{"id":170,"date":"2009-01-16T14:56:48","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T14:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/archives\/170-i-love-threadless-ip-rights.html"},"modified":"2014-07-03T16:50:33","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T16:50:33","slug":"i-love-threadless-ip-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/i-love-threadless-ip-rights","title":{"rendered":"I love Threadless & IP rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI love Threadless, a lot. Threadless<\/a> (just in case you missed them) is a community site where people can submit designs for t-shirts and vote for them. Winning designs get produced, the winner gets $2500 and everyone else gets to buy fun, funny and creative T-shirts.  <\/a><\/p>\n

So, Exactly how much do I love Threadless? To the right you can see a
\npicture of most of the Threa<\/a>dless t-shirts I own. There are about 50 in
\nthat picture (taken in Amsterdam, where I live) and there are more in
\nEindhoven (where I also live). <\/p>\n

Indeed Threadless has a lot to do with why I came to work for Shapeways. What Threadless is for T-shirts, Shapeways will be for all other stuff. Which is what makes what happened to me the other day quite interesting indeed. <\/p>\n

A friend of mine lives in Chang Mei, Thailand and was in Amsterdam to visit his family and friends. As a present he brought me a T-shirt. He talked about markets in Chang Mei where you could get the funniest shirts for next to nothing and gave me one that combined my love of reading for my love of cool t-shirts. <\/p>\n

I can be an idiot at times and was so immediately after he gave it: exclaiming in short order that not only did <\/a>my girlfriend have the very same shirt but that it was a Threadless shirt, making it abundantly clear to everyone that his gift was pirated. This was a complete surprise to him, and just one more incident of me ruining something by blurting out what I’m thinking. To the right you can see both t-shirts side by side, with the Threadless shirt on the left and the Thailand one on the right. You can see the shirt on Threadless here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This incident has many far reaching and interesting implications for communities such as Threadless and Shapeways as well as the future of “peer production”, mass customization and intellectual property in general and is interesting to me for 9 reasons:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. Usually pirated materials are bought with the buyer knowing fully
\nwell that it is pirated, ie “look there is a Puma logo on those $10
\nshoes” <\/p>\n

My friend was unaware that the shirt was in fact
\ncopyright infringement. He just saw a fun shirt that was perfect for
\nhis t-shirt mad friend and bought it.<\/p>\n

2. Usually it is the big brands, the recognizable brands names and logos
\nthat are copied, indeed the element of brand recognition is the reason
\nwhy the person buys the pirated item. ie “A Louis Vuitton bag for $15,
\nwow, this is my chance to prentend that I own one.” <\/p>\n

In this case the
\nThreadless logo does not appear anywhere on the T-shirt. This pirated
\nshirt stole the designers idea and used the idea and the attractiveness
\nof the design an sich to sell the item. <\/p>\n

3.
\nUsually copyright infringement happens precisely because a product is
\nexpensive. “What $700 for Windows? That’s like a month’s rent. I’ll
\ndownload it instead” <\/p>\n

Threadless T-shirts are from $5(on sale)
\nto $15, without shipping, so are very affordable. I’m not sure how much
\nhe paid for the T-shirt and knowing South East Asia it might have been
\ncheaper, lets say between $2-$5. But, all the above price points are
\nvery cheap and should be well within the means of an average developed
\nnation consumer.<\/p>\n

4. Usually piracy happens to big “boring” companies who are refusing to abandon their old broken business models. <\/p>\n

Threadless is a hip “new” internet business with an even “hipper” business model revolving around co-creation and community.  <\/p>\n

5.
\nUsually piracy happens to big billion dollar businesses or
\nmultimillionaire recording artists who could cry all they want from
\ntheir private jets and personalized basketball courts but can not
\nreally count on much sympathy from the general public. In this case the
\nvictims were Threadless and Josh Kemble, the designer. <\/p>\n

Although Threadless has revenues of $30,000,000 it should be able to garner more sympathy than the truly huge companies (check out how Google now returns the result to the query ‘Threadless revenue” by the way<\/a>). <\/p>\n

And Josh Kemble<\/a>
\nwho is a freelance illustrator, born in “a small speck of dirt in
\nCalifornia” and working on a graphic novel is someone I feel instantly
\nsympathetic towards. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a 24 carat gold
\ndome above his bed, yet, anyway.  <\/p>\n

6. The prated Threadless
\nshirt example above really puts “power internet users” in a bit of a
\nbind. Usually the RIAA, DRM, copyright protection companies and closed
\nsource software companies are the bad guys. Intelectual Property(IP) and copyright in general
\nis seen as the “old way” and a mark of evil boring companies who do
\nnot get the internet and want to monopolize. To them downloading a movie
\nfrom the Pirate Bay can be seen as defiance in some way. <\/p>\n

In this
\nexample the Intellectual Property rights are represented by Josh Kemble,
\nwho with his creativity and skill makes his money using an internet
\nbusiness. Good IP protection in this case would seem to be neccessary
\nin order to usher in a new era on the internet whereby many more people
\nthan is now the case could make their money directly from the net
\nitself. IP in this case would seem to be much more of a neccessity in
\npropping up the little guy rather than a tool of the large corporates.<\/p>\n

7. Threadless makes money off of the ideas, IP and skill of Josh and
\nall the other contributors to Threadless. When you upload to Threadless
\nyour IP becomes the property of Threadless<\/a>(Shapeways
\nis different: your designs will always remain your IP when you upload
\nthem to Shapeways<\/a>). I would assume that they strive to protect this IP
\n(as we strive to protect Shapeways users’ IP<\/a>) but how much can an
\nonline business do against some guys on a market in Thailand? Indeed a forum question on Threadless<\/a> pointed me towards a picture gallery from the Glastonbury festival in 2007<\/a>
\nwhere several pirated Threadless T-shirts where on sale(making me feel
\nkind of daft for writing this huge post about what I thought was a unique
\noccurrence). <\/p>\n

8. There would seem to be a huge business
\nopportunity here for an online business that would effectively protect
\nthe intellectual property rights of small businesses and freelancers
\nworldwide.<\/p>\n

9. We need to, as Shapeways, keep listening to our community directly as to how they view their IP and want to protect it. We need to also join the IP debate with other companies, people and groups. We need to be a part of it in order to make sure that people such as Josh Kemble can protect their IP and can continue to make money online. At the same time we have to guard against companies that abuse IP legislation in order to stifle innovation. The thin line of IP is going to be challenging to walk on.      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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