Why is it legal to sell fan art on Redbubble...?

DokiDokiTsuna 2018-10-12 23:15:00 UTC #1

Like, I can understand using other people's characters for promotional purposes (and even that is a bit of a legal grey area) but...I thought that making money by merchandising characters that don't belong to you was generally considered a no-no.

I mean, if someone can do it to Steven Universe, what's to stop someone from doing it to me? My characters probably wouldn't sell very many T-shirts on their own, but in the store of an already-established Redbubbler... :\

A-weird-girler 2018-10-12 23:35:08 UTC #2

Redbubble managed to find a loophole I think idk someone fact check me on that

Kittosaurus 2018-10-12 23:41:34 UTC #3

It is a big "no-no" as you call it. Unfortunately a lot of artists do not understand copy-right law, and there are others who simply choose to ignore it, and unless you start making big bucks a lot of these companies just don't bother/ have the time to ask every artist to take their stuff down.

Luminosophy 2018-10-12 23:47:03 UTC #4

Selling fanart is even less in your favour when you consider most thieves are specifically looking for it to also sell on their POD merch.

LordVincent 2018-10-13 05:26:43 UTC #5

It's not legal but it goes mostly unpunished or at the very least when things are taken down they are quickly replaced. There are multiple reasons for this, especially in fandoms where the bootleg merch actually meets a demand that original merch doesn't meet.

I will admit right now that I have a bootleg Ten Count phone case. Why? Because the official ones were boring as fuck and the model they came in just wasn't what I was looking for, because I know damn well with phone wallet cases that I am 100 times more likely to end up crushing my screen. This completely defeats the purpose of having a phone case.
I wanted to buy an official one to support the original creators SO BAD. But at the end of the day, in my case, they just didn't meet customer demand. So I found one I liked on redbubble and bought that, cursing under my breath about those few dollars of revenue going to some thieving douchebag instead of the artist I wanted to support. It's not even fanart, it's a stolen illustration!
It's a simple phone case. It is a combo of the two first covers of the series. The original publishers could have very easily met this demand themselves.
The official phone case on the other hand barely even looks like it's merch at all to my memory.

This isn't a new thing. Bootleg band merch for example has existed since before the internet went big and they filled the exact same purpose. Some bands just have really shitty merch. Or little to none at all.

Most people aren't stupid. A small few will buy the bootleg crap because it's cheaper, but most fans want genuine merch because genuine merch has higher value both from a fans standpoint, collectors standpoint and in supporting the content in question.

The best thing you can do (and what I try to do) to battle bootleg fan merch is to fill the demand yourself. If you do, the amount of bootleg merch being published will lessen and fans are less likely to buy it.

shazzbaa 2018-10-13 06:00:43 UTC #6

Why is it legal to sell fan art on Redbubble…?

It's not. It's not even allowed under Redbubble's rules.
https://www.redbubble.com/agreement#putting-content-on-redbubble

There's a takedown procedure here:

I imagine it's just tough/not worth it if you're a huge company to go through and file takedown reports for every single darn thing, so a bunch of stuff stays there.

FedoraSpooky 2018-10-13 06:26:09 UTC #7

Yeah, I was wondering about that myself... I figured it was against the site rules, but it seems to be something that people just do anyway because it doesn't seem to be heavily enforced, at least as far as getting sued goes...

And on one hand I can get why they sell fanart, because it's more likely to get attention and be bought because people already love whatever the fanart is of from the start, and you don't have to deal with the added hassle of making your own series or whatever and trying to get people to like that to the same degree... XD ; But at the same time, it's definitely an at-your-own-risk sorta deal.

craftymarten 2018-10-13 09:34:40 UTC #8

Like with any other site if you post fanart to sell you run the risk of getting a Cease and Desist, but companies rarely take it any further than that. The worst that happens to most people is they get their accounts banned.
Some companies are worse than others with takedowns, Funimation (DBZ is a big one), Cartoon Network (they focus on Steven Universe and Adventure Time I think), Blizzard, BBC, and Marvel/Disney all send out C&Ds.
There's so much fanart that even if they take down thousands there's still thousands left. People will find ways to get around it. You can send out C&Ds if someone is using your characters without your permission, that's enough to scare most people. If it isn't you'll need to get an IP lawyer and get the legal system involved.

sushy00 2018-10-13 12:12:20 UTC #9

It is not legal on RedBubble actually. And they remove artwork that violates the terms. However, it is possible some artwork has gone unnoticed.

Cavechan 2018-10-13 13:04:17 UTC #10

Yes, this. I worked at a place for a while that would have to constantly deal with copyrighted images being used (hell, I still do, but it happens a lot less often and there's a bit of flexibility to say the least). Part of the problem is that there just is no way to keep track of the copyright of every image and that is why it falls on the owner of the copyright to be proactive in protecting their copyright.

We'd get a lot of sports stuff, so even though I don't watch football at all, I know all the team logos and colors because they were so common. We had a database of common logos and all their alternate logos to try and find them and take them down proactively. We even had a database of Pokemon. We had a team that even tried to take down copyrighted and sensitive material. It's just impossible when you have thousands of images coming in every day. I imagine Red Bubble has even more than what we had coming in.

hisameartwork 2018-10-14 16:51:25 UTC #11

My art is constantly stolen and sold on Amazon. I kinda stopped reporting because it takes too long and solves nothing.

We need better legislation so that when we report a copyright claim the shops take it seriously. If Society6 can be almost clean so can RedBubble and Amazon, the former two just don't want to as far as I can tell.

P.S. For those saying it's not allowed it's only on paper not spirit. I have talked to RB and TP admins via Skype or GHangouts during a survey and they did not seem to view it as an issue and doged my questions. My impression was they were more than happy to permit this behavior because it resulted in good sales. So they just turned a blind eye.

That is why I am currently loving S6 because they make real efforts to promote original content and remove theft. I think I made 1$ from RB as opposed to other places where they support original content creators.

RB and Amazon at this point are places where you go if you want cheap knock offs. It's not just some items overlooked it's full of them, I'm sad to say. Hope it changes.