Social media became a great platform for artists and small business owners in promoting their work, but art theft remained rampant in them.
Portugal based illustrator Chloe Greenfield shared her frustrations when her art was stolen by a Chinese brand called INXX and printed it on their apparels.
“He said hey I’ve seen your design, which I did at uni, he was like, ‘I’ve seen that design on two shirts, It’s definitely yours.’ And I had a look at it, (it) was, and I was quite stunned, and I just wrote an email to them but then they didn’t reply for like two months and I think I kind of forgot about it,” she said.
Art theft is referred to as the to re-posting and claiming a piece of art and claiming it your own or not giving proper credit to the original artist, and it came in different forms.
Art theft that was intended for profit was called appropriation and ranged from stealing designs to using someone else’s art as example for their commissions.
Rabbit and Rain owner Steph Sanders-Jacob experienced the same thing when a shop from the online selling platform AliExpress stole photos of her product and listed it as for sale.
The internet gave a wider reach of customers for small business owners like Steph and Chloe, but it also made art theft so easy as it goes unregulated on social media.
Featured photo made on Canva.
