This company seems to be ripping off artwork from Rimworld

[Herr Morlock]

https://www.redbubble.com/people/Apex5/shop

I found this inside the Project Zomboid forum where the mods comfirmed that this is NOT official PZ merchandise.
So, the chances are high, that the Rimworld merchandise is illegal, as well.

Propably you developers can make contact to each others, in order to sue that company together?

[Howkin__]

Reddubble is one of those sites where you can just upload a jpg and then print it on all kinds of stuff, And the site does little to stop infringments. The content creator vinesauce Vinny visit the site from time to time to see all the rip off stuff regarding his content.

[Morkonan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbubble

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=563e5484-8079-4a3c-8c7e-f4360ce43df6

I think that the cost of pursuing a suit against them might be more expensive than the recouped losses, but I don't know "Australia" so... /shrug

IMO, the website doesn't do anything to act to prevent trademark infringement or abide by copyright law. That's not unusual, though - If they did have active review of such things, they'd be exposing themselves to more/worse lawsuits.

And, if by some miracle all copyrighted text and trademarked images were removed from their list of product, their revenue would tank.

As it is, they have very deep pockets. I wonder...

https://www.redbubble.com/shop/disney

LOLZ

Someone forward that link to Disney ™ © ®...

(Note the color changes in the graphics and some subtle changes in them. Disney trademarks color schemes for each character. HOWEVER, the link and page itself uses the "Disney" name... That's enough to make Disney's fifty-eleven lawyers a bit excited. *Edit- I note this because it's an active and clear attempt to try to circumvent trademark. The "looks like" boundary, no matter how much work the "artist" did, is broken because the entire product line is prefaced by the word "Disney." This is what "stoopid" looks like, folks. Remember it. :))

[Astasia]

It's a bit of a gray area. They are selling a printing service, and the art being printed is somewhat questionable because while it is clearly copyrighted content in many cases, it's transformative, they are taking a computer image and putting some amount of effort into turning it into a magnet or t-shirt print and adding something to it which I believe technically makes it fan art. So it's a service that prints art and fan art onto whatever people want, on demand, rather than a store selling bootleg merch. Disney is absolutely rabid when it comes to protecting it's copyrights when it can, but this site has been around for 15 years and has won multiple "awards" while entering the public spotlight a few times over other controversies, if Disney could do anything about it they would have by now, because there is no question that they know about it, and if Disney can't find a way to confront the site then it's unlikely there is any avenue to litigation currently. This will likely change in the future.

You will probably see something similar for 3d printing soon, if it doesn't already exist. These I think are areas where entrepreneurs are ahead of the laws.

[VoiD]

Free advertising, they should do more of those.

Not like the dev's losing anything anyway, he isn't in the business of selling RW Merch afaik and even if he was it's not set in stone that he would get any losses at all, people who like a brand buy the originals anyway, people who don't care wouldn't spend more anyway either.

[LIMP BISQUICK]

Awe they got project zomboid shirts too. Cute

[Jigain]

Originally posted by Astasia:

It's a bit of a gray area. They are selling a printing service, and the art being printed is somewhat questionable because while it is clearly copyrighted content in many cases, it's transformative, they are taking a computer image and putting some amount of effort into turning it into a magnet or t-shirt print and adding something to it which I believe technically makes it fan art.

Not really. If they don't in a meaningful way change the art itself, their product is not transformative and as such is not covered by fair use. Doesn't matter if they slap a print of a copyrighted image onto a shirt, bra, mug, frame, or cake (actually, cake miiiight be a transformative work).

Essentially the two questions regarding whether something is transformative or not is:
1) Has the material taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
2) Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights, and understandings?

All this said, I'm not a lawyer. I just have an interest in law. So take this with a fair helping of salt.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Jigain:

Not really. If they don't in a meaningful way change the art itself, their product is not transformative and as such is not covered by fair use. Doesn't matter if they slap a print of a copyrighted image onto a shirt, bra, mug, frame, or cake (actually, cake miiiight be a transformative work).

Essentially the two questions regarding whether something is transformative or not is:
1) Has the material taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
2) Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights, and understandings?

All this said, I'm not a lawyer. I just have an interest in law. So take this with a fair helping of salt.

Just cropping an image or cutting out a portion of it and using it in a new way generally counts as transformative. For example taking a company logo or iconic character and cropping it onto the thumbnail for a youtube video which covers a topic related to said company, even if that video is monetized, it's allowed. So put a small cropped image of Mickey Mouse on your youtube video talking about how aggressive Disney is with copyright enforcement, not a problem. The point is you aren't using that art in the same way it was originally used.

Making a static piece of computer art into a t-shirt could also easily be argued to be a meaningful change, it's an entirely different medium and serves an entirely different purpose.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Making a static piece of computer art into a t-shirt could also easily be argued to be a meaningful change, it's an entirely different medium and serves an entirely different purpose.

There's actually an interesting / disheartening (depending on where you stand) case in the US that's currently underway, in which tattoo artists are being sued for tattooing copyright images (such as celebrities' faces) onto their clients' skins. As it stands, the courts are leaning toward the viewpoint that taking an original image and transferring it to a different medium (e.g., human skin) does *not* count as a transformative change.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by Astasia:

Making a static piece of computer art into a t-shirt could also easily be argued to be a meaningful change, it's an entirely different medium and serves an entirely different purpose.

