Fundo Azul: 11/01/2018

I have a RedBubble store and approximately one year ago I published an artwork for use in tshirts and merchandise composed from a selfie and built in an app on my iPad. It went like this.

On September 5th this year the RedBubble Marketplace Integrity Team sent me an email saying my artwork was removed because a company called Bold Strategies, Inc. (no website found) claimed my work violated their rights.
Apparently my face and a word from the dictionary violated their rights.
Why? Because of this:

They own the rights to the Sheppard Fairey poster “Obey”. The same artwork that used an image from Andre The Giant and was posted everywhere without his express authorization or his family’s or even Titan Sports. The same could be said of the authors of the film “They Live”.

“His "Obey" Campaign is from the John Carpenter movie They Live which starred pro wrestler Roddy Piper, taking a number of its slogans, including the "Obey" slogan, as well as the "This is Your God" slogan. Fairey has spun off the OBEY clothing line from the original sticker campaign. He also uses the slogan "The Medium is the Message" borrowed from Marshall McLuhan. Shepard Fairey has stated in an interview that part of his work is inspired by other street artists.”

Also “Fairey claimed his HOPE poster was based on a 2006 copyrighted photo of then-Senator Barack Obama seated next to actor George Clooney, taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia on assignment for the Associated Press, which wanted credit and compensation for the work.^[117] Garcia believes that he personally owns the copyright for the photo, and has said, "If you put all the legal stuff away, I’m so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it's had".^[118] Fairey said his use of the photograph fell within the legal definition of fair use.^[119] Fairey claims he used pieces of the photo as raw material to create a heroic and inspirational political portrait, the aesthetic of which was fundamentally different from the original photo.

I didn’t challenge the claim from Bold Strategies, Inc. I have no possibility to reply in the legal terms asked.

You can see in this link they don’t have remotely any right to claim my work is in breach of any law and yet I have no power to fight them, nor does RedBubble’s Marketplace Integrity Team has the obligation to fight for my artwork or my authorship.

This is what will happen when article 13 is approved by the European Commission and the European Parliament. Many of us simple unprotected and poor creatures will be bullied out of our rights by huge law firms without any lawful or truthful claim.

Beware of these policies to police content on the web. They already exist in other markets and they only protect the powerful.