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Art + Audience
Ep. 35: Justice for Artists: How Daniel Lachman Helps Creatives Fight Art Theft
00:35:26
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- [00:00]
A
Introducing Family freedom from T Mobile. We'll pay off four phones up to $3200 and give you four free phones all on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com familyfreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phone via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement. Example Apple iPhone 16128 gigs $829.99 Eligible trade in example iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact us probably the hardest part of my job is was basically trying to convince someone that we weren't scamming them when we reached out to them because they're like, why would some guy randomly reach out to me and offer to help me get money for one of my designs that was being stolen? You know, this seems like a scam.
- [00:44]
B
Wouldn't it be nice if your art business loved you back? Hi, I'm Stacy Bloomfield. After years of trial and error and late night doodling, I went from being a coffee shop manager to running a vibrant seven figure art business that I love. And now I'm on a mission to help more artists create an art business that they love too. So I invite you to find a cozy spot, pull out your favorite sketchbook and listen in. It's never too late to chase your creative dreams. Welcome to the Art plus Audience Podcast. Hello everybody. I am so excited you're here for this episode of the Art Audience podcast because today we're talking to Daniel Lachman, the founder of justice for Artists. And I don't know about you guys, but have you ever been afraid that your art is going to be stolen or ripped off and you're like what am I going to do? And so you don't share your art at all? Well, Daniel's been there, done that, bought the T shirt haha. And moved on because he used to have an Etsy store that specialized in shirts and then he blew up on social media, had something happen selling a lot of shirts. And from what I understand, then your art got ripped off, right?
- [01:54]
A
This is correct.
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B
Oh yeah. So Daniel, take it away. Can you tell everyone just more about you?
- [02:00]
A
Sure. I'm Daniel and I my whole journey probably started when I was in college. I started a T shirt company around 2009. It was called Sharp Shirter. Not my favorite name, but I was in my early 20s. I think I actually came up with a name in high school. So I was not my my prime brain development. But anyway, I, I ran it for 17 years on Etsy, got it onto Amazon, had a couple of my designs really go viral on Reddit. So I had these insane one day sales which was very exciting for me as a broke college kid. And so unfortunately though, along with the publicity came the counterfeits. And just to fill you in on the design, it was called Slothzilla and it was a sloth like King Kong on the Empire State Building. And well, actually it became a nondescript building because the Empire State Building got in touch with me and I had to adjusted. So that was an interesting journey for me as well. But basically, unfortunately Flossilla got super counterfeited and I had really no idea what to do. I sent out cease and desist letters, DMCA complaints, got in touch with whoever's website it was, but it just did not stop. And so flash forward almost 10 years later and I linked up with some lawyers who specialize in dealing with that sort of situation. And I worked through it with them, had a very good experience and I realized that most artists don't know what to do when they're in this situation. And so I and my company was kind of at the end of the, at the end of the road, had a good run and so I basically closed up shop, started justice for artists and two years later, here I am.
- [03:36]
B
Man, that's so hard. Whenever you've poured so much time into building your creative business and getting it off the ground and it's actually starting to work and then it's like completely out of your control because someone has taken the art and you know, is counterfeiting you. I've been there too, Daniel. I have had so much art ripped off, especially in those earlier days when I think people were on Etsy, a lot more looking for artists, you know, and maybe less like manufacturers overseas. Like my best designs, you could probably find them right now still being counterfeited. And sometimes I fought it and sometimes I'm just like, let go. I don't even have time for this. But there's a lot of money being left on the table and there's a lot of opportunity for artists to actually take action, especially now. And you're providing so much information for artists so that they can feel empowered. So you decided to found justice for artists. It's been two years. How many artists have you worked with and how do you work with them?
