Umlikewhat

Hi,

I don't give Zazzle that much attention; I'm much more focused on other PODs. Only have about 15 to 20 designs on Zazzle, but three of them earned their "Today's Best Award" when originally posted to their marketplace.

I checked my Zazzle gallery today, and a couple of my designs had been removed! Logged in my account at Zazzle, to find a general note in my dashboard (directed to all Zazzle users):

"Zazzle has recently made several important changes to our User Agreement, Nonexclusive License Agreement, and Associates Agreement. Your continued use of the Zazzle site constitutes acceptance of the agreements as modified."

Okay, let's talk about the designs of my that they'd removed: YES, they're both inspired by popular movies. And one of them was the first design I'd ever posted there, and that one did get a "Today's Best Award" form them.

I'm staying anonymous here, but I assure you I'm not one to be blatant rip-off artist and put the words, "Wayne's World," on a t-shirt. I'd abstract from the movie, and do something like, "Noah's Arcade." (That's just an example...I personally didn't do that design, but have seen it done elsewhere.)

I might've just been targeted in Zazzle's first wave, or for some other reason I'm not aware of, but if they treat all fairly, that means Zazzle will have to remove I'd guess tens or even hundreds of thousands of designs from their site, including some very popular sellers.

Go ahead over to Zazzle, and do a search for ANY popular movie from the '80s to present. See what you find. Is Zazzle gonna wipe ALL of these?! (Maybe a lot of stuff will be wiped by the time you read this!!) They must have been hit by some outside lawyers.

Then head over to two very big pop-culture t-shirt sites online: SnorgTees.com and BustedTees.com...

...eyeball down their designs. If these guys were on Zazzle, they'd have like 50% of their designs removed. They BOTH have Superbad-inspired "McLovin" t-shirts. Do you think either of those t-shirt sites got an official license for the movie studio to do that shirt?! Unlikely.

Now, I'm POSITIVE that there had been McLovin shirts all over Zazzle...some really good ones, '70 retro style. Looks like Zazzle has wiped those already, check it out and how you barely get anything:

Mclovin T-shirts, Shirts and Custom Mclovin Clothing

Anybody have further info or insight on what's going on with this at Zazzle, and has Cafe Press also doing this?

Thanks,

Um...like, what?

 

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Rodney

Quote: Go ahead over to Zazzle, and do a search for ANY popular movie from the '80s to present. See what you find. Is Zazzle gonna wipe ALL of these?! (Maybe a lot of stuff will be wiped by the time you read this!!) They must have been hit by some outside lawyers.

Yes, this is probably true.

Lawyers usually go after the places with the biggest pockets first. Since Zazzle accepts user uploaded content, they have a lot of stuff on their site that they didn't "approve".

At the same time, Zazzle does have official licenses to print some very big movie/tv/cartoon/band merchandise officially.

Quote: Then head over to two very big pop-culture t-shirt sites online: SnorgTees.com and BustedTees.com... ...eyeball down their designs. If these guys were on Zazzle, they'd have like 50% of their designs removed. They BOTH have Superbad-inspired "McLovin" t-shirts. Do you think either of those t-shirt sites got an official license for the movie studio to do that shirt?! Unlikely.

We don't know what goes on behind the scenes at another company. We can only speculate.

But, the fact of the matter is, Zazzle has a large community of people uploading content that they may not own the rights to. Like YouTube, that is going to draw some attention from laywers representing their client's intellectual property.

Some things might be legal, some things might be borderline, some things might be blatant ripoffs. But as a business, Zazzle (and all companies) have to decide which battles they want to fight and how to spend their dollars. I'm sure many people would rather Zazzle spend money improving the service, offering more products than wasting it away on lawyers to defend lawsuits for every little image.

Some other sites might be "getting away with it" for now, but who is to say they won't be sued later or aren't in the middle of a lawsuit, or don't have some type of permission, or haven't already decided to spend the money to fight it in court.

If you wanted to print the designs yourself and sell them, they you could take on the responsibility of defending these type lawsuits in court.

Quote: Anybody have further info or insight on what's going on with this at Zazzle, and has Cafe Press also doing this?

Yes, CafePress has done something similar. Because of their concern over intellectual property and probably from lawsuits, they now have a Content Usage Policy (CUP) team that regularly tries to review images that could be infringing. Of course, with the volume of images that get uploaded to these sites, it's impossible to review them all, but when they come across them, they do remove the images from the member's site. If they have a copyright/trademark complaint, they also remove them.

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Rodney Blackwell - T-Shirt Links Directory
PrinterListings.com: a place to promote your custom t-shirt printing business

 

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FTWrath

The reason they do this is because once you put something on their website they are responsible for it.
You agree to their terms of service which say you can't do this and this and they expect that you haven't. But if someone sees a copyright image or trademark or anything along the lines Zazzle would be responsible for it.
But if it isn't your primary mode of income i wouldn't worry too much about it. Just like Youtube is deleting thousands of videos daily to protect themselves, zazzle is doing the same.

 

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