Art Theft controversy

Article (Daily Dot): DeviantART clarifies it doesn’t sell artists’ work after Hot Topic shirt debacle

Article (Fast Company): How A Company Gets Away With Stealing Independent Designers’ Work

Article (Fortune): 12 Artists Are Accusing Zara of Stealing Their Designs

Article (The Guardian): Fashion brand Zara accused of copying LA artist’s designs

I’ve been pretty quiet about this, until now. Over the past year, @zara has been copying my artwork (thanks to all that have tipped me off–it’s been a lot of you). I had my lawyer contact Zara and they literally said I have no base because I’m an indie artist and they’re a major corporation and that not enough people even know about me for it to matter. I plan to further press charges, but even to have a lawyer get this LETTER has cost me $2k so far. 〰 It sucks and it’s super disheartening to have to spend basically all of my money, just to defend what is legally mine. ⚡️ EDIT: Some of you are asking how you can help. Repost and tag them, on Twitter, on Insta, on Facebook. I don’t want to have to burden any of you with the financial strain that comes with lawsuits.

A photo posted by Tuesday Bassen (@tuesdaybassen) on Jul 19, 2016 at 5:57pm PDT

There have been many report of companies like Hot Topic stealing art from online artists. The general consensus is that artist cannot do anything about it, even if they took the thieves to court. This is because although copyright law say that the artist is entitled to compensation from the selling of their work, this doesn’t cover court costs. And as most copyright court cases are very expensive, most never chase it, as in the end they would be worse off for doing so. This means that big corporations know that they can steal art with no consequences.