To Don Myers of TShirtBordello

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.

4 thoughts on “To Don Myers of TShirtBordello

  1. Looks like a cut and dried case of Copyright Infringement. The alligators don’t lie.

    Do the right thing, and do as she says, Don.

  2. The infringement is actually the lesser thing here. That the imbecile accused me of corporate theft, in public, constitutes libel. I charge a lot for that luxury.

  3. Dear Zazzle.com and Hunter@coffeechick.com. I strongly urge you to file a lawsuit against this company and it’s owner, as I have personally seen that this fraudulent item is still being sold. And I am also aware of his intentions to commit a future fraud and theft, as he explained to me in detail during my interview to be hired by him, how a company owner can steal a large sum of money and put the blame on the employee. And the sum of 25,000 dollars had been mentioned to me several times. I believe whole-heatedly, that I was to be the victim of this future crime. Not only is the theft of anything over 20,000 a federal offense, but the money stolen would be insured, giving the owner a 50,000 dollar payout, saving the failing business and not doing a moment of time in federal prison. I was let go within the first 45 minutes of my first day, and I believe that was due to his guilty conscience and the grace of God. I have been informed by not only him, but his current girlfriend and ex-wife that still works there, that the business wasn’t doing well this year. 50 grand is a pretty big chunk of change, but I’m not willing to be his pawn. His excuse for letting me go was my background, which I was up front about before a check was ever mentioned. He claims otherwise. I know that this was his plan, but he couldn’t go through with it using me. And though he has responded with insults and referred to my background, he failed to address the alleged scheme that I felt he was up to regarding this major theft, using me as the pawn. I say go for it, because I know firsthand, the man cannot be trusted.

  4. My friend told me she called Don to have a funny tshirt made. She communicated through phone calls and emails her idea. After receiving the orgiginal artistic idea he stole it and posted it on his tshirt site. She never heard back from him and he never answered her calls or attemts to contact him. Also one night I over heard him talking about making up lies to squash any competition regarding an amazing up and coming artist. I was completely disgusted and backed away shocked and haven’t spoke to or been around him since.

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