Stolen artwork and why I feel powerless in the face of it

But feel better for writing about it here!

This was not the post I intended to send today, it was supposed to be something much more cheerful, creative, and with a great ‘overheard’ story and illustration (next time, I promise, that story’s not going anywhere).

I’ve been in a great stream of flow recently and really enjoying my work.

But something came to my attention on Thursday to interrupt my flow state. Some of my work, which is publicly on display online, was taken without permission or contract for royalties, breaking copyright law, and placed for sale on Temu at greatly reduced prices.

I don’t know how long they’ve been on there, but if some of the sales figures are to be believed they’ve been selling in their thousands.

Now, I’m aware this sort of theft is commonplace (I’ve heard reports of it now filtering into Amazon). It’s affected me only once before, a few years ago, the website in question targeted purely greeting card designers and was eventually shut down. But now, it appears to be almost normalised.

Not only did I see my work on there but plenty of other artists that I know well and admire alongside brand new illustrators new to platforms like Thortful.

The sheer scale of the theft is mesmerising and in numbers that has AI assistance written all over it

And why is it the artist that now has to jump through hoops to prove it’s their work that has been stolen? I don’t know if I‘m more annoyed about the theft of my artwork or the theft of my time in making all these copyright complaints on their over-complicated reporting systems, clearly designed to deter you from reporting infringements!

What can I do?

Well Thortful, an online greeting card marketplace and which is where most of my work has been taken from, has produced a step-by-step guide to reporting each case of copyright infringement, if you need it yourself, you can read that post here

• I am in conversation with Thortful as many of my designs were contractually exclusive to them, but at the moment it falls to me to search and find my images online and to report each one individually, it won’t take much for you to imagine how long this takes and what a distraction this is for an artist when all I want to do is paint and get on with my commission work and new contractual projects.

• It’s already crossed my mind that some forward-thinking individual might provide this as a service to artists I can hire on Fiverr! (I’ve just searched there and there isn’t …yet). But I would pay for someone to do this for me, just to get it out of my head.

• I can stop putting my work on Thortful and Moonpig, I have decided to do this until something changes. There are other avenues to selling my work.

• I could watermark all my work and I know artists who do this, but it’s a task that sucks the joy out of sharing my art and I find it interferes with the viewing experience. Some enjoy seeing my paintings and illustrations online and I’d like for them to continue to see them, without a watermark.

• I ensure that the images I use online, on my website are low resolution enough that if anyone were to copy them they’d not be able to reproduce anything without blurring or pixelation.

• And, I can vent and share my frustration at this blatant theft as I’m doing now with you and yes it is making me feel a lot better!

  

What can you do?

Christmas shopping illustration by Jo Scott

Obviously, don’t buy from Temu!

But besides that, the best thing you can do is buy direct from independent artists and crafters and if you’re buying for Christmas, buy early.

I’ve gone ahead and listed all the other artists I know have been affected by this in the past few days, some I know well and some are strangers.

My hope is I introduce you to some new artists and you find some great Christmas presents!

Emma Ball - https://www.emmaball.co.uk/

Perkins & Morley - https://perkinsandmorley.com/

Harriet Lowther - https://madebyharriet.co.uk/

Louise Rawlings - https://louise-rawlings-art.myshopify.com/

Sam Toft - https://samtoft.co.uk/

Studio Mads - https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/StudioMADS

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oh yes and me! - https://www.joscottart.com/

I’m also going to share these artists too because,

a. they are great supporters of me and my work

b. I just love their work and if you do end up using this email as a gift guide then you should see these artists’ work too!

Niki Groom

- https://www.missmagpiefashionspy.com/

Karin Celestine

- https://www.celestineandthehare.com/

Hannah Nunn

- https://www.hannahnunn.co.uk/

Andy Poplar - https://vinegarandbrownpaper.co.uk/

Sandra Jordan - https://www.sandrajordanphotography.co.uk/

Sara Abbott - https://www.sara-abbott.com/

I am bound to have missed some of my artist friends off this list, I am not very clear-headed at the moment and if I have, I will rectify it in a future post!

I appreciate not everyone is able to buy things at the moment so actions you can take that don’t cost a penny, include sharing this post with your friends and family, following the hashtag #artistsagainsttemu on IG and elsewhere (if you use Threads or ‘X’) and sharing those posts, as a group of artists we are working together to raise further awareness and every share and social interaction really does help.

Lastly like and comment on this post, if you're reading this on Substack please restack so the message is spread far and wide, all ideas and tactics on what else we can do next are welcome (yes I am already in touch with ACID), having been through this before I ‘think’ we have most avenues in action but I may have missed something and I’ll do my best to reply to everyone.

I feel a lot better now, thank you for reading this far. It’s good to vent it all out onto paper. I’m going to switch my phone on silent, pop some music on, and get back into my paintings.