Fighting Redbubble

This is an open letter. That's a fancy way of saying I am cutting and pasting an email I just sent to Redbubble in a white-hot fury. Weeks ago they pulled about a dozen of my designs from sale. For each one they said

We’re sorry, but we had to remove some of your artwork from the Redbubble marketplace because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights. We identified this material in your artwork based on guidance provided to us by the owner of those rights.

I contested each of these removals, pointing out that this is original artwork, I do not use the names of AFL clubs or their logos, and I only use names and images of players with their permission. Today I finally got a response for each one. I've quoted the important bit in my response to their response.

Here's the open letter.

Hello Lauretta, thank you for that update. Your explanation below for why my work was removed is at odds with the advice Redbubble gives elsewhere.

This assessment is based on guidance of a general nature from the owner of these rights. In most cases, this means that the rights holder did not specifically identify your work for removal, but that Redbubble has detected potential similarity between the removed content and one or more words, phrases or images included in the rights holder’s general removal guidance. This does not mean that Redbubble determined your content was infringing, only that in our judgment, the removed content fell within the scope of the rights holder’s general guidance.

But here on your help page it says "It is Redbubble’s policy to remove allegedly infringing works in response to valid complaints under applicable law, but content is only removed when it has been specifically identified as infringing in a legally valid takedown notice."

So if your help page is out of date with your actual practice; it's not very helpful is it? In practice you are pulling down anything that catches your eye BEFORE the football club or the Australian Football League forms an opinion on it. So the experts on what is or is not an infringement of Collingwood’s IP for instance; the club and the AFL, don’t make this decision, Redbubble does. And you are just flying blind, it seems to me. Who in your DMCA section knows anything about Australian footy?

Without getting into all the blatant piracy by others that is on your site every day, why have you pulled some of my designs for dark shirts for instance, and just left others with identical content [tweaked for light shirts] up on sale? Is this done by human eyeballs or an algorithm? 

You have given me NO guidelines as to what is OK and isn’t, and of course you can’t because I think you have no idea. You don’t know what infringes AFL IP. You are trying to look busy so you can tell the AFL or the clubs “we have pulled X thousand designs that infringed your IP” when all you have looked for, probably with a bot/algorithm, is POTENTIAL SIMILARITY.

The lesson you are teaching to artists who want to celebrate sport or pop culture is DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME BEING CREATIVE. Just rip off a photographer, steal a logo, use a sportsman’s name and face without permission because there’s an equal chance of Redbubble pulling that down, as pulling down something original, lovingly created, with skill, within the rules and with the involvement of the subject.

I will continue to upload creative work similar to the designs I have on Redbubble now. As you have given NO guidance to what is OK and is not, that’s the yardstick I am using. 

I have an agreement to give 100% of my profits on 10068238-bones-mcghie-richmond to the Australian Cancer Research Fund – that stopped when you removed it. All my profits on 14712272-maurice-rioli-richmond and 25053200-michael-mitchell-richmond went to the Lowitja Institute Career Development Fund for indigenous health researchers; until you removed them.

My first order of business will be to put up new artwork representing those three footballers to continue this important fundraising. If you really want to judge the football IP in my work, please have the integrity to get a human being that understands football IP to do it.

sincerely

Chris Rees

122 Cascade Rd, South Hobart, Tas 7004

Ph 0409 284 223    

chris@reesdesign.com.au

www.reesdesign.com.au

ABN 51 352 140 011