CopyWRONG!
I was about to submit the above design to springleap as a copylefted design in the hope that fellow copyfighters would appreciate a cool t-shirt. This was before I read their terms and conditions:
You also assign the entire right, title and interest in and to the copyright to your creation. This cessation includes the right to sue for past infringement and the right to further sublicense the creation in any form, manner or for any purpose. You also acknowledge that you waive all “moral”, “artistic”, “constitutional” and/or “ethical” rights that you may have in and to your creation.
Uh, what? You give us a R7000, and R2 commission on each shirt, and suddenly all your copyright belong are to us? I don’t think so. Also, a strict reading of the above means that I’m assigning all the rights to my creation… to my creation. It owns itself! It’s autooooonomous! Muhahaha!
Compare this with Lulu.com’s self-publishing membership agreement:
When you post Content on Lulu’s website, you keep your copyright, but you grant that Lulu will provide a service to post, display, copy, and sell that Content within the limitations you set during the online publishing process.
Why does this bother me? Because as Lulu.com clearly demonstrates, it’s not necessary to take all of an artist’s copyright in order to produce and sell a product. Springleap’s (poorly written) terms also effectively mean that I can’t submit any copyleft design.
Look closely at their logo. Five pointed star, one point down? It’s a thinly disguised PENTAGRAM! Aaaah!
UPDATE (20 Aug): I apologize for calling springleap copyright nazis, since they are obviously not German, not racist, not genocidal, don’t have a secret police, aren’t lead by Hitler, and since it clearly wasn’t an amusing adynaton.
I also apologize for insinuating that springleap is satanic. Satanists have gotten a bad rap, and aren’t nearly as evil as people think they are.
I stand by my allegation that they can treat artists more fairly, and that their terms of use are poorly written, since they don’t even match parenthesizes in there.
UPDATE (22 Aug): With this post, I tried to highlight that springleap legally takes all of an artist’s copyright, and that I thought that’s unnecessary and immoral.
However, an anonymous source* tipped me off to the fact that eSquared have in the past sold t-shirts with stolen designs.
Fair enough, they responded that they didn’t know, that they were just selling another company’s shirts, and that they stopped dealing with that company.
But what about this allegation from fakeplastictrees?
[The shirt] had an Esquared tag inside and not a Rocky tag, only to find that the design on it was ripped off from Rocky.
fakeplastictrees, if you’re out there, we’d *love* some photographic proof.
What I would like to know is what (if any) screening process they have to check for copyrighted designs on submissions to springleap.
*Hey, I have an anonymous source! Almost like a *real* reporter.
17 Comments
U should chat to Eran about our TandC’s - u might not see eye to eye but you’ll learn more about each others viewpoints.
Your heading has upset me though. I think using that word in relation to our business is insensitive.
WOW Gustav. That’s some pretty harsh comments.
I can’t say I would have worded it quite the same.
I understand your concerns, but let me illuminate some basic facts.
The industry standard for a once off design is in the region of R800-R1200, depending on the artist of course. The copyright to that design ALWAYS becomes the sole intellectual property of the commissioner.
We give the artist 7 TIMES that + about R40 000 of marketing and exposure + Royalties on sales and reprints + Fair and Obvious credit in the form of their name on the back of the shirt along with the name of their design + sponsored prizes + almost R7000 of springleap apparel.
Most accomplished designers working in some of the most respected apparel groups earn less than this IN A MONTH and they churn out work for their employer like their is no tomorrow. They become the unsung heroes of the brand chained to a stool in a cube farm.
Springleap is changing that. We are about providing a tool for liberating and empowering these creators… reminding people of the value that design plays in their life and more importantly that the originator of that design has massive value.
While Lulu’s model is great for certain applications, it becomes VERY difficult to build a business on.
Springleap is a massive empowerment endeavour for both artists and the garment industry in SA. More importantly - it is a sustainable model. To keep that sustainability we need certain reassurances - one of which is of course that we don’t invest HUGE money and effort in an artist that could decide to pull their work one day.
