Stolen doll image - 'Romwe' T-shirt design

HERE is the original owner of the doll. (Lol my Google-fu skills are supreme!!!) On their deviantart they clearly state to use their photos only with permission so it looks very suspicious. What a shame though, I visited Romwe before and they have so many cute clothes. :/ This may not really be a general discussion topic but if you want I would suggest messaging the owner of the doll for them to handle instead of tackling it yourself, of course.

 

This is the exact photo of the doll without the photoshop

http://dying-vampire.deviantart.com/art/White-hair-109458014

 

Maybe she gave permission? If not (and that is, sadly, more likely), I really wish these people would ASK before they just take. I mean, it's not hard to track down the artist--particularly if they are on DeviantArt... and so many people would be good with it--for a reasonable payment. It's crazy not to get the rights to stuff you are producing and selling!!! If artists had a big legal department, they could actually sue the heck out of people... It's just a stupid risk, not to mention unethical and downright stealing...

 

It seems, that there are many more "designs", which probably aren't entire lawful - like Mucha-shirt ja Starbucks -shirt to name few.

Sadly this is not first fashion shop to print out artist's works without their permission.

 

There's a whole cottage industry out there now using designs for T-shirts from all kinds of places. Some of it is art or photos from places like Deviant Art, and no, they don't usually ask. Some of it's fan made designs from TV shows and the like that completely ignore the face that the companies that produce those shows own the rights to make stuff like that. One of the reasons my photography portfolio isn't online is because I don't trust people like that not to help themselves to my work. It's gotten too ubiquitous. I had a photograph lifted off of an art site a few years ago. Ironically a person on DA liked it so much he decided to art filter it claim it as his own work. One email to DA though and they removed it and he got reprimanded very severely from what I understand. But I learned my lesson.

Anything you put online will likely get ripped off. So I don't put anything I'd want ripped off online anymore, at least not in anything like a printable size or sans watermarks that I make sure are pretty darned hard to remove compared to most. Only way my prospective clients get to see my work is by meeting with me. I have a slide show presentation on my tablet for them to see, a digital portfolio, but one that I can control. Likely they didn't ask the artist. I'd be surprised if they did, but we don't know and probably should not make that assumption. For all we know they may well have licensed things. Until she pops up and says otherwise I think we should probably reserve judgement.

 

Romwe has form for doing things like this. They ripped off the work of an artist who does Disney fan-art and put her designs on sweaters without her permission. Since these featured licensed characters that she had drawn as a not-for-profit fan work she wouldn't have been able to sell her designs anyway without getting into a wrangle with Disney, and Romwe should not have used those specific characters without the permission of Disney who hold the copyright on the characters the artist had drawn. I think in the end Romwe took her designs down but I'm not surprised this has happened.

 

On 1 January 2010, Mucha's published works went out of copyright and entered the public domain.

 

Datsuki, my bad! ^^

 

Another reason why I don't put up my pics of my dolls on different websites......especially social media like facebook, twitter....etc..

 

I actually saw the book irl the other week, I looked through it for mention of the image they used and couldn't find anything... so I don't know if it's their own picture or not...

 

This book is actually covered at length in this thread: http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?577576-Evil-Baha!&highlight=baha+book

The tl;dr version, though, is that the whole thing is legit and done the right way--both the Photographer and Pipos were asked permission and credited, and the photographer at least was compensated for the photo as well.

 

I understand where you people are coming from, because I would hate to have my art stolen too!

However, with the book thing, it saddens me that you guys immediately doubt the proper use of it and quickly assume there is some copyright infringement going on. I'm not saying you're wrong, because it is likely and it had happened, but personally when I saw that same book by Mo Hayder, I felt genuinely happy! I felt excited to see a bjd on a book cover in an environment that is not in an anime con or showroom or whatnot!

It made me take a look at it and read about it. I did think perhaps it could have been taken without permission, but hey, it's a pretty popular book you can find it everywhere and if that's the case, the artist would have seen it by now.

All I'm saying is, I dislike the fact that this hobby pays attention to so much little insignificant details. I don't like witch-hunting you guys v.v

 

@ Chamillia: That's kind of a naive way of thinking though. It doesn't matter if "the artist would have seen it by [then]" because so many popular artists get their art stolen and man, do many go through long processes of just trying to get their art removed.

No one WANTS to "witch-hunt," but seeing as so many people post and repost things without permission, it gets to that point where someone IS just going to be extra wary of seeing something "off." :/

 

I'm glad that people see BJD in t-shirts, merch, books and try to verify if the artist and the company permitted the use of their work. The artist is just ONE person, the community has thousands of people with different hobbies and tastes, in different professions and countries. It makes it all much easier to find.

Do you think if the artist was Japanese, they would know of this book? Or that if you're not American you would shop from that store? I don't think so. I never seen that book, I never seen that shop. I don't go to social media all that much so I never found my own work stolen anywhere, but I had members of the community finding and contacting me. I'm grateful people assume the wors, because it's a lot more frequent than the other.

 

Bit OT: Funny thing is - I bought that book only because I remembered there had been some kind of discussion here about the cover and whether the use of the doll was legit in this case. Actually, it's a great book! Well, if you like thrillers. And it's a bit hard to find but Pipos Dolls are credited for the doll on the back of the book, right at the bottom, with their company name and URL.

 

I'll have to check out the book. XD If only for the fact that it has a BJD on the cover.