- [04:37]
A
Sure, I think we've worked with now close to 150 artists. And how do we work with them? So starting out justice for artists, no one knew who we were. So we were actively tracking down artists. And so it was an interesting journey where basically we would browse the Internet and look for items that we believed were being counterfeited and then worked backwards and tried to track down the actual creator and would reach out to them. Probably the hardest part of my job is, was basically trying to convince someone that we weren't scamming them when we reached out to them, because they're like, why would some guy randomly reach out to me and offer to help me get money for one of my designs that was being stolen? You know, this seems like a scam. So. But luckily, because of my prior career being an Etsy artist and everything, I had a lot of artists that I already knew personally. And so I was able to kind of get the ball rolling with justice for Artists by working with artists that I already knew and that started getting my references down so that people could actually talk to other artists that have worked with us. So basically working with us is very straightforward. It's a very quick process that we would. After you sign an agreement with us and we verify that you're the original creator of whatever design is being counterfeited, we just make sure that you get a U.S. copyright. And once that gets granted, we can file a case. And depending on who's stealing your art and where it's being stolen, we might be, for example, engaging with a big box store like an Urban Outfitters or TJ Maxx and our lawyer would be just going back and forth there. Or we would actually file litigation and go after every single store that's on Amazon and ebay and Etsy and all those sites that are stealing your work and basically just build one entire. It's called a mass market infringement case where there's dozens or hundreds of counterfeiters all in one case and you're basically going after all of them together.
- [06:21]
B
Oh, wow. You know, I've heard from other people in the industry that they're like, it's not even worth trying to go after someone on Amazon because you might shut them down and another one will pop up like whack a mole. So have you found that, like, artists have been able to successfully, you know, not just get things taken off of Amazon and all the places then continue to sell that design profitably on their own?
- [06:47]
A
Absolutely. And I should also mention they, some of them have received six plus figure wire transfers for their work being stolen that we were able to recoup. So there's a tremendous amount of money on the table and Amazon is By far the most, I guess lucrative would be the best word, place for us to pursue counterfeiters. Because you should keep in mind that in order to be really successful on Amazon, you probably have to have inventory at their warehouse so that you can be on FBA and have the item delivered the next day. Now, even if most of these sellers are overseas, their inventory is sitting at the warehouse at Amazon. And so if we freeze their store, which is what we do, they can't just open up another store because all their inventory has specific codes related to their. The store that we froze, we froze their inventory and, you know, their assets at the same time. So they are much more eager to settle with us than maybe another. If you catch someone on an Etsy or an ebay and they can just maybe start a new store.
- [07:43]
B
See, that's something I didn't know. And I guess that makes total sense, because if the inventory is already at Amazon, what are they going to do? I guess that begs the question, why do you do this work if you're not a lawyer? Like, you do this work because you're passionate about it, but I don't think you have a law degree. I think what you've done is you've created like, you've found those contacts and brought them together so that you can just, like, do it all very swiftly. So tell me a little bit about finding the people who help make this happen for you. Sure.
- [08:13]
A
And I think it all traces back to the way that I ran my original Etsy store. I'm not technically an artist per se, but I'm more of an art director. So the designs that I created were basically my ideas that I would use Photoshop to kind of collage together Frankenstein, and then I would track down different artists to actually execute those designs for me. I'm very good at handling lots of different people and connections and kind of like putting the pieces together. And that's basically all of the skills that I learned growing my Etsy store. I was able to transfer to justice for Artists. And you're correct, I don't have a law degree. I've seen every episode of Judge Judy and been there in person.
- [08:49]
B
I love that.
- [08:52]
A
But besides that, I'm just simply a sponge when it comes to information. And so I went through the experience from start to finish as an artist, dealing with the lawyers and seeing how the journey went. And I just. I was like, I can do this. I can. You know, every step of the way, I was just like, oh, that's interesting. And then the whole process took Quite a while. And so as I was waiting for my thing to finish, I was just like, well, maybe I can, you know, let me start putting together all the pieces and see if I can make this into a regular thing. And so, I don't know, it was quite scary for me to basically just shut down my Etsy shop and start justice for Artists. And it's a slow process in the legal system is you're not getting sales every day, so to speak. It's kind of like you're working towards a large settlement, which could be usually months down the line and sometimes could be years. Once we started getting some settlements sorted out, I was like, okay, I can do this.
- [09:45]
B
That's incredible. And I mean, transitioning from selling on Etsy to pretty much offering a service that is incredibly altruistic, I'm sure people were shocked. Be like, what does this person want from me in the end? Are they going to steal my life, my store? What is happening? So I imagine in that case, your big network of artists that you've worked with who could have, like, vouch for you, this guy is legit. Is incredibly important, is word of mouth primarily still how you're finding people to serve.
