There is a site called Gramunion that takes every single image posted to every single blog on this website and reposts it to its website, removing the original context of the images, including artist’s notes, requests to not repost artwork, and so on. The website does this as a way of “helping” you “Browse Any Tumblr Blog In a Structured Way!” (to quote their website).
We can all agree that this is garbage, right?
As a result of this website’s existence, I’m seeing more artwork posted to Pinterest and other websites, using Gramunion as the source.
I’d like to see if something can be done. Because no matter how many DMCA takedown notices I send to Pinterest, there will always be idiots who get my artwork again and again from Gramunion. I don’t want that, I’m pretty sure no-one else wants that for their artwork, so what can we do?
I think using this guide here we can send DMCA takedown notices to the website to get our art taken down. Here’s what the website says:
Let’s assume “Phil” sees his 1,500-word blog post republished on a
forum. His first step would be to issue a DMCA takedown notice to the DMCA agent
of the forum letting them know of the infringement. If the forum does
not take down the content, Phil would look up the hosting service for
the site using a “Who Is” domain search, and serve a takedown notice on
that company as well. Finally, Phil would serve notices on Google,
Yahoo, and Bing. If all parties comply with the notice, the offending
page would be removed by the host and delisted in the search engines.The website also provides an easy-to-use template for sending a takedown notice. Seriously, it’ll take you about two minutes to fill out, if that.
I sent a DMCA takedown to Gramunion itself first. I tried looking up the “Who Is” stuff for the site, and it led to a site called “Name.com,” which would be the next stop if Gramunion refuses to respond to my request. (I sent Gramunion an email already last week, and they refused to respond.) I’ll keep you posted on how this goes.
If you’re serious about keeping people from stealing your artwork, then I highly recommend you join me in sending takedown notices to this website. Maybe we can eventually get it shut down.
Accdg. to https://www.hostingchecker.com/#gramunion.com, the hosting service of Gramunion is actually Cloudflare. Try to send your DMCA takedown notices in https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form
So I checked Gramunion and it’s kind of uncomfortable. First of all, they have no permission whatsoever to repost Tumblr content. I searched if Gramunion is associated with Tumblr, there is none. Gramunion is only powered by Tumblr or in layman’s terms, they’re using a Tumblr theme.
Whatever the text is below the image (for example, link to the artist’s official website, support patreon, etc.) is cut out, allowing their art to be spread in other websites without actual credit to the artist.
Check if your art is in there and report if you must. Warn your favorite artists too if they don’t like their works reposted (unless they sign/watermark their works, but even that can be cropped out).
I already reported it in Tumblr (which you can do too, https://www.tumblr.com/support). But it would be nice to give them a heads up that one of the blogs using their themes are screwing with Tumblr artists and calling it “helping”.
Take this atrocity down, one report/reblog at a time.
This isn’t just art guys, it’s literally ANY photo you’ve put on tumblr is reposted there content free. Stop these guys
both my blogs are there.
So I took a look at this site, and they’re not re-hosting the images which means that a DMCA take-down request would probably be ineffective. (tumblr is hosting the images and serving them and you’ve given tumblr explicit permission to distribute your content.)