I suppose Facer would have to confirm that they are clones and name brands.
Ferrari ? Ball watch company? …lol… again, nothing to confirm. Main stream IP and brand names. It’s obvious. If they read the email and bothered to even look at the guy’s faces, and enforced their own their own TOS, they’d have taken them down immediately.
Keep going mate, I appreciate it, like I’m certain the others do. But I do think you are wasting your time. There appears to be a double standard, others have had the same problem and nothing has happened. I find it intriguing that there is stolen graphics everywhere in here. You know as well as I, it’s very easy to recognise your own work. All they have done, is removed the brand and posted. I give up.
There is no double standard here @tghall. I think they will react. When? How? I don‘t know. But i am really sure they will.
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Some are over a year old! How long could it take?
The official method to seek to have removed any faces that infringe on intellectual property rights is described here: DMCA Notice of Alleged Infringement (“Notice”)
As I understand it only the intellectual property owner or a person authorised by them can raise a DMCA notice. You could pass the link to the people who own the IP and they could follow the process.
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Yes it can be frustrating, on the other hand, anyone who publishes digital copies of anyone else’s designs, famous brands or otherwise, may be disappointed if they hope to become a Creative Partner. So despite the frustration that they seem to be getting away with it for a long time at least you can know that they are not likely to succeed in the long run.
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Right - these Cloners violate rights, disappoint all creatives and do have influences on the charts. Besides that - they form a false opinion that you only can be successful in getting syncs and follower when you post clones. Such clones and the people who publish them must be banned for everyones sake.
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That might be a bit extreme, considering you’ll probably never get rid of them anyway 
ban one, another joins up. It’s just endless extra work on their end.
That said, whatever system they have in place to check whether a report is valid or not should bit a lot more agile, even if the person issuing the report isn’t the watch face’s owner… Though considering that “new” system they have in place to automatically flag a watch face you publish, my guess is they just don’t have the man-power to make checking these reports any more agile than what it already is, no matter who issues the report; at the end of the day the report is still an e-mail they have to read through to even learn if the sender is or isn’t the original owner of some sort of intellectual property.
It’s not extreme. It’s like exterminating any type of pest. Keep removing them and eventually there are fewer to deal with because they will go where they can survive.
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There’s no telling if that’s actually what’s gonna happen though until you put the experiment in motion, and like I said, I’m guessing it’s gonna take a lot of extra work, when they can’t even timely check for copyright reports. Not to say it’s a bad idea necessarily, but it is extreme.
The bottom line for me is very disappointed in @Facer_Official lack of response and communication. I recognize the likely lack of manpower to be instantaneous with every response, but I would think that multiple emails from multiple people as well as a lengthy thread here where they’ve been tagged would at least merit a “we’re looking into it” response after this many days.
If you’re curious about what faces all this is about, scroll down the “top free” list, you’ll quickly spot a few “Ferrari Jumbo” faces, a couple of Ball faces, and a couple of Bell and Ross faces. All published here by the same guy. Click on one so you can see his whole collection. Literally every face was a) actually made by someone else, and b) a blatant and instantly verifiable violation of Facer TOS for copyright infringement.
Now, even if you say A is not easily proven, we can just throw that out because B is instantly conclusive.
So again, how is it that Facer is allowing these to remain in their promoted sections let alone anywhere on their platform? We’re not talking about a lone vague Rolex knockoff buried deep in the vastness of Facer, we’re talking about 6 or 7 direct undisguised copies being prominently featured by Facer’s own promotional lists, from a guy who’s entire catalog is such copies. (And don’t forget stolen on top of that!)
The point has been made clear to me, no replicas allowed on Facer. Because I’m looking to reach designer starts I am respecting that. But again, if that is such a critical point, why the utter inaction over such a blatant violation that’s making a mockery of the rule and Facer’s enforcement of their own rules?
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I would prefer to contact the alleged violator personally, but I have yet to find a method to do that. I cannot contact anyone through the comments unless a user contacts me first. I find no comment button on my desktop browser, Safari on my iPhone or in the Facer app on my iPhone.
DMCA requires the IP owner to make the complaint about a violation. Third parties have no legal say in the matter. As this may seem unfortunate in this particular circumstance, it does protect us creators from groups or individuals who may simply want to harm others by making false claims.
I am also bothered by the plethora of obvious copyright infringement that ends up at the top of lists promoted on this platform. As @mikeoday said, however, it is highly unlikely that any one of those violators will become a Facer partner.
Well, i must confess i am a little bit irritated of the long time response and action times. I already reported these watch faces in the free top 100 as well a week ago.
I think what we need is something like a clone police, maybe some sort of administrators like in other communities.
I guess I don’t see the relevance of that when Facer can just look and see the name of an established watch brand on a random user’s published face and simply say, it is our policy not to allow replicas of branded watches, and remove it as simple as that.
Look at the comments under some of this guy’s faces. In some cases the people who actually drew the graphics he stole have commented “you stole that from me”, others who recognize the work have written “this is stolen from …” he doesn’t care. Again, I realize this aspect would still be a bit muddy waters for Facer to independently verify, and there is the irony that it’s stolen work of copyright infringing work.
But as I’ve repeatedly said, Facer could totally ignore the theft aspect of it and there is no excuse for these faces, no matter who made them, to still be so prominently featured in the promoted lists after so much time and effort has been made to bring this blatant violation of their own policies to their attention.
Ironically, though the Watchmaker community is much more tolerant and accepting of replicas, in the official community forum there is a very strict list of banned brands. And you will never find a single one of them posted on that forum because there is an active team of moderators.
Here in Facer it’s a bit different in that everything is posted direct in the app and not a separate community forum, so I don’t know how much “in-app” power they want to give to volunteer moderators, but still you’d think they would be more proactive in responding to things like this.
Facer could take on the relevance of moderating all published material, but then it might take days or weeks to get a simple quick change to an existing face published. This is one of the reasons I only published a single face on the Samsung store. I tried twice to get it published, with no feedback on the first time to inform me of any mistakes I had made during the submission process.
Yes, and at times, the obvious to you and me might be clear as mud to someone else.
Sure. Curating all the hundreds of faces submitted per day takes up manpower that Facer might not be able to afford. Whether or not they take on user moderators is another story. Deviantart user gallery moderators and they have a vastly larger user base.
I have been a member of art sites that did not allow fanart of specific brands, such as anything Nintendo and Disney, as an example. It is plausible that Facer could put this into the terms of use when a face or other app is published. It may cut down on such products, no is not a guarantee.
@ircrotale are you not able to do that via the community here with Private Messaging? I haven’t looked but it may depend on a member’s settings whether he wants to allow receiving them. I recall using that method in my early days here. Click on your avatar in the upper right. The icon for PM’s looks like an envelope.
@Linlay, I am to believe that only works if that member has enabled their forum account. Still, I cannot even find a way for me personally to comment on a watch face through any of the mediums I previously mentioned. I have complained about this and nobody from Facer responded.
Oh, I didn’t know that you meant someone not registered at the community. That’s strange about your not being able to comment via the phone app. Yes, that would be frustrating.
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