I have been on Threadless for almost two weeks now, and I really enjoy the community here. One thing that troubles me, however, is the number of entries that are using stolen art.

mjeremenko leads with three confirmed stolen entries:

http://www.threadless.com/submission/53062/Suicide_King_(King_Of_Hearts) , which rmx noticed: http://www.lafraise.com/tee-shirt-12134p3-politiclycorrect.html#com

and

http://www.threadless.com/submission/52932/love_ambigram , which blandford noticed: http://www.johnlangdon.net/New_Pages/City_of_Brotherly_Love.htm

mjeremenko admitted -- ADMITTED -- to taking the latter design and submitting it. "SHITTTTTTTTTTT i was hoping this shirt wouldnt get accepted. woops. hah." (06 Sep 05)

I decided to check out his Fourbucks design: http://www.threadless.com/submission/52435/fourbucks

A simple GIS (Google Image Search) for "fourbucks" revealed that this image is ALL OVER the internet; a notable entry is from the Fark forums, dated May 6th, 2004. This is not his design either.

This is but one example of individuals submitting other's art work as their own. HelloSudamerica recently submitted a design: http://www.threadless.com/submission/52630/avellanas_in_pijamas

This is an obvious lift of Akiyoshi Kitaoka's work, found at http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/doncurtain.gif . Kitaoka's work is all over the internet; I was surprised to see such a popular image submitted to Threadless.

Then we have crayola_barbie, who recently submitted Boy Toy: http://www.threadless.com/submission/52645/Boy_toy . Chris3347 pointed out that this image was previously submitted to Threadless: http://www.threadless.com/submission/48435/girls_can_be_so_cruel

crayola_barbie didn't even bother using an outside source: s/he used an image that was *already submitted to Threadless!* Unbelievable.

Why do people do this? I recall a time when people had respect for themselves and their fellow artists. Men and women had integrity. It's saddening to see this practice so common -- and so *obvious* -- on such a cool site as Threadless.

I hope the guys at Threadless are smart about protecting themselves and the other honest artists here. I hope that they do their due diligence before agreeing to pay for any design and make sure that the work is indeed original artwork by the submitter. If it is not, then I hope that the Threadless guys take the appropriate measures to prevent false submissions from recurring. Do more than ban the offending submitter's account: ban their IP. Just get rid of them. People like them not only hurt the honest artists here, but one bad lawsuit could fuck Threadless badly, and then we would *all* lose.

That would be a real shame. I have been on Threadless for two weeks, and I really enjoy this community.