Saturday 10 August 2019

Stop scammers ChicV







I am sitting here for the 4th day in a row making yet another complaint about copyright infringement. I am coming to the conclusion that platforms like Paypal and Shopify are in cahoots with the chinese robbers. They do everything they can to stall claims and lead you up the wrong garden paths. The longer they delay having to shut down these online scams the more money they make....so really, why care? Why shoot the golden goose laying the golden eggs?

After filling out everything that was required in their form for making a claim for copyright infringement to Shopify they got back to me saying it isn't enough and do it again. How about changing your form to accurately reflect what is really needed? This is just a delaying and deflecting tactic. I am re-filing my claims in great detail again and planning to sue them $1000 a day per photograph for every day they facilitate these crooks to sell their fakes.

So, another day collecting screenshots, images and URLs from Modarie.com and I discover this 8th garment of mine being stolen by them that has appeared in the last 24 hours. The pictures they have appropriated are the ones I took when staying at my sister in laws home 8 weeks ago, where I sewed this. This is her french doors in the background. 3 weeks later this very same coat, which I call "Coat for the Recalcitrant Bohemian Princess" was the centrepiece of my exhibition at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, where thousands saw it over the period it was displayed for 6 weeks. This coat was most assuredly not purchased from Modarie.com and put on display in the Gallery with me fraudulently claiming it was my textile art.

There is a whole multitude of these scam online shops, possibly 100s that are infesting social media. They all sell the same products, or a mix that gets changed around every few weeks. 
They are all fronts for a single manufacturing business based in China. 

I know the name of that business now, it is registered in China as

ChicV

Here is Facebook group dedicated to collecting complaints to get their fraud stopped

Stop ChicV

The duplication of popup shop names is a strategy to keep ahead of the complaints that shut down various shops as the complaints accumulate. For example, say Tusancat and Barbring have been operating for 3 months and as the first mailorders arrive and purchasers find they've been fleeced, some of them get mad enough to complain and want their money back. Their packages arrive without invoices, contact information or return addresses so they have to go back to whoever processed their payment to try to communicate with the fraud companies. That might be Paypal or their credit card company. Some complain to FB or Instagram trying to do the right thing to get these fraud businesses shut down. Facebook and Instagram do nothing, their defence always is that they just provide a technical platform for publishing.

However, the complaints mount up, choking their systems and eventually FB and Insta decide to stop hosting the fraud websites because cranky people are screaming and bad mouthing them in public....buuuut, in the meantime, Cocochic and Beautyshop and Lalagirl open up and start selling on social media, selling exactly the same products....and so the cycle goes on and on...

The only way we can pressure social media platforms to do the right thing and stop facilitating the fraudsters is to use our collective strength! Repost this on social media, make complaints, enter negative feedback  - SCAM ALERT!!! - when you see advertisements for these fraud shops come up on your Instagram and Facebook. Being horrible, pesky screaming bitches is the best way to get them to listen. Calm, sensible filing of reports will be disregarded. Every day I devote to trying to shut down this criminal enterprise I lose about $30 in average income. Every day the criminals keep their online fronts selling their fakes they are profitting about US$500,000 off the customers they defraud.

More actions you can take -  
Go here to Google and leave comment https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/8715211?hl=en#

Keep reporting the fraud shops coming up on your Insta feed. Right hand corner where the 3 dots are, click then report as scam. When FB writes back that they have reviewed your report they either say they took the site down or they say they didn't find anything wrong but they will hide it from your page, give them feedback that not seeing it isn't the problem its because you're outraged they are facilitating a criminal enterprise and explain what is happening. 


Friday 9 August 2019

organised crime








 The screenshots above are from Modarie.com

The photographs of the garments circled have been appropriated from my blog, without my knowledge or permission. One of the pictures shows a top I made in 2013.

EVERY ITEM IN THIS ONLINE SHOP - AND THERE ARE OVER 900!!! - HAS BEEN STOLEN FROM ITS ORIGINAL MAKER.

