Thunderfrogs In London

I was away in London for the day yesterday, so I couldn't announce the winners of the recent competition as soon as I'd have liked. While I was there I had a quick wander around Camden Market, and I saw several blatant examples of copyright infringement.

There were rips of Threadless tees like this one:

The REAL Dark Side Of The Garden is from Threadless.

And we even found a copy of the t-shirt my brother was wearing at the time:

Get the REAL Elliot's New Friend by Kevin Ross from Go Ape Shirts.

There were also the requisite MJ t-shirts, as well as a plethora of unlicensed Banksy t-shirts.

What's so wrong with buying dodgy market stall t-shirts I hear you ask?

Well one reason is that it's not like downloading a Hollywood blockbuster, where the studios and stars are all extremely wealthy and won't miss a few bob. T-shirt designers work hard to create these tees for you, and most of them aren't very well paid. Where the designers are getting royalties on the design, you are actually taking cash out of their pockets.

The second reason is that the quality of the goods just isn't up to scratch. Sometimes the concept is "reimagined" by a less talented artist, and sometimes it's a bad photoshop of the original, inevitably resulting in a poorer rendition of the image. Most of the ones I saw were printed on Gildan brand blanks. These are used because they are cheap, but don't have a particularly flattering fit. Threadless use their own quality blanks these days, and Go Ape Shirts (like many good brands) use American Apparel blanks. Trust me, you'd recognise the difference when you put them on. The quality of the printing on these fakes isn't the same either - the colours are off, and it's less detailed.

I'm not against piracy per se (remember my family celebrated Piratemas last year instead of Christmas), but I can't condone it on this occasion.