There's actually an interesting / disheartening (depending on where you stand) case in the US that's currently underway, in which tattoo artists are being sued for tattooing copyright images (such as celebrities' faces) onto their clients' skins. As it stands, the courts are leaning toward the viewpoint that taking an original image and transferring it to a different medium (e.g., human skin) does *not* count as a transformative change.

If something like that does go through then it creates the precedence needed to start seriously considering going after sites like this, and the thousands upon thousands of tattoo parlors around the world that have been tattooing popular characters on millions of people's bodies for decades. If you are talking about the Kat Von D case though, I honestly highly doubt she is going to lose that one, and it was just filed last month so I'm not sure there is any leaning yet as it usually takes many months before these things finally reach a courtroom.

[VoiD]

It's nice that these absurd cases show that the concept of intelectual property can't work, it's a contradiction of terms, if it's intelectual it can't be property.

Property is property to diferentiate between owners, if I have a car it's mine, you can't steal my car, if you do I'll lose it due to your hostile action.

When it comes to IP this doesn't apply, if I sing a song, you can learn it and sing along, the fact that you're also singing my song does not subtract anything from me, it's still present in my head as well as yours, hence why anything intelectual can't be called property, nor stolen.

You can steal my shirt with a RW logo from my closet, never the idea of printing a shirt with the RW logo.

[DasaKamov]

@Astasia: The Kat Von D case is certainly the most high-profile example and will probably set the precedent for this issue, but the core question has been around for a number of years -- a longtime tattoo-ist friend of mine told me of fly-by-night mail-order lawyers who've would threaten him with litigation over this type of art going back at least 12 years.

@VoiD: Intellectual Property does work and has worked for hundreds of years -- having roots in trademarks and patents, in fact. IP law is vital to protect artists, craftsmen and other creative-types from people who would just steal and copy their ideas for profit and greed. Without IP laws, a lot of incentive to innovate and create would be squashed, since no one wants their ideas concepts or ideas stolen by someone who has no care other than making a quick, lazy profit.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

@Astasia: The Kat Von D case is certainly the most high-profile example and will probably set the precedent for this issue, but the core question has been around for a number of years -- a longtime tattoo-ist friend of mine told me of fly-by-night mail-order lawyers who've would threaten him with litigation over this type of art going back at least 12 years.

@VoiD: Intellectual Property does work and has worked for hundreds of years -- having roots in trademarks and patents, in fact. IP law is vital to protect artists, craftsmen and other creative-types from people who would just steal and copy their ideas for profit and greed. Without IP laws, a lot of incentive to innovate and create would be squashed, since no one wants their ideas concepts or ideas stolen by someone who has no care other than making a quick, lazy profit.

You mean it hasn't worked for hundreds of years and it has only gotten worse*

And no, it was never meant to protect anyone, just a tool to bash the small guy and all of the competition, having a channel that's one of the first things I said, feel free to take all my videos and use them for whatever, I just kindly ask people to give me credit and YT gives me tools to find out who's using which part of my stuff, I've seen other channels using pieces of my own gameplay for their own compilations or video reviews, specially in TW WH and I'd never even try to strike any of them, none of them are harming me in any way, I would be the ♥♥♥♥ if I did that.

Besides, here's another real life example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsIihrcqJYA

The only thing IPs protect is the right to create monopolies, jack up prices and take away alternatives from consumers, much like that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who bought the rights to produce some HIV medication and increased it's cost 700%, because the government would punish anyone else in his stead if they dared to try to produce the same medicine people needed.

Funfact: If you try to use the soviet anthem in a video you'll get your monetization stolen, because much like gameplay videos, the people performing the anthem can steal money from other creators for using a song they didn't create, just because they are performing it.

[Herr Morlock]

Only because patents might not work as intended, it does not mean that intelectual property can not do so.
If you want to have the property of other people (intelectual or regular), for free, you are nothing but a filthy marxist...

[DasaKamov]

Of course Intellectual Property laws can be abused, just like every other law that has been written in the entire history of humanity. ;) And IP law has a lot of catching-up to do when it comes to digital domains and the internet world.

Overall though, IP law protects the hardworking every-person FROM monopolies and corporate giants, not the other way around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F6o0hzHkyQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opDduxSQSA0

[VoiD]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Of course Intellectual Property laws can be abused, just like every other law that has been written in the entire history of humanity....

You're getting to the right places

As for the videos, it sounds like those explanations on how we should tax the poor and drain them of everything they have, taking all of their upwards mobility, but it's for their own good.

AKA the state breaks their legs, give them a walker and tells them "see? You wouldn't be walking without us"

Any and every problem that may arise that could "need" IP rights is derived from IP rights.

That being said all of this is straying too far from the main point that intellectual property is not, and could never be a thing, it's a contradiction of terms, it's the same of saying "the law of square circles", sure, state laws are arbitrary, don't follow logic and don't have to make sense, they can be named whatever and just issue arbitrary punishments for people doing things the government doesn't want them to do pretending there is a justification for that, but history shows how flawed the concept is, the fact that i keeps getting more and more absurd, ludicrous, and it's constantly trying to patch itself because it wasn't based on a valid concept to begin with, the next patch is always trying to fix the previous mistakes, and things just keep getting worse as time goes on.

The best state of IP laws was: Before IP laws.