- [10:14]
A
Absolutely. All the artists that we've helped are on Instagram and stuff. And so a lot of times what'll happen is someone gets their work stolen and then they put up a post on Instagram. And then what we're seeing more, which is really encouraging, is that someone that we've worked with before, someone that knows about us, will tag us on the post and say, reach out to these guys. And so, yeah, it's been. It's. It's really crazy. And just on that note, you know, probably the most rewarding part of this whole thing for me is when we get, you know, we've. We've basically, we've reached the end of a case, we've got all the settlements. We wire the money to them or send them a check, and then we get, like, this stunned email of just like, I had no idea that this was actually going to happen. Like, it didn't. Like, even you were telling me every week where we were. I just did not expect to actually see this money.
- [11:02]
B
And that's the beauty of it because, you know, I've been in cases, so, like, my art has been ripped off. Like, I said first I would handle it myself, you know, and then I had a big enough retailer rip me off that, you know, I hired a very expensive lawyer, and in the end, I got nothing from it. And, like, Maybe the product was pulled, or maybe they were already, like, not going to sell any more of it anyways. And then I owed attorney all this money. And so that my story is a story that so many artists have had or have heard when they're thinking about pursuing protecting their work. It's one thing to copyright your work, which we'll talk about in a second, but it's another thing to know how to defend yourself. And then, you know, I've been around for a while, too, Daniel. I was selling on Etsy in 2010, and I didn't know what I didn't know. So I was one of those folks who, when I started selling, seeing artists just, like, go after people online. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna do that too. And I almost got sued for defamation because I, like, called out this retailer who had clearly ripped me off. And I wish you guys had existed back then, because I got myself into a heap of trouble and my loyal followers, like. And in the end, I got a nice professional letter from a lawyer saying, you better stop it. And so I was terrified. And so, you know, I've been on both sides. I have, like, taken action, and then, you know, blew up in my face. I've tried it the legal route, and it wasn't until I found another advocate that you should connect with an attorney who is for artists. I'll introduce you guys sometimes, if you don't already know each other, Jason Aquilino, that he started.
- [12:38]
A
I do.
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B
You know Jason?
- [12:40]
A
I do.
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B
He's the best, isn't he?
- [12:42]
A
He's awesome.
- [12:43]
B
I love Jason. He's the one who showed me, like, no, we can actually. There's ways forward for artists to not only protect their work, but thrive. And I don't know. It changed my whole perspective. I'm like, don't be afraid to put your artwork out there. Don't be afraid to bring in someone to help you resolve this. It's frustrating to me when people just say, you know, just make more work. You know, it's flattering, you know, that they even liked you in the first place. I mean, come on, we're all trying to make money here as creative entrepreneurs. So how are you able to change people's perception of, like, what. What can happen for them?
- [13:23]
A
Absolutely. So I think the biggest staple for justice for artists and the reason why we're able to help so many artists and have done it so far, is because we work entirely on contingency. So we don't ask for any money at any point from any of the Artists that we work with. And so that allows us to help people in poorer countries that really just do not have the funds to. You know, artists in general don't have the kind of funds to. They're barely making a living doing what they're doing. And then so the idea of some big store stealing their work or whatever, it's very easy for them to, like you said earlier, just say, you know, well, I'll just make more work or whatever, and it'll go, you know, like. And it's also just having been an artist myself and been around them a lot is they are not. They're kind of averse to the whole legal system. And just they. They probably became artists because they just didn't want to deal with a lot of the real world stuff of just, like, paperwork and all that stuff. So I totally get it. And so it's been an. It's an uphill battle for us sometimes to try to convince an artist that they can just keep doing what they're doing, and we'll just do all the work for them if they. If, you know, if they. If we connect.
- [14:24]
B
So you say you work on contingency, and I love hearing that. So explain what that means for everybody who's listening to work on contingency.
- [14:31]
A
Absolutely. So we only get paid if there actually is a settlement at the end of the case. If, for whatever reasons, if things don't work out, we'll take all the hits financially and the artist would not be paying anything.
- [14:43]
B
Oh, my gosh. Like, that's what we need more of. And I'm so glad that you founded this because, you know, like, people don't have the extra money to go after this or energy. I'll say that's another thing. It can be a huge time suck to try to take care of these things. And emotionally, I think creatives are, you know, we pour our heart into our work. And so to feel like there's an advocate out there who will fight that battle for you, like, what a relief to not have to be out of pocket at that point. I know you can't give away too many details, but you do have some testimonials of people you've worked with. What has been your most astounding settlement, that situation that you've seen.
