Anyone know how many creative people there are out there? Current estimates put it at around 6,692,030,277. 

Huh?

Yup! That’s a massive figure right? How did I come up with that one? Given a simple assumption: everybody on the planet is creative.

Everybody.
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Yesterday I showcased Tim van Damme’s Wall of Shame, a rather fun way to treat copyright thieves.

Today I’ll present a similar approach, from Panic, the software makers who bring us Coda, Transmit and other Mac apps that have become part of our every day life.

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Tim van Damme is famous for bringing the simple landing page back in fashion.

As with all things awesome, his website has been copied numerous times by lazy design thieves. Obviously, Tim doesn’t approve.

So to tackle the bull by the horns, and have fun in the process, Tim decided to list perpetrators’ sites on the WALL OF SHAME.

Good for him, I personally think it’s a great initiative for any non-commercial site. But I wonder if he’s tried contacting the sites’ owners with a Cease and Desist letter?

Last year, my creative studio (Engage Brandcraft) was accused of stealing the intellectual property of a bigger, much more aggressive company who had in fact clearly stolen ours.

They threatened us with legal action if we didn’t ‘cease and desist’ with the flagrant use of our own original work (in this particular case, our name and logo – a very nasty allegation indeed). Trademark issues ensued – we were being accused of passing-off and copyright violations.

Goliath eventually gave in but not without a very expensive counter-threat from the lawyers on our side. Taking it to court would probably have cost in the region of approximately 50 000 USD. We came off lightly. Yet we’d done nothing wrong to start with! In time and money alone the exercise cost us well over 2000 USD. And let me assure you, we didn’t have that kind of money lying around. Similar predicaments face creators from all walks of life, daily, across the globe. Other “writers” steal our articles, companies turn our Youtube^® uploads into ads, bullies copy our logos and then accuse us of being the perpetrators.

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Here we are (somewhere between Singapore, Paris and Cape Town) and this is it – the very first myows blog post!

We are live, we’re in Beta and we’re ready to protect and serve with the most comprehensive set of free copyright management tools available.

Myows is more than an app, it’s a movement: forward-thinking global creatives who respect the originality and integrity of their work and expect others to do the same. It is our stated mission to reduce the incidence of online copyright theft by 20% by 2020.

We’re going to do it but we need your backing… starting today.

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