Paperchase, an Edinburgh-based stationery designer is in the middle of a social media storm after apparently plagiarising the work of an independent artist on The Hidden World of Eloise.
Twitter is alight with Tweets about their use of some of the artwork of the artist without permission and the company’s steadfast refusal to even acknowledge her claims. With the prohibitive costs of launching any sort of court action, the artist has been forced to turn to the web to vent their anger.
As a keen – if not very good – photographer – I’d be well pissed off too, if one of my photos appeared in a calendar or other device which some faceless corporation was making money from at my expense.
The image at the centre of the storm is the girl featured in the illustration ‘He says he can hear the Forest whisper‘. Compare it with the image shown on Paperchase’s Wonderland Square album.
Do you see the similarites between the two?
Shame on Paperchase for their actions; I hope the guilt trip being laid on them by the internets’ many users makes them pull the design from their products and offer an apology at the very least. I hope they do they right thing.
Good luck to the independent artist involved; the other little guys and girls are behind you in support.
And no, I won’t be buying any Paperchase products in protest. Neither, I suspect will many hundreds of others if the comments on Amazon are anything to go by!
EDIT: It appears Amazon have withdrawn the product from their stock listing while Paperchase have issued an apology .. it’s not much, but its a start I suppose.
However, if they were aware of the copyright claim and had contacted the artist (as Paperchase claim they did), why did it take until today’s Twitterstorm for them to do anything about it?
