It’s almost two decades since I created a Print On Demand (POD) store to offer my art designs on products. I’ve noticed in the last few months some of my old designs were selling. In the past few weeks, content review messages started showing up in my inbox.

It seems some of the hashtags were reaching the search engines once more. Of course, I was a happy camper to be making sales due to this. However, it was a surprise to discover a company either owned a license or copyright to the words used in my hashtags. The POD company told me, “it is possible to resubmit all the products that they took down.” All I have to do is take out the problematic hashtags and words in the product descriptions.

When teaching digital citizenship skills, using social media for marketing, or selling online, learn your copyright and licensing rules. Now I have to spend a lot of extra time resubmitting the products due to those hashtags and words used in the product descriptions. I hope you learn from my experiences. Don’t think words are free to be used in product descriptions and as hashtags.