DO NOT BUY THESE SHIRTS by Harmony Nicholas

Well said Mel. Ditto!!!

Oh no that’s terrible!

I recently learned from an A21 Compaign program, that most ‘rip off’ products are used to support human traffickers.

Sorry – A21 Campaign

That’s one of the ways human traffickers make the money they need to support the kidnapping and slavery: By making cheap copies of other people’s products.

This may lead you to further information. There’s also a link for the A21 Campaign here: Speaking Out

how depressing!

Its not just your work that is being ripped off Dalai, there are lots of Bubbler’s work screen scrapped and being used for profit. I started to lobby the RedBubble management about this but their stance is to do nothing, say the best protection is in use (which is to place a clear “.GIF” file over the top of the displayed images. Well even though I managed to copy their own work and publish it on my website to demonstrate just how inadequate their existing security is, they still did nothing.

I reckon a lot of Bubblers out there need to lobby the management about this theft, about how to stop extremely crude and abusive work being posted, and how to stop banned “artists” from re-joining under a different name.. It will be the death of the RedBubble site if there are no further security measures put in place to stop image theft, and if there is no tighter restrictions on membership, and better moderation of art work posted. We all need to lobby for change.

Of course it technically qualifies as Artwork babe. shares

Posts about copyright infringement almost always get my attention; it’s hard enough to make real money as an artist without thieves adding to the problem. One of my favorite groups here is Copyright Protection for that reason. Maybe you should bring this to their attention, too. It seems that when the crime is done in a country that doesn’t recognize any copyright laws, it becomes a lot harder if not impossible to stop them. It’s infuriating.

This highly upsets me seeing as I have had people rip off my work before and even go so far as to re edit my work and then reproduce it. So I understand the feeling and it is extremely frustrating and aggravating. I would love to see redbubble add some more extreme security measures other than the slight ones they have which seem to not really do any good.

To Harry: This is not the fault or responsibility of RedBubble. Some artists have their images on many websites. Whose to know where it was obtained? Any image can be copied just by using a capture program. One is already built into Windows 7 – the Snipping Tool. RedBubble limit the size of images that people can actually see, and frankly a captured copy would not be of sufficient quality to make these T-Shirt Images. The images would be too pixelated. They were probably obtained elsewhere. The best protection is a heavy watermark placed centrally over a wide band lightening filter. If you allow anyone to see or download full size jpgs (eg Flickr) then you indeed run the risk of being ripped off. It is up to the artist to protect their work properly; just saying ‘Copyright’ won’t do it. Watermarks should be designed by the artist that make them very difficult to retouch out.. This is an example of the type of watermark that gives reasonable protection… http://www.wix.com/dieselphotographics/diesel-p...#!
To sum up: the size limit of displayed RB art makes them of insufficient quality to rip off for any commercial use. By the way, how may of you secure your computers?? If you don’t have a firewall and AV protection, anyone can just find your machine with a scanner and help themselves to any of your content that might be useful.

To John: the snipping tool is no more new to Windows 7 (It’s in Vista and has been since that turkey got out of the stock) than doctoring a piece of small artwork and making it as big as a billboard. If I can do it in my free time, that slave labour in a despot third world country can replicate it in days, watermark or not. Being relentlessly meticulous isn’t hard for the people who copy paintings from the masters just so rich people can have them on their walls knowing they are fakes. And who’s to say any-body’s art was posted elsewhere as well as Red Bubble? I’ve used Flickr (terrible site), Blue Canvas (great site), Model Mayhem (interesting site), Toxic Models (dying site and that’s too bad), as well as a number of other places. I couldn’t get something stolen if I left it on the streets in Taiwan.

John, I have two firewalls, two virus programs (that work in tandem so people, don’t let those companies scare you off from backing-up their products), and Windows Defender (Yeah, not good but better than nothing). All are set to automatically update but I manually update them as well. I also run scans both ways. I may be more anal retentive than most but I doubt anyone in my area is completely unprotected: the virus programs are sold by the shelf-load at just one store I frequent. How many people are downloading the same programs? I’d bet my butt that it’s hundreds per day worldwide and that’s more significant than it sounds because those programs don’t need to be downloaded twice for the same computer; they only need to be updated. No Microsoft computer that I know of is sold with no protection whatsoever. If I could afford one, I’d have a non-software firewall as well. I have a virus protection/blocking program in my cell phone (AVG).

Damn it Harmony, I already had my credit card in my hand before I read your blurb! I could have been shot right thru a Dangerous Dolly boob and died clueless!!! Change the freakin title to say something like “pirating” or “I’m seriously being ripped off” or "(I mean NO, REALLY!) Gee!!!!

I’m sorry you’re being ripped off. Seriously sorry. It’s like a rape where one never see the faceless punk but has to live with it anyway. :-( Unfortunately, Red Bubble isn’t more powerful than the United State’s State Department. They acknowledge the kidnapping of US children by foreigners but have no diplomatic tools in place to stop it or correct it.

I don’t know a good answer. I know I can get past almost any “security” steps taken to protect artists and I’m no computer wizz. Like John, I did it to my own work but I used the watermarked larger version of a photograph. The initial screen capture was at high resolution, the resizing it pixel by pixel took time with trial & error, and the reposting of it wasn’t a hitch so making a shirt from it can’t be much harder. Right then, I gave up on the major centrally-located watermark as less effective than losing the possible legitimate sales.

The issue of what the pirated money is used for is quite disturbing. If I had the wherewithal to track it down, I’m sure I’d be appalled. 60 Minutes (television show in the US for those who don’t know) followed fake “Levi” jeans into South America and into the sweatshops where people earned pennies. But that was 20 times more than what they could earn elsewhere IF they could get a local job. That’s pathetic. That’s also the cold hard facts. The government of no country steals; the people of it do (if they choose to). Going to war, on a national basis or a personal one, isn’t going to stop the problem because ‘stopping’ thieves hasn’t happened in the history of mankind.

That said, your gesture here and now is a sign of resistance. You are not going to simply ignore the theft and I applaud you. Please considering adding to the gesture and make the posts that get read elsewhere too. Show the stolen pieces and the originals in Yahoo News, Google News, CBS News, damn it. Give all the evidence. Make the case so well-known it gets heard far beyond Red Bubble. Get known as The Woman Who Isn’t Gonna Ignore Theft. And prepare. There is a lot of money involved so targeting people who don’t want to have you stop their paychecks will put you on their radar. But if this is ‘fighting the good fight’, fight it. I won’t be there ‘standing behind you’ tho. I’ll stand beside you and, as a fellow artist, I’ll put my mouth where my typing is.

PS (As if I haven’t said enough already) I just favoured this piece. I strongly suggest all that read it to do the same. People watch your watchlists. Let’s give them something more to do than just watch. ;-)

Goddam tw*ts. Having a similar problem with somebody on this site!