A Cautionary Tale... · Poster Print on Demand

A Cautionary Tale...

Hi all.

For anyone that has seen my previous posts, I started my Etsy journey on April 11th and managed to get to 'Top 25 Etsy Sellers' in that time.

Yesterday my shop was permanently banned for IP infringement - I appealed and I have received confirmation that the decision won't be changed.

For context, I had received 2 IP infringement notices in that time.

The final 'nail' in my shops 'coffin' came yesterday when I received an IP infringement notice for an image that I obtained from a very popular Public Domain use website, that clearly states the following - "The Artist died in 1917 so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries where the copyright term is the Artist's life". This is the only part of my cautionary tale that I actually feel was unfair; although Etsy weren't interested in my direct appeal.

This is entirely my own fault. Rules are there to be followed and whilst I could link you to a LOT of other shops that are selling items that are either the exact same, or slightly different, it doesn't matter - rules are rules and I broke them.

The cautionary bit - I have spent literally hundreds of hours on my shop since I opened it only 6 or so weeks ago, I was well on the way to Star Seller and had 5* reviews across the board. None of this matters as I was clearly in breach of Etsy's stringent rules. Please don't fall foul of these same rules - check your inventory regularly, make sure you remove anything that could be deemed to be someone else's intellectual property. They ain't f*cking around here!

The future? - This has been a BLAST! I have managed to meet some really cool people here, Callum Massey, Tom, Max and Mihai (plus many others). I'll probably go and do something else with AI now (not Etsy, obviously) 😉

I wish everyone the best of luck and good fortune in their endeavours - please be careful and don't make the same mistake that I did.

Cheers!

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