Wednesday, August 7, 2013

So, as you can tell I've been inactive on the blog for a little bit. I've been having a frustrating week as far as creativity and ideas. I've also recently received some bad news from Etsy and Facebook saying that I can no longer sell my social media icons due to copyright issues :(

They are cracking down on the use of their trademark "f" and I just feel really frustrated about it. How am I supposed to help others link up to Facebook on their blogs or websites if I cannot use it? When I first started creating icons, I felt like I was doing nothing wrong because so many others on Etsy make the same type of sets. If you search "social media icons" on Etsy, over 40 pages of content pops up and I compared my listings to those and they are all using the same "f" on their icons as well. I contacted Facebook about it and they said that they have an ongoing trademark enforcement program. Whatever that is supposed to mean. Who knows if these other sellers will get notifications soon or if they'll be lucky to go under the radar.

They also mentioned I was not targeted directly and that a lot of other listings were also deactivated. I just feel that if you deactivate some, why not all? I cannot help but feel like that kid in kindergarden class that gets called out for doing something that all the other kids are doing and I'm the only one that gets punished. *Sigh* The weird part is they only deactivated two of my listings, but I had many others. I got so paranoid about it that I took them all down just to be on the safe side and not have my entire Etsy account deleted.

I still feel so annoyed by all of this. I was coming up with some really cool ideas for social media icon sets and now I cannot even share them on Etsy. I would love to hear opinions on this matter. What do you guys think about this?


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