We No Like CafePress Today
The over-eager young copyright patrol persons at CafePress have struck again. You may remember last summer, when they robbed the world of the awesome Super Mac design. Only this time, they've targeted our highest selling design of all time, Enterprise Silhouette.
They yanked all seven of our Trekkie silhouette shirts, in fact. No more Klingon Battle Cruisers, no more Romulan Warbirds.
Despite perfectly watertight, bullet-proof and absolutely flame-retardant defense (e.g., "You suck! Kiss our asses!"), CafePress invoked the dread Content Usage Policy.
The bottom line is, under CafePress' rules, they can pretty much yank anything they want, for any reason they want. It's just part of the deal with them. Whether they've gotten heat from Paramount before on this kind of stuff, or not, I have no idea. Our defense was more serious than that (e.g., "trekkie" is not copyrighted, and not copyrightable, and the images are our original art, etc., etc.), but CafePress has to the weigh little bit of money our designs bring in against the possibility of getting their asses sued off by Paramount.
From our standpoint, it just accelerates the next phase of Far Out Shirts, in which we open our own damn store, for real, with our own shirts that we send you ourselves. For real. Stay tuned.
They yanked all seven of our Trekkie silhouette shirts, in fact. No more Klingon Battle Cruisers, no more Romulan Warbirds.
Despite perfectly watertight, bullet-proof and absolutely flame-retardant defense (e.g., "You suck! Kiss our asses!"), CafePress invoked the dread Content Usage Policy.
Unless you have written permission or a license agreement with the various studio, producer or rights holder of the movie or tv show, your use of Star Trek related content gives the impression that you are selling official merchandise of the movie/tv show. This is not permitted nor is it in accordance with our Content Usage Policy.
The bottom line is, under CafePress' rules, they can pretty much yank anything they want, for any reason they want. It's just part of the deal with them. Whether they've gotten heat from Paramount before on this kind of stuff, or not, I have no idea. Our defense was more serious than that (e.g., "trekkie" is not copyrighted, and not copyrightable, and the images are our original art, etc., etc.), but CafePress has to the weigh little bit of money our designs bring in against the possibility of getting their asses sued off by Paramount.
From our standpoint, it just accelerates the next phase of Far Out Shirts, in which we open our own damn store, for real, with our own shirts that we send you ourselves. For real. Stay tuned.
posted at 7:21 PM
2 Comments:
I agree that these were the best designs, by far. How does one get a silhouette t-shirt like the one shown, or the enterprise silhouette 'GEEK' t-shirt?
The images are your original art? SO if you draw a picture of Mickey Mouse yourself that looks exactly like Disney's Mickey Mouse, is that okay, too?
That's clearly a picture of the Enterprise from Star Trek, and someone else designed that. Also, Star Trek has a store on Cafepress, so they're hardly going to be happy about Cafepress selling other Star Trek designs. Use your common sense.
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