You've made a magnificent mistake. An egregious error. At first, I'd hoped that it was merely an atrocious aberration, a bit of a blunder on your part...but it wasn't.

What was it, you ask? Because you haven't actually asked, so I have to pretend that you have a very poor memory, and show you.

DonMyers99 said 11/5/2010
Thanks for stealing my art :)
To whom it may concern. We feel the Zombie Eat Flesh design at Zazzle.com violates our copyright and we want it removed immediately. The image was created and published in 2007 and is owned by Tshirtbordello.com Our copyright registration number for ZOMBIE EAT FLESH : VA 1-738-214 The URL to our copyright protected design at Tshirtbordello.com: http://www.tshirtbordello.com/Zombie-Eat-Flesh-T-Shirt We would like all Zombie Eat Flesh images listed under this vendor to be removed. There does not appear to be a bulk reporting mechanism and there are MANY instances under some of these sellers. For brevity we will assume that any and all images will be removed for each offending image. There are too many products to report them one at a time. If you have any questions you may contact our copyright attorney: michael.spradley@myidealaw.com Michael Spradley 713-319-8284

That. Your deleterious delusion, and the reprehensible lack of research that led you to this point in time -- a moment where you do not want to be.

This moment where you're disrupting me, taking time away from my first attempt at seasonal celebration in almost ten years. You're pissing me off. Liars piss me off.

Yes. That's right. I called you a liar. That's what you call dishonest people, isn't it? Don't like that? Would you prefer maligner? Perjurer? Prevaricator? Fabulist? Yeah, I bet you'd prefer fabulist, because that generally means 'one who makes up fables', and fables are little stories with a moral. And you've certainly made up a little story, and there might be a moral.

I'd conjecture that the moral would be 'Don't trust Don Michael Myers of TShirtBordello, because he'll get an artist to make a design similar to yours and claim you stole his design, even though your design predates his.'

Yes, I know you get freelance graphic artists to design for you. I don't know if you pay them much, but I don't care to find out. I don't want your greedy little claws in any of my shit.

I also know that the Zombie Eat Flesh shirt I own predates yours.

I'm going to pretend you're thinking clearly, and not consumed by some sort of self-important ahr-teest-businessman rage...although I suppose you could easily splutter out 'PROVE IT!' through the rich and luxurious lather of fury-foam you'd have in the latter scenario.

Proof of statement part one:

I own this shirt.

That is the item listing from the receipt.

And this is the date of that order. The full receipt can be viewed here.

That date is important. Why? Because I'm quite the little internet investigator. I, like everyone else online, easily found your little registration. And I found a couple of interesting things.

For example:

And:

Source screenshot here

Now, I notice a couple of interesting things here. Very interesting things. Like your registration date: October 6th of this year. Makes me wonder about the alleged 'creation/publication' date. Did you think you were back-dating it far enough when you filed this? Or maybe that is the valid creation date. There's only one problem. April 9th 2007 comes after December 3rd 2006.

And you know what December 3rd 2006 comes after?

Source Receipt, as usual.

December 3rd 2006 comes after October 14th 2006. Both of those dates are before April 9th 2007.

Now, maybe I know where you got confused. Maybe you accidentally transposed that greater/less than 'The alligator bites the biggest one' onto time, and assumed that the one that the alligator bites, being bigger, is therefore the reigning champion, and all others, being lesser, must be deleted. But that's not how time and copyright and first use work.

In first use, if the alligator bites your date, that means it's newer. The alligator isn't happy with being re-purposed for this little thing -- he's got enough work with all this hypertext shit on top of everything else -- and wants us all to fuck right off and use a goddamned calendar because that's what it's for.

My recommendation: you rectify your little lapse -- make good your miscalculation. Here's a handy step-by-step guide.

STEP 1: DO NOT demand that I take this post down. I won't. You have no grounds to make such a demand.
STEP 2: DO go straight to sotld.com and post an apology. Say that you're sorry you accused the creator of a preexisting work of stealing your subsequent work.
STEP 3: DO NOT look at the current designs there, and think 'gosh, I should make one of those, too!'
STEP 4: DO contact Zazzle directly and tell them that you filed a false claim.
STEP 5: DO NOT pull this shit again.

If the wishful thinking side of me hadn't been beaten to death by the realist side of me in 1999, I'd say that I look forward to your swift and appropriate response leading to the reinstating of the earlier design; instead, well, I look forward to your comments.