Colourlovers (YC W10) launches Creative Market

There's a lot to mention regarding motivation, especially in terms of user experience for both buyers and sellers. One thing that's not as subjective is our split with sellers. Envato advertises a 70/30 split on themeforest, but you have to be exclusive as well as sell over $75k of goods (http://themeforest.net/make_money/payment_rates). If you're selling non-exclusively, authors only get 33%. We give authors 70%, end of story.

The licensing is required, but the limits on it make me wonder about how much use I'd get out of it. I see links to the license on the FAQ: https://creativemarket.com/license - but there's only one type of license offered. It's very artist-friendly, I'll admit, but... that's the only license. The FAQ says that if that's a deal-breaker, to use the contact form. But there's more about that license that's, well, confusing.

It seems about what you'd expect (by which I mean good for a seller, and not as much as I'd hope for as a buyer, but buying IP is always going to be hard to balance, so it's understandable/expected), though there's one that worries me: "All other items may only be used in a single commercial project." This is referencing items that aren't add-ons.

Does this mean, for example, a purchased WP theme could only be used on one client's site, ever? That's how I'm reading this plus the other terms.

And those packs of between 25 and 500 or so icons, can they only be used in a single client application? It looks like some are add-ons to Photoshop, while others are apparently a non-program specific package, doesn't that mean they have to be used differently per this license since one set of icons is an add-on, the other isn't? I know it's called "SimpleLicense", but licenses are never simple.

And then there's another licensing aspect. The true ownership of the items. The FAQ says that each item won't be checked when uploaded to the market, so the developer can update listings as they please, and to use a contact form for copyright issues.

I'd hope that'd be enough, but I already see one person who looks like they are probably infringing copyright, from what this lay person can see: https://creativemarket.com/Adrien/activity - does this individual has licenses from Braun for his UI product and individual licenses with each car manufacturer listed for the car designs that allows him to create products based off those and resell them with a restrictive license?

A place to report copyright violations in excess of just a contact form is going to be required, sooner or later. But a check to begin with to make sure someone isn't offering an item that already exists... I can see how that'd be an impediment. The texture packs make me wonder for both site and seller, as I wouldn't want to be the person that has to make sure one particular version of the texture "crumpled paper" isn't the same as the other 1000 versions of it.

That all said, it does feel like something that has great potential to succeed. I do some design work, and even with all I noticed, I'd still be tempted to use this site for selling sets of graphics.

So our simple license is not meant to be the all encompassing, but as a start and base license, the most open license. ie, you can actually use it commercially.

As for the rights and infringement stuff, we take this seriously and are gating sellers right now while we work on this stuff before letting anybody open a shop. It will always be a moving target, but we'll keep working on our aim.