Pixel 3 case order keeps getting rejected "due to copyright issues" despite not using a copyrighted image

sunjester · October 18, 2018

Just like it says in the title. I preordered a Pixel 3 last week and with it tried to preorder a My Case with this image. I had the exact same image on my Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 cases with no issue. I have tried to order this 4 times and every single time my order has been rejected because "There was a copyright problem with your My Case order". Except, this image is not copyrighted, and cannot be copyrighted. According to US copyright law, "works created by the U.S. federal government or its agencies cannot be copyrighted. (This does not apply to works created by state or local governments.) Therefore, NASA pictures are legally in the public domain.".

I have contacted the Google Store about this multiple times, and I have a case with them that's been open for almost a week now with no word and no resolution. I've tried tweeting at madebygoogle to no avail. Does anyone know who the hell I have to talk to to get this issue resolved? I just want my damn phone case.

vanished · October 18, 2018

Remember when they freaked out and removed the "view image" button on Google Images because... copyright or something lol

Wasn't that done since the launch of the Pixel 2 but (of course) before the launch of the Pixel 3? Could that be related? It wouldn't surprise me.

I guess just keep trying to contact a person that could override their detection system.

sunjester · October 19, 2018

So according to a supervisor at the Google Store support, the following is how things are right now.

My image is being rejected automatically due to copyright reasons. No one at Google has any idea why it's being rejected. There is also no one at Google who can apparently override this and approve my order. They have no idea if this issue is going to be fixed and are simply telling me to use a different image.

vanished · October 20, 2018

16 hours ago, sunjester said:

So according to a supervisor at the Google Store support, the following is how things are right now.

My image is being rejected automatically due to copyright reasons. No one at Google has any idea why it's being rejected. There is also no one at Google who can apparently override this and approve my order. They have no idea if this issue is going to be fixed and are simply telling me to use a different image.

Wow that's incredibly stupid.

Spoiler

But yeah, part of me thinks no company would run like this, especially not something as large as Google, but on the other hand, knowing how YouTube works, this makes total sense. Have you tried playing with it? You might be able to edit it to not get picked up by their algorithm. Maybe.

sunjester · October 20, 2018

I've tried editing it multiple times. I even submitted the infrared version of the image and it got rejected as well. I think now in total it's been reject 7-8 times. I ended up just giving up and going with the option to do like a google map of my current city instead.

More than anything else I'm just amazed that this even happened. It means that they've set up their workflow in a way where the copyright detection isn't working properly, but they built in no manual override so it can't be dealt with without doing back-end modifications to the system.

It'd be nice to get some kind of media spotlight on this because this means that other people are going to have non-copyrighted images rejected as well and Google is literally claiming "We can't do anything about it, sorry.". I just can't even. I'm not even a teenage girl and I still can't even.