On Thursday Dec. 10 to my dismay, I saw that a woman I’ve known for almost 20 years had entered a photo of herself into a Princesses With Power Tools calendar sold by Reinvented Magazine, wearing my wings, and presented as a wing maker. With no attribution for my wings, even though the photo shows her working on wing panels and initially, the profile described her as someone who ‘makes fairy wings that really flap’. Even without that text, it visually implies she’s the wing maker here.
Below you’ll see a screenshot of the calendar page posted yesterday, and below that one of my old wing listing photos for the wings she is wearing.
Screenshot of the page from Reinvented Magazine, shown in Fair Use for the purpose of commentary and education
I sent Reinvented an email Dec 10 at 11:59am Pacific, simply asking for credit as I felt, and still do, that the photo could imply that she was wearing the wings she makes herself since she’s also shown making wings. My initial email is below.
I got no response at all from Reinvented until early Friday morning, but they found the time to discuss this with Erin roughly a half hour after my email was sent, and Erin contacted me to assure me it was all fine because it’s ‘just a photo of her in my wings’. No apology or offer to address it in any way, and I got no further response from her since. Obviously it was not fine.
I emailed Reinvented again, at 12:48pm Pacific, right after I got that message from Erin, asking for a direct response to me.
I mentioned a copyright issue with a Princesses With Power Tools calendar in my Instagram Stories, at first without naming or tagging anyone. It explained how disappointing it was and briefly described the problem
I did tag their account in an Instagram Story later Thursday night asking for a response, since It’s been my experience that if an organization doesn’t want to address us, they will if the request to respond is made public. Meanwhile they were taking orders for this calendar, so this needed to be brought to attention. A few people said they commented on their calendar post asking to have me credited, but each one was quickly removed, they wanted to blame their lack of response on everyone being busy but they sure had someone working for them to delete inquiring comments no matter how polite, rather than respond with even one sentence to me.
Below are screen shots of those Stories.
Reinvented was silent all through the night, so it seemed I was going to be ignored.
At 7:31 am Friday morning I got an email from Caeley at Reinvented, she let me know that she deleted the text about wing making from the page and calendar, but let me know she did not feel responsible for anything further without a licensing agreement between Erin and I, which is not even necessary nor applicable to this situation at all. She made statements about patents, trademarks & garment exclusions from copyright, none of which have anything to do with my copyright on my wings, which I register with the US Copyright Office. This specific set was not, because I haven’t had issues of infringement with them until now, but it’s irrelevant because I still own the copyright on them. They are my own design and not the movie version.
Copyright ownership is created as soon as the design is, to require legal registrations seems to communicate to me that they are only concerned with whether or not they will be sued for it rather than whether or not it’s wrong - which it was.
This statement Caeley made was especially concerning:
”As of right now we are not aware of any license or agreement that would forbid us from using your projects or displaying the results of your wing tutorials in our calendar. We also were unable to find any attribution requirements related to their original purchase. However, if there is a limited use license associated with photos taken by third parties of your wings, please send that to us immediately so we can make the necessary corrections.”
It sounds like they think they can use whatever they want unless they see a license agreement forbidding it, and that’s not necessarily true in every instance.
The use of someone else’s IP to give the impression that you’re responsible for creating it is still plagiarism.
Below is my response to their email.
I did post a screen shot Friday on Twitter that erroneously showed Caeley’s phone number and email, which I did not realize was a private one since it was coming from an organization she’s the CEO of. I didn’t know phone numbers are protected on Twitter like that either, so that screen shot did get reported and removed, I didn’t appeal it because I don’t intend to give out anyone’s private info and I apologize for that oversight. It’s been removed and I can’t access it again for you.
Anything else on Twitter about the issue should still be up.
The screenshot in this one has obscured that info.
Below are the Stories I posted on IG after I got the email from Reinvented, Friday around 11:30 am. The one from Friday night where I asked Reinvented to please respond to my request for credit, I had deleted after they responded to me and I guess it deletes those from the archive too, so that is the only thing that’s missing as far as I can tell.
Now, ultimately, the fault lies with Erin, who I’ve known for almost 20 years and who has lightly stepped on my toes through the years when it comes to copying my wing work, I didn’t say anything when she posted about ‘her’ wing prototypes, which seemed to be made exactly the way I teach in my tutorial, a post in which she said she’s making her own tutorial for flapping fairy wings.
Last year after Maker Faire, when I posted new video of the flapping wings Jordan worked on for me in 2016 she even asked if she could help us with our flapping wing project and I welcomed it.
But she must have changed her mind, and none of these WIP tutorial posts or even her own posts on social media of herself in my wings credited me in any way.
Below are her public posts, and receipts of her request to help with the flapping wings Jordan worked with me on in my post last year after Maker Faire in the SF bay area.
She’d been fascinated by our flapping wing project ever since we started, years ago. She’s stated she’s been trying to figure out how to make some for years, but hadn’t been able to yet with all her experience. Meanwhile, Jordan figured out an elegant and economic solution with zero formal training or previous experience, learning how to code in his free time when he wasn’t working as a graphic artist. Below, the first posts of our prototype flapping wings and her share of them.
