Yesterday, an artist on Twitter named Nana ran an experiment to test a theory.

Their suspicion was that bots were actively looking on Twitter for phrases like “I want this on a shirt” or “This needs to be a t-shirt,” automatically scraping the quoted images, and instantly selling them without permission as print-on-demand t-shirts.

Dozens of Nana’s followers replied, and a few hours later, a Twitter bot replied with a link to the newly-created t-shirt listing on Moteefe, a print-on-demand t-shirt service.

Several other t-shirt listings followed shortly after, with listings on questionable sites like Toucan Style, CopThis, and many more.

Spinning up a print-on-demand stores is dead simple with platforms like GearBubble, Printly, Printful, GearLaunch (who power Toucan Style), and many more — creating a storefront with thousands of theoretical product listings, but with merchandise only manufactured on demand through third-party printers who handles shipping and fulfillment with no inventory.

Many of them integrate with other providers, allowing these non-existent products to immediately appear on eBay, Amazon, Etsy, and other stores, but only manufactured when someone actually buys them.

The ease of listing products without manufacturing them is how we end up with bizarre algorithmic t-shirts and entire stock photo libraries on phone cases. Even if they only generate one sale daily per 1,000 listings, that can still be a profitable business if you’re listing hundreds of thousands of items.

But whoever’s running these art theft bots found a much more profitable way of generating leads: by scanning Twitter for people specifically telling artists they’d buy a shirt with an illustration on it. The t-shirt scammers don’t have the rights to sell other people’s artwork, but they clearly don’t care.

Once Nana proved that this was the methodology these t-shirt sellers were using, others jumped in to subvert them.

Of course, it worked. Bots will be bots.

For me, this all raises two questions:

1. Who’s responsible for this infringement?
2. What responsibility do print-on-demand providers have to prevent infringement on their platforms?

The first question is the hardest: we don’t know. These scammers are happy to continue printing shirts because their identities are well-protected, shielded by the platforms they’re working with.

I reached out to Moteefe, who seems to be the worst offender for this particular strain of art theft. Countless Twitter bots are continually spamming users with newly-created Moteefe listings, as you can see in this search.

Unlike most print-on-demand platforms like RedBubble, Moteefe doesn’t reveal any information about the user who created the shirt listings. They’re a well-funded startup in London, and have an obligation not to allow their platform to be exploited in this way. I’ll update if I hear back from them.

Until then, be careful telling artists that you want to see their work on a shirt, unless you want dozens of scammers to use it without permission.

Or feel free to use this image, courtesy of Nakanoart.

So since these art-stealing bots are tracking your text and not reply images, I made this for you guys!

If you want something from ANY creative made into a shirt, you can use this image to tell the artist you want to buy it. So you don’t need to type it out pic.twitter.com/E9Mn2GILcb

— nakanoart (@nakanodrawing) December 4, 2019

Update

Nearly every reply to the official @Disney account on Twitter right now is someone asking for a shirt. I wonder if their social media team has figured out what’s going on yet.

I know I shouldn’t buy them, but some of these copyright troll bait shirts are just amazing.

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This is not the least bit definitely about my wife.

As many of you have no doubt heard, control of the .org registry has been sold to private interests. There have been attempts to call them to reason, like Save .ORG, but let’s be realistic: they knew what they’re doing is wrong, the whole time. If they were a commercial entity, our appeals would fall on deaf ears and that would be the end of it. But, they’re not a commercial entity - so our appeals may fall on deaf ears, but that doesn’t have to be the end of it.

The level of corruption on display by the three organizations involved in this scam: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), ISOC (The Internet Society), and PIR (Public Interest Registry), is astounding and very illegal. If you are not familiar with the matter, click this to read a summary:

If you are familiar with the .org heist, then like me, you’re probably pissed off. Here’s how you can take action: all of these organizations are 501c3 non-profits. The sale of a non-profit to a for-profit entity like this is illegal without very specific conditions being met. Additionally, this kind of behavior is not the sort the IRS likes to see in a tax-exempt organization. Therefore, we can take the following steps to put a stop to this:

1. Write to the CA and VA attorney general offices encouraging them to investigate the misbehavior of these three non-profits, which are incorporated in their respective states.
2. File form 13909 with the IRS, encouraging them to review the organization’s non-profit status.

This kind of behavior is illegal. The sale of a non-profit requires a letter from the Attorneys General in both California (ICANN) and Virginia (ISOC, PIR). Additionally, much of this behavior qualifies as “self-dealing”, or leveraging one’s power within an organization for their own benefit, rather than the benefit of the organization. To report this, I’ve prepared a letter to the CA and VA Attorney’s General offices, which you can read here:

• Letter to the Attorney General

I encourage you to consider writing a letter of your own, but I would not recommend copying and pasting this letter. However, this kind of behavior is also illegal in the eyes of the IRS, and a form is provided for this purpose. Form 13909 is the appropriate means for reporting this behavior. You can download a pre-filled form here, and I do encourage you to submit one this yourself:

• Form 13909 for ICANN and ISOC complaints (PDF)
• Form 13909 for ICANN and ISOC complaints (ODG)

This only includes complaints for ICANN and ISOC, as PIR is seeking to lose its non-profit status anyway. You can print out the PDF, fill in your details on both pages, and mail it to the address printed on the form; or you can download the ODG, open it up with LibreOffice Draw, and fill in the remaining details digitally, then email it to the address shown on the page.¹

Happy Thanksgiving! Funny how this all happened right when the American public would be distracted…

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They're planning to become evil after they get emeritus status, but by then they'll be too tired.