Here is a post by Julia Rothman regarding how a copycat of her design opened up some revelations…
From the screenshot
So if you followed this story I posted a couple of days ago, I wanted to share how it all came to be and the outcome. I was angry. They listened and are implementing change.
Whew. And I wanted to say THANK YOU!!!! The best thing to come out of this was feeling like so many people- strangers- had my back. What a great community we have ??? and Ps. @hyggeandwest is the best
What happened?
Spoonflower: A follow-up and a happy ending!
Here is the gist of what happened and how my name became an ad for Knock-offs on their site.
Artists made “very similar” designs to my design. when you upload, you are asked to add tags to make your design searchable.
those artists tagged their designs with my name (yuck!)
Spoonflower didn’t verify tags (yuck again!)
Spoonflower’s tags auto-generate into Google ads. Voila! A perfect storm.
Christiana from Hygge & West and I got on a Zoom call with them yesterday. I was so angry. I might have lost it a bit. They told us that they obviously removed the copycat design and banned my name from tagging. fine.
But what about other artists?
This could happen to someone else.
I didn’t want names to be able to be tagged. and if they couldn’t do that, at least language that said.
“Tag with nouns and adjectives. do not tag artist’s names”.
(I honestly can’t believe an “artist” would copy a design and tag the original artist to their copied design. What nerve.)
Today, just an hour ago, we heard back! they are going to do all that and more. In their own way… but they listed out everything they plan to implement.
This won’t happen to anyone else! YAY.
Good Job Spoonflower!
Lastly, if you see a copycat design of yours, report it to them. They have a system in place already. And if it’s someone else’s, let the original artist know so they can report it. We gotta look out for each other.