- [15:22]
A
Okay, so this job from start to finish is just a wild ride from tracking down the artists, seeing what the items are that they're making, and being, like, getting the moment where we actually figure out how much was sold of their work. Because Amazon or Etsy or ebay, they'll actually turn over the records to us of the total sales for that specific SKU number or asin. So we're like, this person sold a million dollars worth of your art or something like that. So there was an artist who closed her Etsy shop, had disappeared. We knew that her pin had gone viral. It was a frog giving the middle finger. It was called the Frick frog. And we could not figure out who the creator was for the longest time. And so I have a whole team of researchers, we've completely turned the Internet inside out, cannot find her. So I go on Reddit and there's a section called Help me find where you can kind of just throw something up and hope Hail Mary that somebody's going to come back with something. And so we put her up, we put her frog up there. And I said, do you guys know who made this frog? And someone said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Boo Juice from Etsy. So I was like, okay, that's incredible. But of course, Boo Juice on Etsy had closed down prior and so that also hit a dead end. But I was eventually able to track down the creator and I had sent her a message on Instagram and she didn't look at it for at least a couple weeks, maybe a month. And I remember at 10pm on my end and I'm just going to sleep, I got two kids, you know, we go down at like 9:30. And so I get this text from her on Instagram. She said, yeah, I made that frog. And I'm just like, oh my God, I need to talk to this person immediately before they disappear. I'm just like typing like crazy while my baby's sleeping next to me. And I'm able to convince her to work with us. So we start the Frick frog case and we got her like a life changing amount of money for a frog pin that was giving the middle finger. So that was, that was a crazy ride.
- [17:14]
B
Life changing amounts of money. People don't realize, I think like, okay, like you said, we as artists, you know, we're trying to just uphill battle, sell our art, find an audience, make money. So for some artists that drawing on their own, on their own product maybe makes them $1,000 and they're thrilled, you know what I mean? The idea that your art is so valuable to someone else that they can generate a million dollars in gross sales and then if you like, your rightful portion of that is like a retroactive licensing agreement or whatever, that it could change your entire life. I mean People don't value their work nearly enough. And then you just see this misconception. The world is like, artists don't change the world. Artists aren't valuable. Meanwhile, all these companies are making all this money off of people. It's ridiculous. So I love that you're able to change, like one illustration. One frog changed someone's life. How incredible.
- [18:12]
A
I mean, as it should.
- [18:13]
B
As it should, right? What happens now, though, that we are in a world of AI where artists work is out there and being crawled and used to create other works of art. Are you guys, like, tiptoeing into that at all?
- [18:26]
A
Yeah. So this AI thing, it's pretty scary. You know, we should probably touch on the idea of what a counterfeit is versus a knockoff, because that's a big. That's a big part of the legal system here and kind of like whether or not we can actually pursue someone for stealing your idea. So the counterfeit would be basically, you create your black sheep, for example, and someone creates an almost identical black sheep. Maybe they changed a few items, but they're pretty minuscule that your. Your black sheep is the black. Anyone can say, yeah, it's the exact same thing. Now with the AI introduction, if someone feeds your black sheep into some sort of AI mid journey or whatever, and they spit out another black sheep, that is a different sheep with a different look. It's the same. You get the same vibe when you look at it. It's this, you know, people can definitely say, oh, yeah, that's from the other black decks. Clearly. Now that gets into what's called a knockoff. And so it's a lot more of a gray area. If there is enough evidence to say, yes, that was stolen from you, versus no, this person or the AI machine was inspired by this design to create the new design. Because if you change. And there. And there's a folklore that it's like 30% that if you change a design, 30%. So that's not true. There isn't actually a percentage. There's no. I mean, how do you even make a percentage out of something? So it's more like it comes down to each one's a case by case situation. I will present these sort of situations to the lawyers that we work with regularly and say, is there enough evidence here? Do you think that we can pursue this big store for this item? And so circling back to the beginning of your question and kind of like this whole AI thing, we can't group all of these AI images into one single lawsuit because each one of Those designs is different. And the only way that we can do a mass market infringement case is if each of the sellers are selling an identically similar, the same product, basically. And we can say all, all 100 of these sellers are selling the exact same black sheep that you created. There probably is some sort of syndicate, maybe they're working together in the background. That's kind of what we're pushing forward when we group them all together. We're trying to push the case that they're all somehow related to each other and that this is, this isn't just a random group of people that are selling your stuff.
