Account Suspended Due to Etsy's Creativity Standard Violation - Unjust!

[#1]

I’ve been selling wedding dresses on Etsy for years, with all designs created from scratch by myself and my team. Every photo is taken by us or professionally paid for, and I have all the camera data and original files to prove they belong to us - including behind-the-scenes shots. In 2018, one of our designs went viral (Brittany Snow wore it for her wedding), and since then, we’ve had copycats flooding the internet.

Despite this, I’ve repeatedly had my own listings removed, and Etsy support has been nothing but frustrating. The responses are vague, often citing that our photos are being used on platforms like Aliexpress. While it's true that they steal our content because our photos has gone viral, this is beyond our control. But now, our shop has been suspended - for what? For creating original, unique designs and photographing them in a way that attracts brides to buy from us on Etsy?

You can find our photos everywhere with a simple Google search, and trying to track them all down is impossible. I can bet a large amount of our images have been stolen from Etsy itself. As it stands, Etsy isn’t protecting sellers’ content, allowing anyone to click ‘save as’ and misuse these photos, while only Etsy’s top sellers seem to be flagged and copied!!

We’ve been on Etsy for years, with dresses priced over $2,000 (which I guess generates significant commissions for Etsy), and we maintain a 4.9-star rating. The fact that Etsy can’t do basic research or apply common sense is beyond frustrating. We hold a registered trademark, and yet this new system seems completely broken, with little to no real support.

As a long-standing, trusted seller, being treated this way is unacceptable. I understand that things change, but the lack of real assistance, the robotic responses, and the failure to address the real issue of stolen content - all while accusing me of not designing my own items - is incredibly unfair and disappointing. I wonder why this issue hasn’t reached the media yet, considering how many businesses are affected and in the same situation!

[CraftyCornishMaids]

It's quite easy to do.

If your a single person with a handmade shop, the searches aren't difficult to do.

with 18, it shouldn't take much time at all.

and when you issue takedowns, the gaps before they are stolen go down.

and, you can also issue takedowns with google, so even if the same people steal them, they are not shown, so they don't bother, as there is no point.

[digitaldoodlebug]

Exactly. I posted some example prices of hiring a lawyer or IP monitoring. It's not something most small biz can afford. A lawyer is thousands for them to do just a tiny amount of work (hundreds per hour).  And monitoring IP is $1 an image per month. For shops that have hundreds of listings that's hundreds of $ per month. (of course etsy bots could still find and remove your listing in-between months or the monitoring could miss something). Then you file DMCAs yourself or pay $200 for them to do it. 

And we know we don't have the time to police hundreds of images monthly across all platforms. 

Of course if a seller becomes aware of it they should file a DMCA. But with etsy using bots to identify copies and remove sellers listings (on a very regular basis), it's not something sellers can stay ahead of unless we had our own army of bots. And shops are not only losing listings for this but getting their stores shut down by etsy. 

One could argue you only need monitor your best selling images. But I've had regular sellers copied from amazon.

[DigTheDesign]

@craftycornishmaids. I think people do get that they need to defend their own IP. I think the point you aren’t getting is that Etsy are being idiotic closing the shop of a couture wedding dress manufacturer who clearly make their own product and invest hugely in their individualistic brand - just what Etsy would want to be adverting you would think. But no, the robot from their ads had just enough life in it to shoot yet another AI bullet into an Etsy foot - and closed the poster girl shop…

It doesn’t need any IP knowledge to not be as stupid as Etsy is being. It just takes a degree of common sense to let the shop stay open, stolen images or not. That simple action would show that they have a belief and understanding of low volume individualistic makers - which is what they say they want.

[digitaldoodlebug]

What should happen is the seller appeal it to etsy for a human to review. Even if part of the appeal required filing a DMCA. 

You can't stop digital theft anymore than you can physical. This is punishing the person who is stolen from...

Could you imagine if Disney had a shop on etsy and etsy closed them down due to finding their IP used everywhere?

[CraftyCornishMaids]

Disney is fairly good at protecting it's IP, the way it wants to.

and I really think Disney does much better, without Etsy - Etsy sellers are pulling sales from them, which is why they do sweeps here, and issue takedowns here

just like we should do, with aliexpress etc

[TrinketDrawersUK]

@CraftyCornishMaids

If only 18 I have over 7k, it's not feasible. 

[CraftyCornishMaids]

you have 18 in the shop you are posting from, and no other shop listed in your about section.

With 7K first photos I'd taken, I'd hire a company  to do it for me

[digitaldoodlebug]

For the low, low price of only $7,000 a month...

Or another company will monitor 75 copyrights for $500 a month... (that's a bit short, and more expensive per image)

Or there is a software company that requires you to fill a form to get a price (hint that means it's high). There may be no limit to the # of images they monitor (yay!) According to a web search it's only 35k a year (average).

