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29 October, 2007
  • ArtWanted.com Staff

Latest Comment...

Good news. We have been able to speak with the owner of Polyvore several times and they will be removing all past and future images that were downloaded from the ArtWanted.com website.

26 October, 2007
  • Dominic Melfi
  • 26 Oct 2007
  • 1,491 Views
  • 31 Comments

Original Post: Polyvore members have started to upload Artwanted works

This is reply to my complaint to polyvore From Pasha Sadri the founder

============================================

First: I see this in artwanted's policy statement:

http://artwanted.com/policies.cfm?Policy=Image

"Digital Artwork Understanding By posting your artwork on the Internet, you acknowledge that by doing so, allows anyone to download, print, screen-capture and digitally edit your image. This also allows websites such as 'Google Image Search' to take the artwork from this site and add it to their image search functions without credit to the artist. If this concerns you, then you should not post your artwork anywhere on the Internet or you can place a large visible watermark/copyright sign on all your artwork. This will discourage cyber thieves from stealing your artwork."

As I have said before, we would be happy to take down artwork if the request meets the following:

- it establishes that YOU are the owner of the work (we can't assume everyone from site X wants their images removed). - exactly specifies which content you wish removed (so that we can remove it)

I believe that we have gone beyond what is required by law and good-will when responding to these requests. However, we have very limited resources and you will have to excuse us if we can not respond to requests that don't specifically meet the criteria for DMCA take down notices.

We appreciate your efforts in informing other artists about Polyvore. We hope that they will find it a valuable venue for their art to be appreciated by an enthusiastic audience. If they decide that they don't want this, they are free to contact us to remove their images from Polyvore's index as long as they follow the DMCA guidelines.

Finally, if you upload images to Polyvore, it is with the understanding that it may be used by other people to create collages. I think as fellow artists they have to right to self expression as they see fit. Our terms of service specify which kind of images/sets are not suitable for Polyvore (eg: pornographic, racist, ...) and will be removed from the site.

Sincerely,

Pasha (polyvore founder)

========================= My comment =======================================

He wants to twist the AW caution into a permission to copy our work.

Maybe the wording shold not say "allows" but "exposes you to" --------------------------------------

These people are uploading artwanted images, this person Pasha is the founder, as you can see he is very unconcerned about his members ignoring our right click warnings, his company has published a tool to right click any image on internet onto their site, once your piece is on their site it may be used by hundreds of users to create dirivatives. Redbubble got him to block redbubble from their tool, I would suggest we do the same.

I had volutarily uploaded some pieces, when I saw them taking our work without permission I shut down my account, once there is work out there they point everyone back to those sites so it becomes like a malignant deseaase. ===================================== There is no way to clean it out because everyone takes ownership of your pieces.

====================================

The only way to protect us is to do what RedBubble did and speak for everyone on this site.

You will never get it done one-at-a-time.

I have already emailed a couple dozen of our members who have had their work posted there without permission, this will not end, I assure you, ISTOCKPHOTO has 1000's of pieces copied there. Once there pieces are presented to members as if they are freely available, they are low res but there is no sense of copyright and they could be freely used in dirivative works.