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.

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!”

“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.

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.

Seriously dude WTF have you been smoking? my socks?

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.

Submit your design and then infringe on the copyright.