Hello! Thank you for setting up this community! I'm just curious about how Amazon knows if you've used any Canva elements in your book. And if they terminate your account for that, do they specifically say it's because you've used Canva elements? I've stopped using Canva elements, but I have in the past, so I'll have to go back and re-do some notebooks. Thank you!
2 Answers
I do not think they have a way of being 100% certain unless its a very obvious Canva element.
You can get blocked from Amazon KDP for using Canva elements that are trademarked. I have no idea why or how they are using those in the first place, but they do unfortunately.
I would only re-do them if you used elements are the obviously trademarked like Harry Potter, Spiderman, etc, etc. Not just like a random Autumn leaf for example. But that is just my opinion.
Best,
Corvin
Is it possible that Amazon's automated system is applying this part of its content guidelines to images, where it says, "We will not accept content under copyright that is freely available on the web unless it’s provided by the owner of the copyright?"
And then the human reviewers are saying that an image provided by canva and used by us to design a book is not us being the owner of the copyright even though canva gives us license to use the images with full commercial rights technically we are not the owners of the images and that's where kpd takes issue.
I think only by combining images to make a totally new design is the only way to use canva safely.
And i know some of canva's image database are from sites like pixabay which amazon is probably using bots to detect images from sites like pixabay and then applying the standard of it not being provided by the copyright owner. Even though that image might have a full commercial license attached to it.
I think that this is where if Amazon changed their stance to "We will not accept content under copyright that is freely available on the web unless it’s provided by the owner of the copyright or you have a commercial license to use the content?"
That would solve a ton of issues, that is getting ppl terminated. In short only use images that have been significantly altered from canva or have an artist design all images.
However, the other part of the content guidelines concerns poor customer experience, so anything designed needs to be of top quality.
I think amazon are confusing with freely available with freely useable and they don't understand licensing of images.
