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Someone is selling my photo on Etsy (or Redbubble): what to do

Marco van Oirschot·

A desk scene showing a photographer's original beach path photo being resold without permission: an Etsy listing offers it as a framed print for 29 dollars, a product page sells it as a photo mug with t-shirt, sticker and phone case variants, another page sells it as a phone case, and a cheap knockoff listing offers it for 2 dollars, next to a notepad with the steps: screenshot everything, save URL and seller, report as rights holder, ask for payment and keep monitoring

You search for your own name, or a follower sends you a link, and there it is: your photo on a poster, a mug, a phone case or a t-shirt, sold by a shop you have never heard of. The price is real, the reviews are real, and the "artist" is not you.

This happens to photographers and illustrators constantly, because print-on-demand marketplaces make it almost free to try. Uploading a stolen image costs a seller nothing. If nobody complains, the listing earns money. If someone complains, the listing disappears and the seller uploads ten new ones.

The good news: both Etsy and Redbubble have formal reporting processes that work, and if you are in the EU, the law is more on your side than most US-centric guides suggest. The bad news: if you report first and collect evidence second, you can win the takedown and lose the proof.

This guide covers the right order.

Direct answer

If someone is selling your photo on Etsy or Redbubble without permission:

  1. Capture evidence first. Screenshot the listing with the price, seller name and URL visible. A successful takedown deletes the listing, and your proof with it.
  2. Report it as the rights holder. Etsy uses the Etsy Reporting Portal; Redbubble uses a Notice and Takedown Report. Both only accept reports from the copyright owner or an authorised representative.
  3. In the EU, you have a legal right to this process. Under the Digital Services Act, any marketplace serving EU users must offer a notice mechanism, act on precise reports, and explain its decision.
  4. Decide whether you want money, not just removal. With an identifiable EU-based seller, an after-the-fact licence fee is realistic. With an anonymous overseas shop, the takedown usually is the win.
  5. Keep monitoring. Stolen images get re-uploaded by other shops. One takedown is rarely the end.

Why your photo is on a mug you never approved

Print-on-demand is the engine behind most of this. A seller uploads an image, the platform (or a fulfilment partner behind an Etsy shop) generates product mockups automatically, and nothing is printed until someone orders. The seller never touches inventory, never pays for stock, and never needs the rights to make money from an image. That economic structure invites mass uploading, and there are operations that scrape portfolios, social feeds and stock sites at industrial scale.

Your photo can show up in two different ways:

  • As the product itself. Your image is the artwork on the print, mug, case or shirt. This is the classic case for photographers and illustrators.
  • As the listing photo for someone else's product. Knockoff sellers, especially on AliExpress and Temu, routinely copy product photos from successful Etsy listings to sell their own version. If you shoot product photography, this variant is aimed at you.

Both are copyright infringement. The reporting route is the same.

Capture evidence before you report anything

This is the step most guides skip, and it is the one that costs real money if you get it wrong.

When your report succeeds, the platform deactivates the listing. The page you would have used to prove the infringement, the price, the number of sales and reviews, the seller identity: gone. If you later want to claim a licence fee or calculate damages, you are stuck arguing about a page that no longer exists.

So before you touch any report form, save:

  • the full listing URL
  • screenshots of the whole listing, including price, product variants, seller name and review count
  • the seller's shop page and its URL
  • the date you found it
  • your own original file, with its original capture date

This is also exactly the workflow ImageTrace automates. A scan finds copies of your photo on public web pages, including marketplace and print-on-demand listings, and stores the URL, a screenshot and the match details in a PDF evidence report with a timestamp. If the listing disappears tomorrow, your file does not.

One honest note: no reverse image search finds everything. Marketplace pages come and go quickly, some load images in ways that are hard to index, and a listing that exists today can be gone before any tool sees it. Scanning dramatically improves your odds; it does not make them perfect.

How to report your photo on Etsy

Etsy handles copyright reports through its intellectual property policy and a dedicated reporting flow at etsy.com/legal/ip/report. You do not need an Etsy shop; you need to be the rights holder or authorised to act for one.

The process, step by step:

  1. Register with the Etsy Reporting Portal. This is Etsy's system for rights holders. You create an account, then add your "intellectual property": for a photo, that is your copyrighted work, no registration certificate required in the EU, since copyright exists automatically.
  2. Create a report and attach listings. Add the URL of every infringing listing. If one shop has taken several of your photos, put them in the same report and include the shop URL.
  3. Substantiate ownership. Link to the original publication of your photo (your portfolio, your social post, your client's page) and state clearly that you are the rights holder. Etsy requires a good-faith statement that the use is unauthorised.
  4. Submit and track. You get an email confirmation, the report gets a status you can follow in the portal, and Etsy emails you the outcome.

When Etsy accepts a report, it deactivates the listing and notifies the seller, including instructions for filing a counter notice. Counter notices under the DMCA apply to US-based reports; if a seller files one and you do not start legal action within roughly ten business days, the listing can come back. In practice, sellers running stolen-image shops rarely counter, because a counter notice requires them to identify themselves.

