Sunday, February 18, 2024

Stolen Crochet Patterns | Intellectual Property Theft | Reporting Process

Please be aware of the adverts put out on Facebook and Instagram
 for my stolen designs/patterns and many other designer's work as well.




Please, please, please do not trust:
Yarnopia
Hooksopia
Private Craft
Laura's Crafting
They will sell you a stolen pattern with my logo removed, 
and then they will add on other products that you did not order. 
Your only recourse is to report the post and dispute it with your bank. 
You will not receive a reply from their contact information. 
They are also representing themselves as affiliated with Shopify and they are not.

We have been fighting this all week. 
At this point, Meta/Facebook/Instagram 
has not been helpful. 

The websites are through namecheap.com and they are registered in Reykjavík, Iceland.
A big thank you to all of you who have been sending me messages reporting
 and notifying me of these. 
I am so grateful for your love and support!

My patterns are legally available through:

Sadly, @threeloopsonthehook, has also been hit. 

She was so kind to send me the following information to help fight
these crimes:

This first link is to a search I have done for your Macaroon Blossom Pattern on Facebook Ads – prepare yourself as there are a few and each box contains multiple adverts:
 
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=ALL&q=yarnopia%20macaroon&sort_data[direction]=desc&sort_data[mode]=relevancy_monthly_grouped&search_type=keyword_unordered&media_type=all
 
With regards these Facebook adverts, you will need the advert codes to report them. You can search all adverts on the Facebook advert library yourself from here in case any others are selling as the above search specifies ‘Yarnopia’:
 
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/
 
To search the Advert Library - just put "All" in the first two drop-down boxes and then type your keywords. To find your pattern ads, I typed in "yarnopia macaroon". You can use this to search for any other advertisements for any of your other patterns that are likely to be pirated. I only have one Etsy Bestseller that they've stolen (to my knowledge) so I just put in "rainbow of stars" to see if anyone is advertising (although they are now renaming my pattern to Stellar Spectrum in their adverts as they think this will stop me finding them!). I've found several websites to take down that way before they can earn too much out of my hard work.
 
Then you need to report the adverts, Facebook intellectual property reporting page
 
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/1758255661104383
So you can report the advertisements and the profile promoting it if you want to go that far. (It's so time-consuming and sapping of creative energy doing all this). However, reporting the ad using the three little dots doesn't do a lot, there is nowhere to explain it's an Intellectual Property/copyright issue and they will normally just respond to say the advert does not breach their rules and not remove it if you only report via the three dots on the advert – so this long intellectual reporting page is the only way to successfully get the adverts taken down.
 
I have found that Facebook can take anything between 24hrs and 8 days to respond but they have always removed the adverts reported. I would recommend you regularly search the adverts as mine are back on sale around 24-48hrs later under a different selling page name.
 
The above only deals with Facebook/Meta adverts and not the websites themselves – Yarnopia is directing your adverts to lauracrafting.com and that website is hosted by NameCheap domains. So you can report the page to them – but I have found you need to report the exact page of your pattern or they will not do anything. Namecheap's takedown form it's here:
support.namecheap.com/index.php
 
the webpage with your blanket is here:
https://www.lauracrafting.com/Blossom
 
Click on "Submit a ticket" on the NameCheap reporting page and then "Abuse Reports" (near the bottom) and that leads to the Copyright form. Keep the ticket number so you can follow up if it's still outstanding.
 
If you ever need to report a website it is worth checking who the domain provider is as these all say they are powered by Shopify but they are not a part of Shopify – another way to have us reporting to the wrong people and not getting the page removed:
https://lookup.icann.org/en
So I typed in lauracrafting.com and it showed me NameCheap is the domain host. NameCheap are a favourite of these scammers at the moment as I have reported numerous pages to them – but again keep an eye out because they will remove the page and then it will pop back up so you will need to report it again.

Well, with all that said, I will not stop fighting this nor will I stop
designing and writing!
Thank you all for your love and support!


Gratefully,

Astri

2 comments:

  1. I am so sorry. I was about to report to you but found this instead. I am sorry that I wasn't more vigilent. I have lost $60 nz dollars and had to replace my debit card.

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    Replies
    1. Oh shoot, I am so sorry! I hope you can dispute this with your bank and get your money back. It's really been so very terrible. All we can do is spread the word so people know what to look out for.

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