Hasta La Ideas

Yesterday, the UK illustrator Mr Bingo informed the website Society6 that one of its user’s pages was allegedly displaying and selling his work. The page, which has only been taken down in the last few minutes, reveals a worrying glimpse into the unchecked selling of artworks online…

The piece in question, ‘A New Hope’ (above) – an edition from Mr Bingo’s Hair Portraits series – was made in 2007 and is available for all to see at his website, mr-bingo.org.uk, and also the Nelly Duff gallery, where it is still sold as a handsome gold foil edition.

But a visit to the page of an artist called – yes – ‘Thug’ on the Society6 site, and visitors were presented with a select group of illustrations, the origins of which were … somewhat debatable.

There’s the Hair Cuts Star Wars piece that looks uncannily like Mr Bingo’s Hair Portrait, and a couple of other works that may be familiar to CR blog readers: an image akin to the waveform image from the cover of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album, designed by Peter Saville, and one clearly in homage to the late Arturo Vega’s logo for The Ramones.

Each of the ‘works’ could be bought as a print (of varying sizes – the cheapest is about $16), or as a tank top, a T-shirt, hoodie, tote bag and so on. Society6 claims that when customers buy goods from its website, they are then produced as “gallery quality art prints, iPhone cases, T-shirts and other fine products – without giving up control of your rights”.

But what about Mr Bingo’s rights? “I’ve personally only got in touch with them via Twitter, which I do in my typically brash way,” he revealed earlier today, adding that “more professional humans” were also in touch with the company on his behalf (which may have resulted in the webpage coming down).

“A number of people on Twitter – who I’ve never met – have let me know that they’ve sent messages to Society6 about the matter and nobody has received any kind of adequate response other than a link to [its] rules and regulations,” Bingo says.

According to the Santa Monica-based company’s extensive terms and conditions, all work uploaded to the website must be created by a “verified member” of Society6. It’s easy enough to sign up, upload work, select the media in which it can be made available, and set a price – then agree to the ts&cs* (see bottom of post).

But making a complaint to the site, if an artist has seen work that they believe infringes their own copyright, is harder to do. The onus is heavily on the ‘infringed’ party to do the leg work – as Sheffield-based illustrator Matt Ferguson found out.

“Someone let me know that my art was up for sale on their site,” he says. “I obviously didn’t OK this to happen …. The file [was] only 72dpi and not hi-res enough for print.”

Ferguson says that the work in question was created solely for online promotion connected with the film, Pacific Film, and was never licensed to be printed. “Society6 made me jump through a lot of hoops to get the art taken down, but I wonder – do people who upload this stuff have to go through so many hoops?”

Ferguson managed to get the page removed, but was left unsatisfied by the website’s treatment of his case. “I only got bog standard pre-written emails once the stuff was taken down. No apology and also no monetary compensation for lost earnings, which I thought was outrageous.”

A quick Twitter search of complaints made towards Society6 reveals that artists Christopher Uminga and Chris Piascik also alleged that works of theirs were appearing on the site without their permission. In both cases, the pages in question have now been taken down.

But these and Bingo’s case highlight the difficulty in protecting copyrighted artwork online. When a decent enough jpg can easily be grabbed and reposted as part of someone else’s portfolio, what’s to stop them passing it off as their own work, and even making money out of it?

Well, for one, it should be harder to submit work to sites like Society6 and its roster of artists work monitored much more closely. Even a cursory Google Image upload search would reveal matches with existing files online.

And while the platform might serve a purpose for many artists selling their own artwork (Society6 claim to represent thousands of people’s work), when issues to do with alleged plagiarism and infringements of copyright occur, it makes no sense to have such a lengthy process in place to deal with them.

Not least when, in Bingo’s case, no-one seemed to be replying to any tweets via the Society6 Twitter account either.

CR contacted Society6 for comment yesterday and were informed, via an email from an unmonitored account, that in order to make a claim for an infringement of one’s intellectual property rights, enquirers must follow the procedure detailed in the terms and conditions.

As yet, Society6 has not responded to a further email for comments. Mr Bingo, despite his way with words on Twitter, remains calm. “To be honest, I just put a few tweets out there,” he says. “I’ve got much better things to be doing really. I’d rather spend my time making new work than worrying too much about who’s doing what with existing work.”

When Bingo or CR hears more, we’ll update the post. For now it seems that Society6 has at least responded to Bingo’s tweets – by removing ‘Thug’ from their website.

*From Society6’s terms and conditions, for members: “You represent and warrant that you own all intellectual property rights in your Content or that you have obtained all copyrights, trademark rights, rights of publicity and other rights required for you to make your Content available through the Society6 Services” and that “your Content and the manufacture, distribution and sale of Products that include your Content does not and will not infringe the intellectual property rights or other rights of any person or entity….”