100% Soft, a business that sells pop art, is accusing the Daily Wire of stealing one of its art designs for new products and trying to sell it on Amazon.
The design in question is a small, blue, smiley dumpster on fire. Truck Torrence, the artist behind the design, tweeted Friday that they have been using it for years now.
“It’s completely disheartening, overwhelming & shitty to have to keep dealing with art theft,” Torrence tweeted. “Real lame move of @realDailyWire to rip me off.”
I’d appreciate any signal boosting I can get with this. It’s completely disheartening, overwhelming & shitty to have to keep dealing with art theft. I’ve had my Dumpster Fire image for years now, across tons of different products. Real lame move of @realDailyWire to rip me off. pic.twitter.com/2LKIofGIJT
— 100% Soft • ᴗ • (@100soft) August 17, 2019
The Daily Wire, a right-wing news organization, posted a picture of its new merchandise, featuring the dumpster. A few hours later, Torrence pointed out the similarities between their design and the design on the Daily Wire’s new T-shirts. The only visible change made to the design featured on the Daily Wire’s shirts is an added “D” on the dumpster. The “D” stands for Democrats.
“Introducing Dumpy the Democrat Dumpster Fire,” the Daily Wire wrote Friday, along with an Amazon link to purchase the shirts in a now-deleted tweet. “Isn’t he cute and fiery and dumpstery? Get yours before the next Dem dumpster fire debates!!”
Torrence’s tweet, calling out the Daily Wire, is gaining some traction online. Thousands of people have shared the tweet, with some commenting that design theft, unfortunately, is an all too common occurrence that artists are faced with.
👇👇👇👇👇I know a lot of talented artists and this happens WAY too much and I am absolutely not surprised it’s @realDailyWire doing it. https://t.co/SFCUOQglrj
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 17, 2019
messed up that @realDailyWire is trying to sell t-shirts (pictured left) that totally rip off @100soft‘s work (pictured right) pic.twitter.com/QiHu47P7sz
— priscilla page (@BBW_BFF) August 17, 2019
Many Twitter users tagged Amazon to let it know that the Daily Wire was allegedly using stolen art. Torrence also reached out to Amazon’s copyright infringement department, according to one of the artist’s tweets. The Daily Wire’s products have since been taken down from Amazon.
Update: Amazon has taken down the product listing, however @realDailyWire has yet to respond to anything or take down their tweet advertising their theft, which is still a big deal. I appreciate all of your RTs and support.
— 100% Soft • ᴗ • (@100soft) August 17, 2019
Also FYI I reported @realDailyWire to @amazon/@AmazonHelp‘s copyright infringement department. I have no idea if that will do much. Thanks for the support, keep RTing until they take it down. 🙏
— 100% Soft • ᴗ • (@100soft) August 17, 2019
The Daily Wire is known for its main podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show. The organization is also known for publishing a slew of anti-LGBTQ, sexist, and racist remarks, according to Media Matters for America, which has compiled all the offensive comments from the Daily Wire’s podcasts since the beginning of 2019.
For example, one of the organization’s main commentators, Michael Knowles, said earlier this year that the birtherism conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama wasn’t racist. He said people didn’t think Obama was born in the U.S., because “he doesn’t speak like an American. He doesn’t speak in the sort of ideas that are traditionally American ideas.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Truck Torrence and the Daily Wire.
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