I think that we can debate this all day, but we are ALWAYS fair and obvious about these issue.
I talk around the country at design schools who know that we own the designs if we go to print with them and they not only encourage their students and colleagues to participate, but have even started to introduce the creation of springleap tshirts into their curriculum.
I really think that you need to take a cold hard look at competitive models out there and ask a basic question.
Is springleap serving the greater good?
I believe in my heart that we are.
Why not do a one on one interview with me sometime? It would be great to chat a bit more.
Gustav, why don’t you get off your high chair and try do some thing good for artist and the South African economy.
Complaining is not constructive !
I am with Gustav on this one (although I think he is much more committed to the ideal than me).
Why not ensure the artist gets a royalty for as long as the item sells, *AND* in whichever format (for instance, what happens if Springleap starts printing mousepads with these designs?)
The idiom is “Get off your high horse”, but I like your adaption better. It evokes this mental image of a baby in a high chair having a tantrum, and flinging puree.
This is not complaining. This is critical thinking.
Consider the artist who made the I Know Chai Tea design. Graeme admits that he and his sister give attend Tai Chi classes.
Will he now be able to use the design on a poster promoting his Sifu’s classes? No.
Will he be able to make badges with it? No.
Will he be able to modify it slightly to say, “I know Tae Bo”? No.
Should he be able to do these things? YES!
My post started a conversation with springleap. I’m going to challenge their preconceptions and assumptions until they hate my guts. And if I do it right, it will result not only in a better deal for the artists, but in a better business model for springleap.
So you get off your high horse. I like it it in my high chair. Watch out for the puree!
Never sign over the copyright, Thats why the record companies are rich and the decendants of many artists poor.
I agree with you Springleap are not fair to artists.
Good post man. I don’t really unnerstand why Springleap would want to be like that about the copyright. The way I see it, they don’t particularly need to own the design to sell the shirts. Am I missing something, Springleap?
Good argument, and the inflammatory nature of the article will actually create dialougue instead of just disappearing into the background, besdies it got the SL folks out to comment - pity they didn’t actually explain themselves.
Submit your design and then infringe on the copyright.
you’re a fool. comparing lulu to springleap is idiotic. just rethink what you’re written here. does lulu run book competitions to see who gets into print? Do you win R7000.00 in a book printing competition? Does springleap do print on demand? Springleap is not cafepress my friend. You, sir, are an idiot.
Jo, you are so right. I truly am a fool and an idiot… but I don’t need lesser idiots like you to tell me that.
Of course publishing books is completely different from printing t-shirts. I mean, no way there is any similarity whatsoever between:
A. Manufacturing a physical object bearing information that is copyright.
B. Manufacturing a physical object bearing information that is copyright.
Oh, but what is this? Could it possibly be the Terms of Use of Threadless? Could it be that it actually says that “You retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions”?
Yup. Totally different. No way that springleap is a cheap knockoff* of Threadless.
Seriously man. If I wasn’t taking my medication, I’d suspect myself of having a split personality that just made that comment so I have a nice straw man to knock down. I mean, that was just way too easy.
By the way, I took the liberty of removing the URL you submitted on your comment, because there is not a snowball’s chance of surviving the surface of the sun that I am sending any traffic to your crappy parked domain. Come back when you have a real website.
Thanks for the CafePress tip though. I’d totally support a local version* of that.
*Note the impact of loaded language. You should always critically evaluate what someone says, as well as the way they say it. For the purposes of critical thinking, cheap knockoff and local version should be equivalent.
Jo Bloggs is obviously a non critical thinker, I am guessing to the religious right and left of the mental giants.
Seriously dude WTF have you been smoking? my socks?
It turns out that Joe Bloggs is just a clever way of saying “anonymous”, similar to “John Doe”, “J. Random Hacker” and “Jan Van Der Merwe”.
The commenter was either a troll, or a sock puppet.
Either way, I had so much fun responding to him, that I’ve decided to restore his crappy parked domain.