How to report your photo on Redbubble

Redbubble's process is described in its IP/Publicity Rights Policy. Two routes lead to the same place: the Report link in the footer of any product page, or the Notice and Takedown Report form in their help centre.

What makes Redbubble different: one uploaded design automatically spawns dozens of product pages (shirt, sticker, mug, print, and so on). Report the artwork page for each stolen design rather than every individual product, and say explicitly that the report covers all products carrying that design.

Include:

  • the URL of each infringing artwork page, plus the uploader's shop URL if one account took multiple works
  • a description of your original photo and where it was first published
  • proof of ownership: your original files, dated posts, or your own store listing
  • your full name and a monitored email address, and the required good-faith statements

Redbubble says it responds within about 48 hours; complete, precise reports get handled faster than vague ones. Be aware that your notice, including your name, may be shared with the uploader. Redbubble also operates a repeat-infringer policy, so reporting a serial uploader does more than remove one listing.

Your extra leverage in the EU: the Digital Services Act

Most takedown guides are written for the American DMCA. If you are in the Netherlands or anywhere in the EU, you have a stronger position than that, because of the Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065), which applies to every platform serving EU users regardless of where the company sits.

What it means for a photographer, in plain terms:

  • Platforms must offer a notice mechanism (Article 16). An easy, electronic way to report illegal content, and copyright infringement is illegal content. This is not a courtesy; it is an obligation.
  • A precise notice creates knowledge. A sufficiently substantiated report means the platform can no longer claim it did not know about the infringement, which puts its own liability shield at risk if it sits on the report. This is why complete reports with exact URLs and ownership evidence work so much better than angry summaries.
  • You are owed an explanation (Article 17). If the platform removes the listing, restricts it, or refuses, it must give a statement of reasons.
  • You can escalate (Articles 20 and 21). Platforms must run an internal complaint system, and beyond that, certified out-of-court dispute settlement bodies exist for contested decisions.
  • Marketplaces must know who their traders are (Article 30). Platforms like Etsy have to collect and display the name and contact details of professional sellers. For you, this is gold: it can turn an anonymous shop into an identifiable business you can send a demand letter to.

You do not need to cite article numbers in your report. But knowing that the process is a legal obligation, not a favour, changes how you follow up when a platform is slow.

The same playbook works on other print-on-demand sites

Society6, TeePublic, Displate, Zazzle and the rest all run comparable notice-and-takedown processes, usually linked in the site footer under "IP" or "Copyright". The pattern is always: identify yourself as the rights holder, list exact URLs, prove ownership, make the required statements.

Two are worth naming separately:

  • AliExpress handles reports through Alibaba's Intellectual Property Protection platform (ipp.alibabagroup.com), where you register once as a rights holder and can then file takedowns across Alibaba's marketplaces.
  • Temu runs its own IP portal for takedown requests, reachable via the site footer.

If you sell physical products and your listing photos are being reused by knockoff shops on these platforms, the same evidence-first rule applies, with one extra reason: those photos are often your proof that the knockoff listing copied you and not the other way around.

Will you ever see money from this?

Honest answer: it depends almost entirely on who the seller is.

An anonymous shop with a fantasy name, no imprint and a suspiciously broad catalogue is usually operated from outside the EU. You can get the listing removed, and that is worth doing, but chasing payment across borders costs more than it recovers. Take the win.

An identifiable seller is different. A professional Etsy shop in the EU displays trader details (see the DSA point above), and a Dutch or European business that sold products carrying your photo owes you a licence fee for the use that already happened. That claim starts with the evidence you saved before the takedown: the listing, the price, the sales indicators. How to calculate the amount and how to write the letter are covered in separate guides.

If you skipped the evidence step, this door is closed. That is why it is step one.

After the takedown: expect round two

Stolen images behave like weeds. The upload cost is zero, so the same photo reappears in a different shop, on a different platform, often within weeks. Serial uploaders work from folders of scraped images, and your photo is in the folder now.

That is the argument for monitoring rather than one-off searching. ImageTrace can re-scan your photos on a schedule and email you when new matches appear, so round two gets caught while the listing is fresh, before it accumulates sales you will never hear about. If you manage a large archive, you can upload a ZIP and keep the whole set under watch. For the wider picture of tracking down copies beyond marketplaces, see how to find stolen photos online.

The practical workflow

When you find your photo for sale on Etsy, Redbubble or any print-on-demand site:

  1. Save the listing URL, screenshots with price and seller visible, and the shop URL.
  2. Save proof that the photo is yours, including the original file.
  3. Check whether the same image is for sale elsewhere; thieves rarely use one platform.
  4. Report each listing through the platform's IP process, as the rights holder, with exact URLs.
  5. If the seller is identifiable and in the EU, consider a licence fee claim before or alongside the takedown.
  6. Keep the evidence, even after the listing is gone.
  7. Keep monitoring the photos that matter.

ImageTrace handles the finding and the evidence: upload your photo, review the matches including marketplace listings, and export a timestamped PDF report per match, with an editable takedown or demand letter in English or Dutch. You decide what to do; there is no commission on anything you recover.

Start your free ImageTrace scan, no card required.

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