She did experiment some on her own (below), however with a different type of construction. Although someone knowledgeable in animatronics might figure out that it was a 2 servo construction by the way Jordan was holding onto the motor (above), that wasn’t completely apparent until I posted the video of myself in them at Maker Faire in 2019 and showed the exposed mechanism.
I mentioned my concern to Adafruit after 11pm Thursday night, as I was worried Erin would continue this trend of trying to take credit for my work when she makes her wing tutorial, and she lists herself as working for them. I believe my concern was valid based on her reaction and refusal to address this properly, as this choice of photo and omission of my name now seemed intentional plagiarism rather than accidental.
In order to be completely transparent, here is my email to Adafruit below as well, along with their response to me, which I felt was fair and professional. For the record, because I’ve heard of people getting their screenshots removed for showing even their OWN email that was reported as private, mine are info@fancyfairy.com and faeryangela@gmail.com. I’m sure I’ll get more junk mail but there ya go.
Their new post shows Erin’s new photo with my wings removed and hers added in - a lot more effort than simply adding a credit tagline, but okay. I’m glad for the change.
They’ve now made a post without naming me, but claiming my issue was with her costume, which it isn’t, and stated that I felt that ‘reproduction’ of my past products in commercial print is a violation of my copyright. Well, if someone DID actually reproduce any of my designs, it’s copyright infringement.
They’re now playing victim with no accountability for how they handled this either, accusing me of slander, & doxxing, and this is also inaccurate.
I did make a mistake as I didn’t know that was a private phone number, but slander?
It has to be false to be slander. I have not lied about anything.
I’m being painted as someone who demands credit in any photo where any of my wings are shown at all times, which isn’t true at all.
Reinvented’s IG post is shown below, with the newly edited photo using Erin’s wings, which is honestly how it should have been in the first place if she was so against crediting me.
This particular type of use was clearly inappropriate and misleading. Costume makers don’t pose for publicity photos sitting at a sewing machine wearing someone else’s dress, and if you’re promoting yourself as a wing maker don’t advertise in someone else’s wings without attribution.
Last but not least, this is the last email I sent to Erin Thursday at 4:30pm after she made clear she didn’t care to credit me in any way, and no surprise, I got no response since.
Keep in mind when I say it may not warrant legal action, I mean because I don’t even want to and never implied I would, not that this would never hold up legally as a copyright violation. A court may have seen it as a violation of my copyright, we’ll probably never know, because it’s not worth it.
But making sure you have the truth is worth it, to me. Even if you still think it makes me look bad.
*BTW I don’t mind people commenting their opinion, but I will take down comments that contain misleading misinformation about copyright or lies about this situation.
*Edited at 3:42 Sunday Dec. 13 to make some sections more clear and to add screenshots. I like to be completely transparent about these things if I’m being accused of something as serious as slander or ‘terrorism’.
Additional info
*Edited 12/26 to add that Reinvented Inc. seems to be noncompliant with registering their organization with their state’s regulatory body.
At the suggestion of someone with experience being on voting boards of 501c3 non-profits, I tried to look them up to make sure there wasn’t more than just IP issues they were being opaque about and there is no record in Florida’s check-a-charity.
I wasn’t sure what this might mean, so I used the site’s chat function to ask someone.
I was told by the agent that this is a red flag for donors.
Above was my chat with the agent. I’ve blurred out any addresses and phone numbers, even though much of the info is public record as is required for all nonprofit 501c3 corporations. I would never share a private address even if I had a legal right to, if one was used to register with.
Remember, 501c3 nonprofits are required to provide their financial & tax records to whoever asks to see them, so that’s an option if you are nervous about your donations whoever they are going to.
*Edited further 2/24 to add the screenshots of our early prototype posts and Erin’s.
Adafruit has assured me that they will be crediting me for inspiration for the wings and linking to my tutorial video, which I very much appreciate since we still feel her tutorial came about through unethical behavior. I’m glad they have the integrity to credit even if she won’t.
Especially since I’ve learned that most of the construction of the new flapping wings for them is done by someone else:
https://twitter.com/ecken/status/1357375971482034176?s=20
It appears Erin made the code (we had code for ours already), the wing panels, which I obviously could have provided and putting a video tutorial together, something we also could have done.
One more thing people might want to look at, is Erin’s very recent cultural appropriation of indigenous facial markings and other elements in her cosplay of a fictional ‘barbarian’ group of white women she and her friends made official accounts for & smells of white feminism.
The FB page was removed within a day after I posted about it, but although the Instagram account is still up, most photos were deleted.
Perhaps someone else removed them, because Erin still has those photos up publicly. Though she switched her profile pic today, just yesterday it was still a photo of her with those facial markings.
With that response, my guess is she cares about cultural appropriation as much as she cares about the rights of fellow artists - zero percent.
Screenshots below of the FB page description for her group ‘The Horde’ before it was removed, the Twitter account, as well as photos that are still up on her Instagram. The photos on her Facebook timeline are still there as well.
Although there’s a common misconception among cosplayers that the chin stripe was a Nordic, Celtic or Viking thing, it is not. It’s used by Indigenous people in the Americas, by the Inuit, and various tribes in Africa and Asia. None of which are her heritage.