Eran please remain honest; your website suggests the following :
“The Runner-ups each get their winning design and 2 other tshirts plus a limited edition poster. They also recieve R1.00 on every tshirt we sell.” Source : springleap.com
One must then assume that Eran your statement :
“We give the artist 7 TIMES that + about R40 000 of marketing and exposure + Royalties on sales and reprints + Fair and Obvious credit in the form of their name on the back of the shirt along with the name of their design + sponsored prizes + almost R7000 of springleap apparel” only applies to one artist, the winner, and not all of the artists; you are thus acquiring the copyright to potentially thousands of pieces of art for a couple rand.
Your argument then about paying artists far more than what they might were they to ply their trade professionally is again fatally flawed : you pay one artist a very poor month’s salary for a single design. The runners up are better off selling their designs privately than via springleap - even the paltry sum of R1000 is better than the R1(cash) and the additional (R xx,xx) for exposure that you offer.
I’d far rather hear springleap admit that they are a business, like any other. No one would have any beef with them if they did that. No one would argue that they are providing artists with a window of opportunity to get their names out there..
I’m off to the pub, all this seriousness hurts my mind.
For a printer to print a book on demand is pretty straightforward. You don’t need plates or anything these days. It just gets the file from a server/computer and the printing is automated. No real overheads to tee it up. So, lulu can sell books as and when people choose to buy them.
I don’t think its as easy for t-shirts. You need to make a screen-print first, in real-world businesses this usually costs around R300.00. This is like the ’stamp’ for the shirt. So already there’s an overhead. I somehow don’t think its like a book print where you don’t lose out if nobody buys the book. With a shirt, you’d lose money if only one person bought a shirt for R100 and it cost R300.00 for the ’stencil’ plus an extra R5.00 for the ink plus R20.00 for the shirt.
I think you see where I’m going here.
However, you CAN do kuk quality prints which ‘burn’ a transfer into the shirt, which is more like a novelty, which allows cafepress to sell shirts on demand with your own designs.
Which I hope goes some way to explaining why your argument about lulu and springleap being exactly the same.
Springleap pays for your design if you win, gives you exposure, has your name on the back of the tee, and gives you a bunch of shirts. In return, they want your design. They also give you a bunch of shirts if you’re a runner up. Sounds fair to me. They’re certainly not forcing anyone to upload their designs to their site. But if you do, understand that you can’t just put one foot in the water.
Saying they’re copyright thieves is like saying “My boss is making me work and stealing my time AND all my work! He’s a thief!”
Its also like saying “The shop stole my money and all they gave me was this lousy piece of cheese!”
Its like saying “I programmed a video game and they paid me for my work but now they won’t let me use that same code for my own game! Huh?!”
Its like saying “I sold the rights to the Nike logo I designed and got a bunch of money. Now Nike’s giving me trouble because I used the swoosh for my own company logo! What gives?”
Hmm. Its also like saying “I won a Springleap competition, now they’ve paid me and given me a whole bunch of shirts, but they want to own my design in return! Thieves!”
New rule for anonymous posters: Use a real email address, or make it interesting enough that I can resist the urge to simply delete your comment. First and final warning.
These points have already been addressed. I’m not comparing springleap’s business model with Lulu.com’s. I’m comparing their IP policies.
In addition, I already pointed out Threadless (which has an identical business model to springleap) has an IP policy similar to Lulu.com’s.
Your game example is debatable. What if the guy is a paid-for open source programmer? I personally believe such a model is economically more efficient that the current model.
Your Nike example isn’t about copyright, it’s about trademark rights.
Hi, i’m the Graeme who designed the Chai Tea tshirt and i’m really honoured that some one has noticed my design.Just some clarity my sister and i only attend Tai Chi class and not give the actual lessons - had that been the case i would have been more reluctant to have submitted the design. Me submitting the design was a means of seeing for myself if it was any good or not and finishing in the top 20 justified my design for myself.
Thanks for letting me know Graeme! The comment is fixed now.
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