OverviewCopyrighted artworks, photos, and designs, along with private photos of children, family, friends, pets, vacation scenes, and even home interiors, snagged from personal webpages, photo storing sites, and non-fashion commercial sites - to name jut a few - have found their way into Polyvore collages: as backgrounds, virtual mannequins, props or even bizarrely altered focal points. Often, watermarks are obscured or removed - an offense punishable by fines of up to $25,000 USD. More and more users are calling these sets 'works of art' and are defending their 'right' to make them, regardless of where the images were obtained. For many users, Polyvore has become a major outlet of 'free expression' - only the images being used to create these moody depictions, make political statements, etc. are NOT free use. And the creation of these compilations damages the owners of the copyrighted images by adversely affecting their reputations and incomes, and infringes on their lawful right to have complete control over the use of their images.
Polyvore is a free, easy-to-use web-based application for mixing and matching images from anywhere on the web. It is also a vibrant community of creative and stylish people.
Polyvore lets you create sets composed of individual images using an easy to use, drag and drop editor. After you have created a set, you can publish and share it with your friends and the Polyvore community.
Artists, photographers, and designers of all sorts are coming forward to denounce Polyvore and to complain that its users have stolen their images and created illegal derivative works. And, although Polyvore will comply with DMCA requests to take down specific content, little-to-nothing is done to stem the tide of illegal clipping and altering, or to educate the Polyvore community about the true facts of copyright. Infringing content continues to abound. Images taken down one day are uploaded the next. And when made aware of the illegal use of images, many users react defensively, claiming that Polyvore TOU gives them carte blanche to use any image they like. Artists have even been accused of 'asking' for it by uploading their images on the internet where 'everything is up for grabs'. Very seldom do the users comprehend the gravity of the theft that is occurring wholesale at Polyvore.
The reality is that Sadri himself had once opined to a colleague that "there is an enormous amount of content on the web today that isn't being used in any kind of creative way." That attitude, coupled with the fact that Polyvore provides both the image clipping tool and the graphics manipulation software onsite to users, without reasonable restrictions, supports the growing sentiment that Sadri ought to be held accountable for facilitating both the theft and illegal derivative creation of copyrighted material. Besides - this isn't the first time that Polyvore and Sadri have come under scrutiny and criticism for these issues: in January of 2008, many artists at Etsy.com - an e-commerce site specializing in handmade items, as well as vintage finds, and crafting/art supplies - became aware of the illegal use of their images and began a campaign to both inform other Etsy sellers and to get their images removed from Polyvore. Sadri defended his site and its practices, but agreed to disallow images from Etsy from being directly copied by his clipper tool. At some point, however, that restriction was removed, and illicit copies of Etsy images began flowing in again.
In this latest round of complaints, Sadri is again defending his site and its use. He commented on the Flickr account of one egregiously abused Etsy artist, admitting "we don't have affiliate relationship all the sites in the world but we want people to be able to use products from any shop." The implication from both Polyvore users and Sadri himself is that anyone whose images are featured in sets and 'art' collages ought to be grateful for the free promotion and exposure they are receiving - whether or not they agreed to, or want, it. (Interesting to note that Polyvore users generate income for the site by the creation of many of the sets - and most don't even know it, operating under the mistaken belief that, because Polyvore is free to use, it is a not-for-profit site. Polyvore has partnered with certain companies to receive click-based sales commissions.)
Again, direct-clipping from Etsy has been disabled, but Polyvore users have developed workarounds whereby they copy images to other sites, then import, or clip, them from those third-party locations. In many cases, there isn't any direct link to where the original image came from, and no credit given to the artist/photographer/designer. And, by the way, personal photos are every bit as copyright protected as artworks or product images.
Because Sadri has not restricted the clipping and manipulation of images to ONLY those sites with whom Polyvore has a contractual affiliation, does not require users to 'check off' a statement for every image that is clipped, asserting that they have the rights to that image, and has not taken serious steps to inform users of - or to effectively enforce - copyright restrictions, there is a widespread sense that Sadri has acted in bad faith, putting his own interests and financial profit before the law. There is precious little real estate in the vastness of the web that is safe from the Polyvore clipper. People all across the internet, from locations all across the globe, are saying 'Enough!' They are calling for the shut down of Polyvore. And many are looking into securing legal representation for a class action suit.
