This week I have been trying to focus on my etsy shop and making it much more appealing and hopefully I will get some more sales from it. (That is the hope) and in all the talking and research I've been doing, one thing that was made known to me, but that I didn't think about before, was to make the pictures in my listing harder to steal. Not that you can't just take the pictures anyway, but to actually make them look less defined so that it isn't easy just to steal them. I honestly haven't noticed anyone stitching my designs and saying they created them or seen them around but... it could always happen and I need to do my part to make it more difficult and honestly if I do say so myself the listings look so much prettier now!
But it did make me think... and think hard about what is acceptable. Years ago when I first started blogging I was lamenting at one point that I want to buy Ink Circle's baroque but I didn't have the money at the time. When later that week I got an email in my inbox with the pattern PDF. I was entirely grateful at the time but then something triggered in my head. (This person also sent through some other files I had been saying were on my wishlist.) But I remembered that Ink Circle didn't have PDF files... you could only buy her patterns in paper form. This made me concerned and I emailed this person and said don't email me again this is stealing and proceeded to delete all the emails. (I have no more record of these files but I kinda wish I had said something to the designers at the time but I only have my story now and no records and this was about 6 years ago now.) I knew even then that as much as I wanted to have all the patterns in the world they were much more special when I EARNT the patterns the right way. Could be why I was ecstatic when a couple of months later I eventually bought Ink Circles Baroque and it was so awesome to plan out when and how I would stitch it. This project is about 1/3 done at the moment and I will have to focus on it at some point soon, now I've reminded myself about it!
What constitutes stealing?
I often end up in conversations with people on facebook about what actually constitutes stealing. With PDFs so easy to pass around when do you call it? When you can find images just on the web can you make cross stitch patterns from any design without talking to the original artist even if it is for personal use? I know where I sit in this argument. If you didn't design the art work you can't use it until you find out who did and ask them if you can use it. If you didn't buy a PDF pattern you need to buy it for yourself. If you bought a physical copy and you are selling, you need to hand that copy in it's original form and destroy all other forms over to someone else. To me it seems simple but what do you think? I don't understand why it becomes such a large question point and so many people don't understand.
Honestly the only grey area I have is forms of fan art. Where the legalities of whether you can sell something that is fan art are dependent on the actually creator of the original art. My understanding is that pokemon loves it and I know disney hates it.
In searching for more information about stealing patterns I stumbled onto this blog post.
It really explains it well. And I think I will go out of my way to show the original pattern picture more often. I don't have that many projects that I stitch from a non PDF form and I'm not sure if I'd go as far as to use the order number in my photos but I will go out of my way to label the designer and link to where you can legally buy the pattern. We can all do something to make it harder for people to steal by supporting the original artists and making it known where to legally buy the patterns.
What is your opinion? Do you think this is important? What lengths do we as consumers have to go to, to help support the designers and look after them so they are here tomorrow?
Happy Stitching,
Caitlin
Hi there everyone, it's my first visit at this web site, and paragraph
ReplyDeleteis in fact fruitful for me, keep up posting these articles.