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Yesterday we received a number of angry tweets, e-mails and phone calls about a design from one of our shop partner’s shops. They all, in one form or another, asked the same question: why/how could you allow such a design to be sold or printed.

Yes, we know about this design – it has been available since 2008. We now know the terrible events it indirectly references. But, we see ourselves as a (neutral) platform – a “technical service”. That means that we sometimes have to print designs and text that we personally don’t support and/or don’t approve of – but still have to tolerate. As stated in this shop, “The Shop Partner is exclusively and solely responsible for the design and content of this shop”.

Whenever there is a design that might cross a line (something that is very difficult to define), the Ethics Committee steps in. This committee is made up of 7 employees from a number of departments throughout our company. They discuss shops and designs that have come to our attention on a case to case basis. For example, a “clean” shop with a design that clearly violates our ethical guidelines will not be shut down – simply the design would be removed.

There are however (often) situations where a design doesn’t directly violate our guidelines, but is rather a subtle case which lands somewhere in the grey zone between freedom of speech and censorship.

The example referenced above: a design “Without Killing Anyone”, is seen by many to be offensive, tasteless and disrespectful (I count myself among those). However, we have not yet removed it because it is a case that we have to review whether it falls within the realm of freedom of speech. We see this freedom as a fundamental part our platform – and unless a design directly violates the law or our ethical guidelines, we will not play the role of censor.

We will, however, review this design in our Ethics Committee. In the meanwhile, we invite you to express your opinions and thoughts for discussion in the comments below.

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UPDATE: We understand your points in the comments below. We take this and other such inquiries about ethics very seriously. We also want you to understand that this process takes time. Our platform allows users to upload content expressing their opinions. In some cases it is very clear that a design “allude[s] to victims of catastrophes or attacks in a disrespectful manner”, in other cases, like this one, when taken out of context, the design does not clearly break our ethical guidelines. This is why it was approved over 2 years ago and has existed on our platform without much note until yesterday afternoon.

We cannot control the opinions expressed in every design uploaded to our platform. Nor do we want to censor the opinions of our partners. I hope you understand that wish. Imagine you uploaded a design to our platform expressing an opinion we don’t agree with and us censoring it. This is why we let all designs uploaded to shops appear, as long as they clearly do not break any law or violate our ethical guidelines. This design violates the latter – but our Ethics Committee is in place to deal with this once it comes to our attention.

The Ethics Committee has decided to remove this design from the shop. Please understand that this process takes time and that we can’t remove every design complained about without properly looking into the case and coming to the right conclusion according to our Ethical Guidelines. After reviewing this design and placing it into the context (which was unclear two years ago upon its approval), we found it does violate our ethics.

Thank you for all of your comments expressing your outrage. I took each and every one seriously, except for those that personally threatened me. Please continue to discuss or ask questions below.