Not one of these pictures shows what the buyers really receive. Modarie has never designed or made a single item of clothing on any of the pages of this online shop. They have never seen or handled any of the clothes shown there in real life because every picture was taken without knowledge or permission from the original makers.

The big clothing companies like Magnolia Pearl and Tina Givens have already succeeded in getting their pictures pulled down from these Chinese websites. I wouldn't be surprised if they have full time legal depts dealing with stopping people making fake copies of their clothes. So now it's small artisans and individual designers like myself who are spending days and days of our precious time filing copyright infringement notices and trying to negotiate the labyrinthine documentary evidence we are asked to provide.

We have all heard horror stories of people who had their identity stolen on the internet then spend years having to prove they are themselves...? I'm now in the position of trying to "prove" that I made these clothes and photographed them. The mass manufacturing model of clothes production is so ubiquitous in the contemporary world that the people I make complaints to don't seem to be able to get their heads around that I MAKE ONLY ONE THING. There is no production line, I don't manufacture at any level. Ipso facto, if there is a photograph of that garment on my blog, then I have taken it because there is only one single version of that thing that exists in the whole world that was made by me.

I must be vastly more stupid than I ever realised, because it seems logical to me that if I give the people who process the copyright complaints a link to my blog post from 2018, 2017 or 2013 where there is exactly same the photo that is now in the Modarie shop (and show them many more photos of the same garment taken from different angles and also the back of it - the back of the garments are never shown by Modarie because if I didn't publish a picture they have no idea what that looks like) they still don't think this is sufficient evidence to "prove" that I am the copyright owner. It's utterly bamboozling to me why it isn't the obligation of Modarie to provide an example of their fake. Even blind Freddy with frontal lobes removed will immediately realise that isn't a picture of what they sell.

This business model isn't a casual advent. They have spent months, possibly years, appropriating  pictures and designs from numerous international websites. Factories and workers had to be organised for manufacturing at scale. They had to create patterns for every individual stolen design - all graded into numerous sizes. They had to employ IT specialists who have been able to fake photographic reproductions of the surfaces of the clothes they stole. Business names were created to set up online shops and people are employed to maintain them with pictures of the appropriated creative production stolen from other people. People have jobs to process the mail orders and there are others to package and send out their fakes. The hapless and innocent people who buy those fakes are getting a shitty reproduction resembling nothing like what is being shown. 

This "business model" is a carefully crafted organisation, possibly employing hundreds of people, that is based on consciously seeking out and stealing images that don't belong to them. Modarie, Barbring, Cocochic, Tusancat and the myriad other cover names they use are defrauding buyers of tens of thousands of dollars and polluting our world with their nasty crap, all for their own enrichment. It is quite simply organised crime.

It makes me furious. 







Tuesday 6 August 2019

even the birds poop on me

I was sitting outside in the weak sunshine a few minutes ago preparing pictures to post on Instagram. It is the spot where I put out sunflower seed for the parrots every day and they were waiting impatiently in the branches of the tree above me. One of them got their message across very effectively when it pooped on the top of my head. I shall go buy a lottery ticket today, my ever optimistic husband assures me it is good luck.

Most of my readers know I can be a provocateur about various issues, so the experience of being pooped on is something I'm familiar with, usually on a metaphorical level.

He's another metaphorical story to reflect on. A womans partner is a violent man who beats her up. She calls him a "psychopathic bastard". Her friends are shocked and shun her on the basis of her appallingly heartless sneer at people with mental illness and because describing her partner as a bastard is untrue. His parents were legally married.

Well, for the interest of my dwindling followers (the non racists having flounced off to protect themselves from any contagion I might be spreading) here is a picture of the latest of my art clothes that has been stolen and reproduced by the chinese. It is the 6th garment to be stolen. It is nearly 2 weeks since I showed the Freda jacket and I'm waiting to see how long it takes before that is being reproduced too....

I am a bit bemused that the picture they are showing in the social media promotion is actually the back of the original garment, but they seem to have decided to make it the front. I wonder what the back is like? If anybody buys this please let me know. The lady who bought the original art to wear jacket lives in Sydney and recently came to one of my workshops at Muswellbrook Art Gallery. I wonder how she feels about her beautiful garment being mass produced and sold all over the world? I suppose it is a compliment to her superb taste that she bought the original for a mere Aus$225. Kind of like owning the original Van Gogh when the rest of the world can only buy cheapskate crap reproductions.




