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DMCA Vs. The Sewing Underground
Roundeye writes "So the folks at monsterpatterns.com dumpster-dive to get envelopes containing discontinued sewing patterns and sell the envelopes via their website. The sewing pattern company McCall invoked the DMCA to get the site shut down. Monsterpatterns is now suing to protect their 'fair use rights' to advertise and sell the discarded patterns. You might recall that this isn't the first time the sewing industry has cracked down on bootlegging grandmas and their suppliers."
I thought the DMCA was about copyright control circumvention?
What, are they claiming that a dumpster is copyright control?
BlackNova Traders
That once your garbage hits the curb, its public domain. I think this should constitute..
Maybe since sewing grandmas don't have the same image as Eric Corley, this would be a good case to take the DMCA to the Supreme Court over?
That's usually what it takes -- an application of the law so abusrd that even Joe Average realizes it's a bad law. Remember the Life Begins at Conception laws where people started claiming their unborn children on tax returns for the year where they were in the womb, and female prisoners claiming that their unborn children were unlawfully imprisoned because the mother was?
Call it the Law of Unintended Consequences Applied to Law Law.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
bzzt. incorrect analogy. the guy isn't photocopying the "master" pattern. he's selling the envelopes. a better analogy would be if you threw away your cd collection and somebody picked it up and sold it.
2 1337 4 u!
The latest model sewing and quilt machines can download patterns and sew just about anything. Why a guy can use one of these things and feel pretty good about himself! Ahem... not like I've done that or... anything.
Yes, but if there are no dumpster-diving laws, someone could sell those original master recordings on eBay. They just couldn't make and distribute copies.
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I am definately not so old that I am going to die off, and have been sewing for more than 20 years (along with knitting and crocheting - something that alleves the carpel tunnel pain that is in my wrists from working on the computer!!)
It is much easier to search the internet for patterns than going to the fabric store. (http://www.simplicity.com or http://www.voguepatterns.com) I can search several different sites that can create custom patterns that are the printed on plotters via AutoCad - http://www.cochenille.com is one of the best. For the patterns that have been discontinued - that has been one of the sour points of the industry. I find something that I like - and McCalls has allready discontinued it, or it's used as an example of restyling a design, can't be done.
If it's been thrown away in the trash -- it's public. That's been proven in several U.S. courts (which is why the police do not need a search warrent to go through someone's trash).
McCalls' -- get over it. Your patterns have not been the greatest for the past ten years. To blame your main customers for the decline is like the RIAA blaming their customers for producing insipid music and loss of sales!!!
design is art - art is design
the D in the DMCA stands for Digital.. and opening the lid is digital, how ?
MLT - simple and robust open source multimedia framework for Linux
Not my first choice of purchase, but has anyone looked at the cost of sewing nowadays?
I mean, supplies are expensive, the cost of sewing machines can be incredible (cheap ones in the hundreds, up to thousands for higher-end though), and patterns are definately a rip.
Maybe we need an "open pattern site" - anyone got a link?
And so you throw your CDs in a recycle bin, trusting that they'll be destroyed. But then some college students dig through your recycle bin and salvage the CDs, the CDs that someone else already paid for, the CDs that you have made a comittment to destroy.
That is piracy, at that point.
And that's how far you have to take tha analogy to make it accurate.
Okay, I may be one of the few slashdotters who sews (for a living, yet... it's slightly more profitable, in the right areas, than writing code from home. Go figure), and it's not really relevant to the issue itself, but...
Monsterpatterns is selling stuff for "30-40% off retail"?? If that's cover price, that's highway robbery, never mind where the patterns came from. McCall, Butterick and Vogue patterns are *normally* sold for 50% off cover. Most places (JoAnn, Hancock, etc.) have rotating sales where one particular line is a buck a pattern.
I guess Monsterpatterns (and the sewing stores) are targeting the folks that want a particular pattern RIGHT NOW and are willing to pay the fairly-outrageous cover prices ($9-15) on them.
(In other Slashdot-relevant news, I'm trying to decide on an appropriate "open-source" license for sewing patterns.)
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Now let's make the analogy more precise. You sell me your CD collection. I've paid for it. But then I say, "instead of shipping it to me, email me the MP3s you ripped, but as far as the physical media, just set fire to it and piss on the ashes -- I've got the MP3s, I don't need the physical media, I just need to ensure that nobody else but me, anywhere, ever, uses that physical media, which can easily be ensured by just destroying the media entirely".
And so you throw your CDs in a recycle bin, trusting that they'll be destroyed. But then some college students dig through your recycle bin and salvage the CDs, the CDs that someone else already paid for, the CDs that you have made a comittment to destroy.
That is piracy, at that point.
Ok, but who is the crook here? The dumpster-divers are just taking what they believe to be trash. You (the CD-thrower-outer) didn't follow through on your committment. Where do you get the right to call the dumpster-divers crooks?
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It's just the same in this case: the hobby store probably had an agreement to destroy unsold patterns, and violated that agreement by simply discarding the patterns. As a result of that violation, anyone who wanted to could legally take ownership of the discarded patterns - and this company did.
That's the copyright case. The paracopyright (DMCA) case has no leg to stand on, because there was no actual copyright infringement. The right answer, before running off to court, is to send a DMCA counter-notice stating that McCall's does not own the copyright to the web pages in question. These pages are copyrighted, not by McCall's, but by Monsterpatterns; they do not themselves contain the copyrighted patterns. (If Monsterpatterns were disseminating the patterns themselves on their website, then this would constitute copyright infringement, since digitial distribution implies that a copy is made. The same is not true of distribution of envelopes that are not copied.)
The person who is claiming infringement simply needs to send a signed letter under penalty of perjury to the ISP. The ISP is then required to take the content down for a minimum of ten days and no longer than 14 days in such period the plaintiff must file for a court order. If a court order is made, then the ISP must continue to have the site content removed; otherwise, they must return the content no later than 14 days.
This part of the DMCA is very good and very clear. It is unfortunate that it must give such power to plaintiffs; however, due to the penalty of purjury assumed by the plaintiff illegitimate accusations can easily cause a counter-suit and thus the system is balanced.
There has been an interesting and similar situation with recyclers who handle the US Postal Service material. Many people join those book and CD clubs that automatically send stuff, hoping that you'll just pay for it. Many, though, return those to the company - or so they think.
The book/CD goes back to the USPS, who then takes out the scrap of paper saying you returned it, and they toss the book/cd in the recycling bin. They would report to the publisher that the product was destroyed, but you would still get credited for returning it. It's amazing that it costs less to just discard the book/cd than resell it.
So, the recyclers were getting these books and CD in their recycled material. Instead of just baling the books and cds, several I know were actually taking the books and cd's out and selling them on ebay and amazon!
Lawyers eventually came to one of the recyclers I worked with. The laywers say they are only purchasing waste paper and plastic in the recycling, and that they cannot sell the products as books and CD. The recyclers say they bought the material and that they own it and can sell it as anything they want.
Well, in my local case, the recycler decided not to fight due to the high court costs and the probability of losing.
I would blame the USPS - they should be rendering the books and cd's unserviceable before selling them to someone else.