Someone is reselling your digital files

First: is it actually yours to report?

In the UK, copyright doesn't need registering. GOV.UK puts it plainly: "You get copyright protection automatically - you do not have to apply or pay a fee." It covers original artistic and written work, including illustration and photography. So the artwork, layouts and wording you created yourself are yours from the moment you made them.

The complication is anything you built on someone else's material: Canva library elements, commercial-licence fonts, clip art bought from another shop. Your rights in those parts depend on those licences, not on you. It's worth being sure before you file a report, because a report that doesn't stand up can come back at you. Selling Canva templates on Etsy covers the licensing side.

Gather the evidence before anything else

• Screenshots of the copy, including the listing page, the shop name, the price and the date. Listings vanish quickly once a seller suspects a report.
• The listing URLs or IDs. Etsy's portal accepts both.
• Proof you made it first. Your original working files (layered Canva, Procreate or Illustrator files), dated exports, and your own listing's publication date.
• Whether they're selling your files or just your pictures. Some copycats lift the mockup images and sell something worse. That's still your photography, but it's a different conversation from a straight copy of the product.

If it's on Etsy: Etsy's own process

1. 1

   Contact the seller first

   This is Etsy's own recommendation: "we recommend contacting the seller to try to resolve the issue." Keep it short and factual: what's yours, where it's listed, and that you'd like it removed. Some copies come from buyers who genuinely didn't understand a personal-use licence, and they take them down.

2. 2

   If that fails, report it through the Etsy Reporting Portal

   You register, add the intellectual property you own, then build a report from the listings you want removed. Only the owner or someone authorised to act for the owner can report. The portal is in US English only, but Etsy says it can be used from anywhere in the world.

3. 3

   Track it in the portal

   The portal's Reports view shows each report's status. Etsy says that if a report complies with its policies it will "remove the reported content and contact the affected members".

4. 4

   Know that they can answer back

   For a copyright report, the reported seller can file a DMCA counter notice. If one complies with the rules, Etsy has to process it, and Etsy is explicit that it is "unable to make legal determinations on infringement allegations or take sides in these matters." At that point it's between you and them, and that is when a solicitor becomes worth the money.

If the copy is somewhere else, such as a Facebook group, another marketplace or a file-sharing site, each has its own reporting route, and the evidence you gathered above is what every one of them asks for.

A leaked link is a different problem from a copied file

Two things get called "reselling", and they need different fixes.

That cost in the second case is why sellers often leave a leaked folder alone. If the link is printed in the PDF every past buyer downloaded, killing it breaks their downloads too, and the next month brings a run of "link doesn't work" messages from people who paid. Updating a file after people have bought it covers what you can and can't change for past buyers.

Where AccessDrop fits, and where it doesn't

AccessDrop (accessdrop.app) is not copy protection, and nothing that delivers a file to a paying buyer can be. Once someone has downloaded your files, they have them. And the delivery page shows the buyer the real link to your folder, so a buyer who wants to pass it on can.

It helps with one part of the leaked-link case. Because the delivery PDF carries a short link you control, you can move the files to a new folder and repoint the short link once. Every genuine buyer's PDF keeps working, and the old folder link that leaked stops. It doesn't help if the PDF or the short link itself is what's being shared, and it does nothing against re-uploaded files. £19 once, for a year, up to five links. Drive, Dropbox or Canva still host the files.