- [20:37]
B
I see. You know, you mentioned like circumstances like you have to be able to prove like it's a counterfeit. But also there's things you can do to like, I don't know, gather evidence, I think a little bit sometimes. So that if you do need to go to litigation outside of A.I. you know, like sometimes as an artist, when you see something out there before you do anything, you should obviously contact you guys. Justice for artists. But there's also things that you need to do, and I noticed you had a download on your website. Things artists can do whenever they spot art they think is being ripped off, that's theirs. What are those things that they can do and gather for gathering evidence?
- [21:19]
A
Absolutely. So let's take for an example, maybe a big box store that's stealing your work or something like that, or you're pretty sure they're stealing it. You want to definitely get a screenshot of the site because websites go down all the time. And so having a PDF of this listing up on the site is very important. One of the largest companies that we go after on a very regular basis tracks all of us. And so if we don't have a VPN on our computer and they notice that we're looking at a specific design on their site, they will remove that site, that page. So that's a huge cat and mouse game on our end. So I can't stress how important important it is for you to get a screenshot of it. Another thing to do is that if you are going to probably pursue a case and go after them in the US which is where we do all of our cases, it is quite important for you to have a test purchase to actually place an order and have it shipped to your house or somebody else's house. We ship our test purchases to the state that we will be filing the case in. Because that's how it works, is that if you're going to file your case in Chicago, which is where we file most of our cases, we actually send all our test purchases to someone in Chicago to receive them. So then if you have the evidence in hand, then that's. The judges will be much more open to moving forward with a case. In that situation, we have some judges that will not allow us to move forward against any sellers that we did not have a test purchase in place with. So that. That's why it's so important. But before you freak out and throw up a big Instagram rants, it's really important to just do your research too, and just make sure that that person really stole your work versus was inspired by something that is maybe inspired you as well. There have been times where two different people do have the same idea at some point. And you know, there is. And that's the whole thing about art, is art is all of art. Anything you're creating, there's something before this that inspires you to make what you're about to make. Right?
- [23:19]
B
And that's the challenging part. I had some popular art early on that was like woodland creatures. And before I knew better, anytime I would see like a little fox illustration hop up on Etsy, I'd be like, oh, no, did they take my idea? And then once I realized, you know, two people can have similar ideas at the same time based on trends, maybe we are all watching the same show at the same time, or there's this, you know, conversation happening in the world and it's inspiring these ideas. You know, I've seen artists who are hypersensitive to every little detail. And then I see people who are just too afraid to go after it at all. Speaking of gathering evidence, do you ever go after, like, smaller companies that are ripping people off? You talked a lot about mass market, Amazon, things like that. But what if it's a smaller brand that's still bigger than yours?
- [24:08]
A
Hmm. Yeah, no, we do get that from time to time. I can just remember one, that we had an Instagram lead. Someone reached out to us and said, there's this girl at this art festival in it. Every time I see her, she's copied all of my designs.
- [24:19]
B
Yeah, and that stuff really does happen.