[BriarMoonBeads]

I'm not usually the kind of person to say this but.............................................there's an awful lot of 'blaming the victim' going on in this thread.

Policing the internet for our stolen photos is a futile affair; the bigger the shop, the harder it is. But that is not the subject of this thread - the subject is the deep injustice in Etsy just wiping out a seller's listing simply because someone else stole the photos. And worse - either ignoring or flat out rejecting any appeal.

The fact they're ignoring/rejecting says to me they don't have the human staff to respond to this (and this is by design) because they don't want you to appeal, they don't want to give you a chance to be relisted - to them your chance is gone, even if you're innocent.

Etsy wants the site to look unique, so they remove all listings that have photos found elsewhere; this could easily include the seller's own platform on other sites (such as an amazon or ebay) as well as Temu etc. It's easy to assume 'poorly trained bots' and calling this collateral damage in their race to scrub out the resellers, but... I honestly think it's just because they don't want sellers who sell other places. Why would I buy your thing here when I could buy it on your website, where it's potentially cheaper?

What are they aiming for? A site where everything is so unique, not only can it not be found anywhere else, no one could even copy it. Etsy sellers make something so individual even the best manufacturers can't knock it off; it's made from scratch (remember where you here those words)

This IMO is their Last Desperate Attempt to capture the shopper who values other elements before price. They want the emotional value behind scratch-made, high quality, studio created, one of a kind pieces. Shops with only 50 or 60 items max, with videos that show their making process, shops that are so niche in their design that the factories don't bother to steal their work because not enough people want it.

And if doesn't work? Two choices - open the floodgates or close down and sell off their AI tech. I don't think opening the floodgates is a good thing though, otherwise it just makes them worse off; sellers here offering what they also sell on 5 other sites; it all becomes a homogenous, same-same haze. I made a decision a while back that I'd start targeting customers who still have plenty of money; I hope Etsy is doing the same. You're the cheapest or the best or the most unique - everything else is middle of the road, and middle of the road is death.

Meanwhile I did some searches earlier today and noticed the 'handmade' filter was missing from the sidebar. Vintage was the only button to select....

I hope that makes sense - I've had a big day and it's past my bedtime. G'night!

[digitaldoodlebug]

"They want the emotional value behind scratch-made, high quality, studio created, one of a kind pieces. "

So, so, so true. They want to be perceived that way. As they finally realized that's the only way to stand out/compete. Its their USP. Yet they want cheap prices and mass produced (can sell over and over) with only a veneer of unique. It's their new 101 marketing strategy, saying "unique" everywhere. They know it can't all be unique as that would limit the site/sales too much.

But I don't think they want to remove sellers who also have items on their own site. It's simply etsy's very late reaction to reseller flooding. After sweeping it under the rug for a decade they finally realized they were losing their rep and getting upset buyers for being duped buying expensive "handmade" that was a reseller. Per usual they don't care about the collateral damage (sellers who get stolen from).

[PrettyVagrant]

I too almost got suspended due to AI going crazy over magnets.  It took over a month to get them to respond.

The problem is Etsy does the opposite of the legal system.  Instead of innocent until proven guilty, Etsy does GUILTY until proven innocent which is horrible to do to sellers given the lack of support staff to personally look over what AI is flagging.

[primalpainter]

What all these selling sites need to do is implement a code that prevents people from being able to right-click and save the photo. That would solve so many issues. In addition to photo piracy, now that Etsy requires these huge photo sizes, people can just right-click on an image (I sell artwork) and print their own high-quality prints without buying them. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@primalpainter: Because of the way that the internet and web browsers work it is impossible to prevent people from downloading an image from a web site. Disabling right click will only stop people who have no concept of how a browser works - everyone else will have a multitude of options.

The only 'defense' is to use images of a low resolution that display fine but will not print as high quality.

[primalpainter]

@BagmakerSupply Yes, that's true, but it might slow down the low-tech people, and there are a lot of those, especially older folks. I've had to file over a thousand dmca's, and some were huge blankets using my 72dpi online images from Etsy. Now there are programs to enhance the clarity on low-resolution images, but it's an extra hoop to jump through. It's always been risky to sell online but is getting worse. I don't know the answer, but being punished for someone else's theft is disheartening, and Ai being in charge with little or no human intervention is wrong. 

[LeahMeece]

I’m really sorry to hear about your experience—unfortunately, this is a common issue for many Etsy sellers. A tool like Qti.ai could help by detecting infringing listings online, including on sites like AliExpress. With its advanced image recognition, it can help you spot unauthorized use and take action to protect your work. Let me know if you would like more information, and best of luck!