My photo of a Jaguar E-Type from Flickr being used on Gap clothing designs

I'm sure that The Gap has a totally awesome explanation for why this photo of mine, published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license, is apparently being used on the Grey Pumice versions of the "Thermal body double" onesie (SKU #785589) and the 2-in-1 moto one-piece (SKU #785593) at gap.com.

 

The two images are clearly related to each other.

 

I eagerly await the Gap's response.

 

I have various thoughts about what's going on here — for example, the mind-boggling idea that some unknown factory in southeast Asia somewhere is cranking out thousands of $16.95 tshirts with my photo on them on behalf of the Gap, and yet they never attempted to contact me about their use of my work — but I'm trying to keep most of my thoughts to myself until Gap has a chance to respond.

 

This has come up, after all, on a Sunday afternoon, and I doubt the people there I tried to contact about this will find out until Monday morning. So I'll give them a day or so to formulate a response and get things moving to get this rectified.

 

That said, I appreciate all the Tweets & Re-Tweets, the articles in Jezebel & others, the mentions in local media, the Facebook comments, etc. Keep 'em coming, by all means.

 

But I'm going to try to mostly hold my tongue & give them a fair chance to respond before I write much more.

 

Your turn, Gap.

 

• • •

 

Addendum: By "your turn, Gap", I wasn't expecting anything like this.

 

• • •

 

News sources & blogs that have picked this up so far, in no particular order:

 

• Jezebel | Did The Gap Steal This Image From Flickr? (absolute tsunami of traffic from this one, thank you)

• A whole bunch of people are getting here from Reddit, apparently via Gap Pulls A Shepard Fairey and Gap Steals a Guy's Flickr Photo for Baby Gap Outfit, but mostly from their home page (!!).

• This Week in Photo | TWiP #187 — Crowd-Funded Photography

• You Thought We Wouldn't Notice | My photo of a Jaguar E-Type from Flickr being used on Gap clothing designs

• Photography on the Net, Canon Digital Photography Forums | GAP Clothing company allegedly rips off Flickr member's photo

• SFist | The Gap Rips Off Hobbyist's Flickr Photo for Baby-Sized T-Shirt

• news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2169414 (they don't really seem to do titles)

• Reddit | Gap Steals a Guy's Flickr Photo for Baby Gap Outfit

• PetaPixel | Gap Uses Flickr Photo for Clothing Graphic without Permission (very handy rollover illustration on this one, thank you!)

• MediaBisto Unbeige | The Gap Accused of Stealing Flickr Photo, Reprinting Design on Shirt

• Styleite | Did The Gap Steal This Car Photo From Flickr?

• Styleite | Marka Hansen And The Trouble With Gap

• A Photo Editor | Gap Pulls A Shepard Fairey

• Lovelyish | Gap Steals Car Photo from Flickr

• Geek | Gap accused of stealing Flickr photo for shirt designs

• Small Aperture | Oh Gap, get it together!

• Allston City Limits | Gone in 60 seconds (points for the original title on this one)

• MakeupAlley | Horrible. Gap uses a Flickr users photo on tees without permission (chat board, need registration to see past comment titles)

• Laughing Squid, and a whole bunch of other Tumblr users.

• Secret Photo Nerds | -- (yet another registration-only discussion site, no idea what this is)

• NU | Gap steelt afbeelding (Dutch; English translation: "Gap Steals Image")

• Design Taxi | Did Gap Use Flickr Photo for Its Designs? (Is this a spam site? Bafflingly, the comments seem to be about something else entirely.)

• Futomaki | Kolejny dzień, kolejna afera (Polish; English translation: "Another day, another scandal")

• Panophoto | Gap utilise des images Flickr sans s'acquitter des droits (French forum; English translation: "Gap uses Flickr images without paying duties")

 

Thank you all.

Done