Somehow I still keep making stuff despite spending a lot of time ducking and weaving to avoid the poop bombs I invite to be flung at me because of my tendency to say nasty and unacceptable things about the names and physical characteristics of the people who are robbing my art.

Deciding to make a blog post this morning I was going to show my latest work in progress. The pictures were taken an hour ago but sometimes the internet is slow at putting them in my Photos folder and they haven't arrived there yet. I'll do that later today when the pictures can be accessed and talk about how in trying to protect myself from being faked I'm consciously working on changing the textile art I create.






Monday 5 August 2019

I'm a racist


BIPOC people tell me I’m racist. Many white people have distanced themselves from me lately, unfriended me, blocked me because they say I’m racist. 

And I have come to realise it is true. Not just me but all white people are racist. Period. Just like the lack of melanin in our skin we are genetically coded for it. White and racist are indivisible, no matter how much white people are in denial, no matter how many other white people they label as racist and try to distance themselves from (thinking such action will define them as “not racist”) if you are white then you are racist. No action, no education, nothing will ever make a white person not a racist.

That said! - hesitate a bit before unfriending, unfollowing and blocking me, while I explain the subtlety of this statement.  

As Lionel Shriver observes in her Spectator article “Can you prove you’re not a racist?”



Hey, we’re all racists, to a greater or lesser degree. That is, we’ve all developed preconceptions about one another. We vary in our success in resisting stereotypes from person to person, and from day to day. This is not only a problem for white people.

Shriver goes on to point out that the more you protest the label the more lame you look:

For you cannot prove a negative. Try this exercise: prove you’re not a racist. Interestingly, the more you go on about your laudable colour-blindness, the dodgier you’ll sound. Thus, forcing people to repudiate this epithet is inviting them to hang themselves.


At a micro level your identity as a racist doesn’t matter. Doing and saying overtly racist things means BIPOC people will stay away from you for their safety and peace of mind. If you are a white person with an open mind to the concept of shared humanity you will have BIPOC friends, partners and work colleagues. So there is a kind of spectrum ranging from less to more racist, but there are no white people who aren’t on the continuum somewhere.

What does matter about racism is when white people at the high end of the spectrum band together to create dominant political and legal systems that protect and promote their interests. Racism is an organised and oppressive system that gives unequal access to people in society based on constructed beliefs about some racial characteristics being inferior or superior.

The outrage I expressed in my “something for the crooks” blog was perceived by some to be racist.  That seems very simplistic thinking to me. Consider this – I made fun of Chinese names and accents and imagined a piece of absurdist dialogue. Apparently that can be defined by some as racist. In my defence I will say this. I’m not even sure of the legal names of the companies based in China that are faking and selling my art, much less the name of any individual person working in those businesses. So my childish parody wasn’t mimicking anybody personally. I don’t know their names and are fairly sure they neither know or care what mine is. If there was an offence of “racism” it is absolutely miniscule compared to the disrespect and outright contempt of what they doing to me.

As for “slitty” eyes, well I get them looking at a computer screen all day too. Asian people do have much smaller upper lids than western people and slanted eyes. Errm…so what? Apparently some people found that offensive, but it must be subjective as I don’t think its an any worse word than I’d apply to anybody of any nationality that robbed me, such as they looked shifty, devious, sly or nasty.

China is not a country any more friendly to the west than Russia. However I cannot be a racist if I say anything insulting about a Russian person because they are supposedly white people. (anyone know if that applies to Mongolians too? Aren’t they Russians?) 

China does not respect the international rule of law. If exactly the same copyright infringement was done to me by a company or person in Europe or America I would instantly be protected. I would have clear legal rights and power to stop it.