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http://etsynews.com/848/is-polyvore-stealing-your-images-part-ii/For a sampling of information, specific incidents of infringement, discussions and comments on this alarming issue, visit the following links (or try searching for 'polyvore copyright'):
Articles:
http://etsynews.com/607/is-polyvore-stealing-your-images/
Articles:
http://etsynews.com/607/is-polyvore-stealing-your-images/
Blogs and internet forums:
http://artandghosts.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/01/polyvore-copyright-violation-update.html
http://www.zanzig.com/blog/?p=201
http://www.artwanted.com/mb/topic.cfm?Topic=433653
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5438619
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5982886
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5982962
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/57337/
Notices and Petitions:
http://www.metafilter.com/78145/Polyvorous
http://digg.com/arts_culture/Is_Polyvore_com_stealing_your_images
http://www.redbubble.com/people/crokuslabel/writing/266182-petition-to-stop-copyright-theft-at-polyvore-com
http://www.gopetition.com/online/24378.html
If you’ve been victimized:
http://www.vlany.org/aboutus/index.php (specifically for NY - but you can ask for a referral, or search Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts for an organization near you)
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stock-letters/
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In summary, it is sad to note that the prevailing notion is that any content found on the web is free for the taking. Somehow, internet users have convinced themselves that notices of copyright and watermarks are mere annoyances, and not legal notification that it’s ‘virtual hands off’. The truth is that, even without any visible notice, it is illegal to copy and use content without permission, with the very narrow exception of some educational and critical uses. Copyright law grants immediate protection to the creator from the moment that an image, audio and/or video recording, or written work/composition is created. Unless it is expressly stated that the content is free-use, or in the public domain, it is NOT permissible to copy.
It would behoove internet users – and the admins and members of Polyvore in particular – to properly acquaint themselves with factual copyright information:
US Copyright Office
Copyright FAQs
Copyright Law, Treaties and Advice
thankyou, very, very much for this *more* than valuable contribution.
ReplyDeletei will link it to the parasites group.
x
an excellent article and blog post. i've been following this from afar and now feel i have more of a handle on what is happening
ReplyDeletethank you
Thanks so much for this amazingly clear and articulate posting about what is going on with Polyvore. I have been contacting many artists lately (as I find them), alerting them to the fact that their work is being used on Polyvore. I will now, also, send them a link to this blog. You have the gift of gab and have explained it far better than I ever could.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your contribution.
x
Thank you so much for being such a wonderful advocate in all of this:)
ReplyDeleteWendy of
Cafe Baudelaire/ Mulberry Muse
Thank you all for the support! It's so important to push for change - there must be an end to the rampant infringement.
ReplyDeleteI have written to Polyvore time and time again to have my images removed. Instead of my art being taken off the website, it is multiplying. At last count my art was being used 50 times. I've now begun invoicing Polyvore at US 500 for each single use of my images, so the last invoice was 25,000.
ReplyDeleteI've begun keeping screenshots of all my stolen images within tacky Polyvore sets (in order to keep a chronological record of these ongoing thefts) http://www.thegraphicgroove.com/polyvore_copyright_infringement/infringe1.htm
Napster's lawyers unsuccessfully tried to use the very same argument that Polyvore has been using, that file sharing is simply an extension of fair use. But the courts ruled in favor of a zero tolerance approach, shutting down Napster until it had made the new effective filters. The new ruling made clear that every file-sharing system has to filter out items that are copyrighted.
Polyvore's website interface and model would be even more liable than Napster because it serves up copyrighted images from its Image Library on a silver platter, openly inviting its members to freely drag & drop them into their sets and provides tools to chop copyrighted images to bits, to cover up watermarks. It then renames our images, and says that the thief has "created them", which Polyvore's own interface automatically stamps on the image set. It diguises copyrighted images by calling them "items", not "copyrighted images".
It puts no warnings or pops up on the Drag & Drop feature, warning members that the images are NOT owned by Polyvore and that they are COPYRIGHTED and require PERMISSION OR PAYMENT to image owners.
It further blocks victims of theft from being able to leave comments on the sets containing the stolen images by blocking with a pop up javascript application, which gives protection to the copyright infringer.
It then uses its Blog (The Official Blog Of Polyvore.com - An Important Note About Copyright http://blog.polyvore.com/2008/01/important-note-about-copyright.html to encourage image theft ... my questions to Moderators go unanswered, despite there being THREE moderators (Nadia, Jess and Pasha, Polyvore's own CEO).
Yet these moderators let the comments that are pro-image-theft be posted immediately, while holding back for sometimes 4 days comments that are against copyright infringement. This is proof positive of Polyvore's conscious choice to take no proactive steps to rectify this blatant image theft issue.
Gale Franey
www.galefraney.wordpress.com