- [24:22]
A
Definitely. It does happen. And I should let you guys know that I was. I sold my T shirts at craft shows for over six years. I was popping up a tent at least twice a week. So I have seen my share of craft drama. So I can relate. The craziest story I remember in that world was I used to go do the Vegas trade shows. To try to get into, like, the big box stores. And I would go do this one called. It was called Pool. And you're. It's for the hipster indie brands that are not big enough to go to Magic, which is upstairs. They kind of put you down in the basement. And I remember one year there were two brands that both had the exact same designs on their T shirts. And there was a backstory, too, because they were both from the exact same city in the exact same state, and they both knew who each other were. And I talked to both of them as a. Because I kind of. I'm a sucker for gossipy situations, Daniel. As long as it's not about me. I'm like, what happened? What's the deal? I figured out who the original one was, and they were only 10 booths apart, which was a pretty crazy scenario. But back to your question, which I think was absolutely insane in terms of the organizer to put them together like that. But back to your question about do we go after them? I will help you no matter what, regardless of whether or not I make any money or something. I want you to feel like we did the best that we can, and so we will, you know, if we don't think it's going to be worth your worth money to file litigation to go after this one single brand on Etsy, well, at least we'll help you put together a legitimate cease and desist letter or takedown letter, or help you get in touch with Etsy directly so that you can at least make your case to their legal department or something of that nature. But it does all boil down to copyrights and what you can protect and what you can't. And so I do briefly want to tell a short story about someone that we couldn't help, which was a very sad story. And this guy, his name is Scott, and he had this very interesting. I thought it was a very cool product called a Shake a Shelf. And so he makes these miniature bookcase that you can open with a glass door, and you put little books in that are miniature, and you can stack them all in a row, and then you can shake it and they all go out of place. So when you get angry or whatever, you want to get your. It's kind of like a fidget tool or whatever. And he's the creator. He's in, I think, Massachusetts. And unfortunately, his Shake a Shelf went super viral, got counterfeited left and right. And it turned out we weren't able to help him get a copyright because there was no single element of His Shake a Shelf that was protectable, that if you make a miniature bookcase and you put miniature books in a miniature bookcase, none of those items are new items, so to speak. They're just smaller versions of a real bookcase with real books on it. And so we couldn't get him a patent either, because it's very unlikely that shaking a shelf is going to be a patentable situation. So, unfortunately, there was really nothing we could do for poor Scott and his shake a Shelf. And so that kind of gets to the idea of. When I was running my clothing company and making T shirts and stuff, I realized I only wanted to start creating items that I could protect myself on. I didn't do. I stopped doing any sort of word shirts where anyone can do that. Anyone can write the same words on a shirt. And there's. It's. It's very unusual for you to be able to protect those sort of things unless it involves a trademark, per se. One little tip I'll give anyone listening out there is if you add an artistic element to say the scripture, and you put a little flower in the corner, and you've drawn the flower or something like that, if someone does a direct steal of your product and you've got the copyright on that little flower in the corner, you are good to go.
- [27:59]
B
You're good to go, Daniel. We register every single piece of work we make at Gingerbread, and we make a lot of artwork. So, like, we have a whole system that we do and learned it the hard way. I misfiled some things early on, learned that when I tried to go into litigation, I filed it wrong, but now we have this system. But a lot of what I create involves, like, public domain texts or words. And so when you go through that process, you have to be very meticulous about, like, yes, this does contain public domain information, but it also contains original artwork. There's a lot of misconception about what you can and can't protect, what you can and can't use. Let's talk about that. Public domain is, like, one of my favorite things to talk about. Can you talk a little bit about how artists can use work in the public domain?
- [28:42]
A
Absolutely. And I'm not a lawyer, so don't take legal advice for me, but I'm just somebody who does this every day. So public domain means that the image is old enough that it's lost any sort of rights or protection on it. So taking the Hokkaido wave from the, you know, Japanese Yukio E. My wife's Japanese, I hope I got It.
- [29:01]
B
Right.
- [29:02]
A
You know, you can use that image and put it into your artwork. I'm actually thinking of a specific design that an artist did where he used the Wave. It's called the Great Wave as well. It's like a super famous piece. And then he added his own son in the background and built it into this cool landscape that made it very. It's called Vaporwave was the style. And so filing the copyright for that particular piece for him we had to do. There's a limitations section when you're filing the copyright and you basically say, I'm not claiming to be the owner or the creator of the Great Wave. However, all of the other artwork with the sun in the background is my work. And so you will get a copyright that protects just your section of the work and doesn't in any way claim to be the Great Wave.
- [29:49]
B
So you can protect yourself even if you're using public domain works and like using them in correlation with something you're creating yourself. And I just mentioned that we copyright a lot of artwork. We do a lot of stuff at Gingerbread, but most artists aren't really, really in the position to even afford a single copyright, even if you're grouping it in 10. Right. So where do you think people need to start filing their copyright? What level of success or revenue do they need to be at to be like, yeah, go copyright this now before something happens?