I do understand this peculiar subtlety about copyright and the fashion industry - as in, if these people were copying my art and clothing but selling it based on a photograph of their own faked version – I couldn’t stop that. However their fraud goes to the extent of appropriating my own photographs and creating social media promotions showing those pictures. Those pictures don’t represent the reality of what the buyers are going to receive. They will get a garment that has a photographic reproduction of the surface. In my real version of the garment there will be patchworking, appliques, stencilling, multiple layers of embellishment and embroidery and hand stitching built up on the surface. That is the lavish, rich detail of the garment that prospective customers are seeing and what they believe they are buying.

That is the nasty, greedy, opportunistic fraud that is making me very angry.

Sunday 4 August 2019

More ranty tanty

Predictably...I am getting flak about my racism.

Long time readers of my blog probably understand that I often write from a somewhat polemical and satirical position. A sort of self pitying working class angst.

I knew when I published what I wrote this morning there would be swoons of horror from certain personalities given to performative allyship. I hope those having a go at me are also listening to what your president says and are giving him the same sort of negative feedback. Have you sweet violets thought of sending some negative feedback to China? So easy to criticise me, though I'm just feebly lashing out from my position of powerlessness.

Instagram asked me to provide my "authorised version'" of the garments the chinks have stolen. I guess the whole concept of industrial mass production is so pervasive they can't get their heads around the concept that some idiot really makes only ONE of a thing. That if I publish a picture of a garment I've made it really is the one and only version of it in all existence and if there any photos of it they have to be mine because there is only one of that thing that can be pictured.

Since I wrote this morning I've discovered a 6th original garment of mine being mass manufactured by chinamen and offered for sale on social media.

Perhaps the women accusing me of racism think I should just politely shrug? I asked one them how she'd feel if her home was robbed and one of the robbers tripped over a mat and grazed their knee. Would she rush to apologise?....put a sticky plaster on it and kiss them better?

Yes, I am embarassingly futile and childish to resort to publishing racist insults. But think about it....your president sprays racist venom and half your nation agrees and will vote for him in the next election.

Not respecting copyright isn't just a problem for me. It is a problem for the chinese too. Lacking this very significant social contract in their own culture leads to a dog eat dog mentality. A free for all snatch and grab mindset that represses creative thinking.

How do we feel about the tens of thousands of chinese employed by the chinese govt to cyber attack the USA every day? Working on plotting to steal industrial and military secrets from every country in the world? How do you feel about the chinese tech company Huawei implanting secret chips in your software to get  access to all the data on your devices? Seeding social media with the same kind of reactionary political lies that Russia does?

Ohhhh....just don't be racist!!! shock! horror! Don't mention they have slitty eyes! (which I think are very attractive in reality, and mine own have become rather slitty due to the top lid having sagged with old age)

How about you direct your outrage where its deserved and allow me to have my childish tantys?


another for the crooks

Heres a new one for the Chinamen.

Are you watching Chin Chonk Chook Chuck? Person with the slitty eyes on the other side of this screen from half a world away? Your job is better than mine. You get to sit in front of a screen all day skimming the internet and putting your cyber hand into my life, and others, to steal the images of our creative product.

When you find a good one on the screen do you call your mates over - "lookee, lookee! we gottee nice one here. Wot you think Chow Choo Lie, we takee dis one and make our fortune cookies!"

I bet your mothers are proud of their robber children.

When my mother discovered I'd stolen a little plastic figurine from a local shop when I was 11 she marched me down there to apologise to the shopkeeper and to pay for the item out of my Xmas money. I was banned from going into the shop until the next year. The humiliation of my wrongdoing still makes me break out in a sweat 49 years later. But I guess chinese Mums would compliment you on your prowess! So clever! So proud!


front

This was a quick little shift I made yesterday. I'm considering a new business model of trying to sell for less than the Chinese. I usually put in much more time and artistry with printing, textile embellishment and hand stitching. The only piece of hand printing on this one is the pocket.

As ever, it is made entirely from upcycled clothes and used fabrics. The bodice is a patchwork reconstructed from 3 knit tops. The skirt is from a cotton/polyester doona cover.



back

Fits approx size 18-20. Aus$80 plus postage. Paypal only. PM me. No chinese buyers.


the Frida print is a patch pocket