Reported Abuse of Threadless Terms & Conditions

When a report of abuse or a violation is made against a user in the Threadless community,  we take these matters very seriously. We investigate each and every report from internal and external sources to ensure all users in our community are following the community guidelines set out in the Threadless Terms & Conditions.  It is incredibly important for us to protect the privacy and safety of all parties involved and foster a community that is fair, supportive, and welcoming. All reports and flags remain anonymous unless otherwise indicated in the DMCA policy and procedures. 

With any report of violation we receive, we go through the following steps.

1. Discovery
2. Investigation
3. Decision
4. Notification 
5. Appeal review (if applicable)

Discovery

Circumstances may be flagged as potential abuse or a violation for a number of different reasons:

• External Reports The community or a person who sees the abuse alerts us, usually via email or social media report. We give community reported abuse our full care and attention. Our Community Experience team responds to every report or concern that is reported. Reports can be submitted via email at termsofuse@threadless.com.
• Internal Review We may review shop content for anything that violates our terms of use. Some of the things we may look for in content and account usage includes copyright ortrademarked images, stolen designs or images, fraudulent use, improper use of website, abuse of community guidelines, invasion of privacy standards, and unusual order/design upload pattern or other potential abusive use by an automated system or technological devices or programs.

Investigation

We base our decisions on the evidence available surrounding the report or circumstance. We review the details of the report, the content and details of the artwork within an Artist shop, and any other tangentially related publicly available information. We document what we observe and review whether that observable evidence points to a terms of use violation. 

What information may be considered:

• Imagery, design content, and language used by user on the account.
  • This includes the design, descriptions, tagging, metadata description, etc.
• Publicly available information related to account users and others involved.
  • This may include interactions and circumstances outside of our platform (i.e. social media and other marketplaces, if relevant) and any other communications and messages tangentially related.  
• Account usage, order history, or potential account activity that may point to an automated system or technological devices or programs that access the Website in a manner that functions differently than any human can reasonably produce in the same period.
• Indications of intent or negative impact and guidelines set by our terms and any other institutions related to the report.

Decision

Our goal is to balance privacy and safety for those involved and implement violations in a just and fair manner. We understand that while some violations are obvious, there are other violations that are more nuanced, subjective, biased or lacking in clear adjudication. Each report is treated on a case-by-case basis and the decision is based on the findings from the investigation. 

Notification

In certain cases, we may terminate an account without advance notice if there is evidence the abuse is excessively violating the terms of use or the actions were done with an intent to cause harm. Notification of account closure will be communicated at the time of account closing, unless it is determined that the account was closed due to nefarious or fraudulent reasons.

For other cases, users will be notified of any actions taken or required on their accounts according to the violation. This may result in a notification informing a user that action must be taken to avoid account closure or that there has been a removal of designs or content within an account or shop. 

As noted in the the Terms & Conditions, Threadless may take the following actions to enforce the terms:

• Send a notification informing you of any offending action, behavior, tag, spam or description, and request that you take corrective action immediately.
• Make your product(s) unavailable.
• In the case of certain repeat offenders, Threadless.com will, in its sole discretion, withhold payment and/or shut down an Artist Shop.

Threadless may, in its sole discretion and without prior notice, reserve the right to immediately suspend, disable, limit or terminate your account or Artist Shop and discontinue the relationship with any users that Threadless.com determines in its sole discretion are in violation of the Terms of Use. 

Appeals

We may consider good faith appeals sent to help+notice@threadless.com within 14 calendar days. However, if we terminate an account without notice, the decision is final.