expertise in designing a custom made product or even creating a good looking imprint on a stock item — period.
Or they are lazy — people who see it as an easy solution, with no consequences. Again — that says all you need to know about their internal production values. Often it’s done by smaller online businesses who think they are safe from being prosecuted due to lack of relative exposure / traffic they and their actions generally receive and they feel they can fly under the radar — the ability to hide within a vast forest of online imagery so to speak. Or they count on the lack of will or resources of smaller competitors to persecute, and frankly the difficulty in successfully prosecuting, even for larger companies.
Taken is whole, this has made it necessary for us to watermark a majority of our photography with a “PromotionalKeychain.biz” watermark over our product images. We truly wish the world were different and this was not needed. We wish Google would punish copyright offenders as strongly as they punished those who offended their webmaster guidelines relating to their SEO tactics, as image theft is in fact online manipulation of the user who is viewing the image (they have no idea it’s not legally representative of the site they are on). But at this time, either the technology isn’t there to do that accurately enough, or the will is lacking. We do not think anyone except Google really knows which it really is.
Now, here in 2016, we’re noticing that copyright infringement and theft this is not done by relatively smaller business, but we are reading about this activity being undertaken by surprisingly large and well known companies and brands. Much of the uproar lately has been related to indie artists and these larger, typically accessory and clothing companies / brands, and it goes something like this: an independent artist creates a design for a pin or some other item that they then have manufactured, which they then promote and sell online, then the large company sees the design and appropriates it for their own line, and of course cashes in much more than the independent artist could ever have dreamed of.
We stand with these designers. We have manufactured pins and many other items for some of these very independent artists who are voicing themselves, as well, we also manufacture for the large, well respected and established international name brands, independents, governments and “mom and pops” and individuals. As well, we are staffed by creatives, true professionals that have earned four year B.F.A. degrees at some of the best and most well regarded art colleges in the United States. We, and our in house artists know, artwork and unique design is priceless and is an extension of themselves. As the independents put their blood, sweat, and time-honed skills and talent into the making of their creations, the indignation towards this illegal act is not only about rightful reimbursement (although, who doesn’t deserve to be paid, much less need to be paid, for their work?), it’s also about wanting this issue to stop. And we’d add, in this year of the election, it’s noteworthy to mention that in America we pride ourselves on rewarded those who use thier talents for innovation and being independent. Hopefully, in the near future, original art and artists will be protected.
In the meantime, we suggest considering that whenever you see a petition to sign or an article or to share it, and assuming you agree with it, to please do it.
Here are some related articles and posts for further reading on this matter:
https://www.good.is/articles/fast-fashion-indie-artist-takes-on-zara
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/07/tuesday-bassen-on-her-work-being-copied-by-zara.html
http://neladunato.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-online-art-theft/
http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/art/MASSIVE-COPYRIGHT-INFRINGEMENT-253771563?q=