- [30:18]
A
Yeah, great question. Yeah. So a copyright in the US costs $65 and you can do it online. Someone like me who does it every day, takes me 10 minutes to file a copyright and I'm happy to send over a tutorial video. It's. It's very, very easy to do it. And so a lot of people think it's going to be this long process. They might need to go somewhere or mail something. You can just do it all from your computer. And so I can answer this as an artist because when I was running my clothing company, we were creating hundreds of designs. And so $65 times hundreds of designs is a lot of money. And I was not in a position to. I didn't also thought it was kind of useless. I was like, well, probably only five of these designs are ever going to be popular. And that's ultimately how I went about my copywriting was I only copyrighted the designs that I could see were taking off. Or maybe if you've seen already one of them being counterfeited, that's a good wake up call. Like, you need to get the copyright locked down because there's a huge Difference between somebody stealing your work before or after you have the copyright, that if you. If someone steals your work before you have a copyright and then you go and you're always in a position to be able to get a copyright. If you're the original creator and you get to backdate it, you can say, I made this item 10 years ago, but I'm copyrighting it today. And you would get a copyright that basically writes that out. And so if you got the copyright after somebody counterfeits your work or stealing it, you're only entitled to collect the profits of what that person made on your work. However, if someone steals your work after you've already copyrighted it and you've received your registration, that gets into the territory of willful infringement, where they had the ability to know that this item was copyrighted and they overlooked it and they went ahead and stole it anyway. And so you might be able to get damages on that. So even if they only sold 10 units, that's not important. What's important is how much did that affect your brand? Did people. Did that really damage you? And you'd have to kind of show your evidence of why it really hurt. Like, one of the biggest ways that you can get a larger settlement is if there's some sort of confusion to the customer. That if somebody who is shopping on a fast fashion website and bought a T shirt that had your trademark on it, for example, then that's much more valuable in terms of what you can recoup than say, if it was just a design that they that was being sold.
- [32:45]
B
I see. So we're talking damages and benefits of registering your work earlier rather than later. But like Daniel said, you can always register it for copyright. The difference typically is price. And then of course, like you said, what you're able to get if you're ripped off and the price does increase if you are doing it after it's published. Right. I'm not a lawyer either, but I know there's a difference between unpublished work and published work. And that's also confusing, especially in the day and age of social media right now. Like, is it published if I just put it on Instagram? Is it published if I'm asking for money? Do you have any tips, maybe for artists who are starting to think a little bit more strategically about how to protect themselves with sharing their work online?
- [33:30]
A
Yeah, once you post your product, so once you put it up anywhere or even if you just have it on your computer, but there's a timestamp on when you created it that is published. That is the date that you are going to be able to say, this was created, and this is when I became the owner. And so that will might come into play if somebody does end up stealing your work and claiming that they're the original creators and then you can get them. So, yeah, I mean, we live in this world where everything is memes and recycled and goes a million places. For me, at least as a creator, as soon as I started sending my art files overseas to get produced, I used to print shower curtains as well. I got into home decor for a little bit. As soon as you send the art file across the pond, you are done. Like, that image is going to be everywhere, almost guaranteed. And so it's. It's really important to copyright your work. You shouldn't feel, however, that you can't post. I would really hope that you aren't in the mental state that you feel like, you know what, I'm just not going to put my work up anymore because it's going to get stolen or something of that nature. One of the most rewarding messages we got back from an artist that we helped was, you know, not only did you guys financially help us, but mentally, I'm feeling like I can put my art back up online. That was really cool.
- [34:38]
B
I love that because we're always telling people, share your work if you want to build an audience. You and your team are superheroes right now. These counterfeiters are like Lex Luthor. They know who you are, man, because they're blocking your IP address if you don't have your vpn. So, Daniel, you're doing something right, you and your team. And I cannot wait for you to get to help and serve more artists. And I think that in no time, you'll go from like 150 artists or to a thousand to who knows what's possible? So thank you for doing the work that you're doing. And everyone can find Daniel and his whole team@justiceforartists.com all right, everybody, go support justice for Artists because the work they're doing matters for our creative community. Thank you so much, Daniel, for being here. It's been a pleasure. And everybody, we're not lawyers. Remember that, so don't. All right, bye. Thanks so much for tuning in. Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you subscribe to this podcast and then share it with one of your best art friends? I'd really like, appreciate it. And then head on over to Instagram and follow me at the leverage your art account and you can keep up with all of our future episodes. Thank you so much for your support. It means everything to have you here listening and learning.
- [35:51]
A
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