Grannies and Pirated Software

dthomas731 writes, "After reading Ed Foster's blog about how the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition (ESPC) is suing grandmothers over using pirated digitized designs, I thought you might want to call your own grandmothers and tell them they are going to be needing a lawyer. And the ESPC is very serious. On the ESPC faq page they scare these grandmothers by telling them even if they didn't know the software was pirated, that 'Unfortunately, when it comes to copyright violations, ignorance is no defense.'"

Comments

I just checked

[Anonymous Coward]

My Grandmother had no idea this was even possible.

Re:I just checked

[Walt Dismal]

I asked my Pirate Granny if she ever bought any patterns on eBay, and she said, "Well, bugger me timbers, matey, I had no idear it were illegal. Harrrrr." and then she swigged some rum that the parrot had crapped in when she wasn't looking, but she didn't notice; Granny really likes her rum. Then she asked "Who be these ESPC folk, and does they cornhole each other like me crew does ta our cabinboy, although he kind of likes it, but let's not go there." I allowed as they probably did, and they were definitely a scurvy lot.

Then she went back to embroidering a skull and crossbones flag for her ship, which is a trimaster named "The RIAA Sucks Ass Too" that sails the Caribbean looking for patterns and CDs to steal, and Disney videos to copy.

Granny may be an old boozy bag, but she's all right. But the ESPC sure isn't. Leave old women alone, you bastards.

Re:I just checked

[blondieeng]

Speaking as a Cosmopolitan drinking, slightly geeky, motorcycle and bicycle riding non-granny who owns a $3K Bernina (yes, with the embroidery module) let me just say this:

STFU! Leave me alone to let me sew and embroider!

There are free designs out there. Just search for and use them. In the near future I will try my hand at designing my own stuff because $175 for a CD-ROM of a few designs blows my budget out of the water.

Also, after talking to those who own embroidery capable machines most of them are computer illiterate, barely able to operate the basics. I would be hugely surprised if more than just a few users out there are offending the ESPC.

hmmmm, a way to make money?

[yagu]

This almost seems a new (or not so new) trend, and a way to make money above and beyond having a product, though ostensibly "having a product" is where one should start (are you listening RIAA?). So now after seeing the apparent success of legal scare tactics by RIAA and others, the embroidery industry is piling on?

Should we be enraged? Or should we jump in too, cull the internet, everything, for any evidence of anyone, any group, etc. with even the remotest hint of infringing on something you can claim you own?

Don't worry too much about specifics (read the article, the legal threatening letter isn't specific enough to tell Granny what CD she has that infringes), and raise legal bloody hell. This could be more profitable than spam. With a modicum of respondents "paying up", one could conceivably collect rather large sums.

The internet does provide the ability to spread intellectual property instantaneously, and similarly provides amazing tools to sniff out where stuff is, intentionally or otherwise. Unfortunately, most of the "pirated" booty is "otherwise", i.e., the perpertrator has no awareness. These "perpetrators" are not the problem. They should be left alone. Enough already.

(Aside: I really would be curious to how prevalent this (these) letter(s) is (are). Are they really doing this? How many letters have they sent. The article mentions contacting your states attorney, alas, the demographic targeted here is not likely to know that, and probably not privy to /. for reference to this article. Sigh.)

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[LiquidCoooled]

I just posted something similar in the eDonkey article.
So, eDonkey wants to stay legit, good on them.
They want to put in place controls to limit copying, good on them.
They then give all their money to the bullys, bad move.
Paying of the artists might seem like a prudent course of action, but once you pay of one group, what about the next?

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Pharmboy]

This is kinda the thinking behind SCO "swinging for the bleachers" with IBM and Linux, isn't it?

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[russ1337]

If I understand this correctly, the people who came up with some embroided designs are concerned their images are being coppied? OK, thanks, just clarifying it for myself.

There has to be PLENTY of people into embroidery that have the skills to design their own patterns right? Now someone just needs to introduce these people to Creative Commons. Get all the oldies (and a few young'ins) with artistic talent to draw up a few designs and start sharing. The 'Emproidery Protection Racket' will just plain be left out in the cold.

All us grandkids have to do is remind the oldies that they should only use the patterns with the "CC" label that come with them.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[rackhamh]

Or should we jump in too, cull the internet, everything, for any evidence of anyone, any group, etc. with even the remotest hint of infringing on something you can claim you own?

They're not just "claiming they own" it -- they have copyrights on the designs. Which means, presumably, that the (C) symbol was to be found somewhere on or near the design. Maybe it was just too small to make out with granny's failing eyesight?

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[aywwts4]

Setup the site, make it Grandma friendly, (40pt font) Perhaps make a killing on google ads for long term life insurance for pennies a day.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[jmauro]

Thanks to the US Congress the (C) symbol and registering is no longer a requirement. Copyright is automatic.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[DragonWriter]

Registration is still required before you can actually do much to enforce copyrights, even though copyright itself is automatic on creation of any copyrightable work.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[jmauro]

Nope. It just serves as prima faca evidence that you are the author. It also allows you to recover court costs and statutory damage on top of lost income. Still can be quite profitable.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[mOdQuArK!]

There has to be PLENTY of people into embroidery that have the skills to design their own patterns right?

How are they going to prove that they really did design the pattern? If their pattern looks similar to something that's already available (and there have been a _lot_ of "simple" patterns generated by the industry), they're targets for potential lawsuits - and most grannies can hardly afford to fight any lawsuit, even if they have a fair chance at winning.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not really tracking with the opening statement. In both cases, the respective industries do have a product. Whether or not you like or others like the given is a different matter. On a related note, I don't really understand how a product being rubbish being a justification of making copies of it, if it's not worth the money, it's probably not worth the time listening to it either.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Thanks to the US Congress the (C) symbol and registering is no longer a requirement. Copyright is automatic.

The US Congress had nothing to do with it, the Berne convention did. Just so you don't have to look it up, Berne is in Switzerland. Yes, we became signatories to the convention a LONG time later, but it was hardly a US creation.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[schon]

Paying of the artists

What makes you think that any of the RIAA money goes to the artists?

It goes to pay the record labels, who don't give one red cent to the artists (after all, it's not in their contracts.)

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[dr.badass]

There has to be PLENTY of people into embroidery that have the skills to design their own patterns right?

You'd be surprised. I know I was when my dad's wife started a home-based embroidery business. While there is cheap (~$200) and simple embroidery design software, the mid- to high-end of the market is more like CAD/CAM territory, with a similar level of skill needed. We're talking $15,000 software for your $150,000 machine. The designs being pirated here probably for this latter kind of work.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[mabhatter654]

we're arguing about cross-stitch here!

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you RTFA? (Oh yeah, right, this is slashdot).

"They informed me that the CD they were talking about was one with a few flower designs that I'd purchased for $10 on eBay over a year ago. And they said I had to pay $300 'restitution' or they would file suit against me! As I haven't been doing much embroidery over the last year, I explained to them that I'd never used that disk except to check to see if my computer could read it when it first arrived."

$15,000 software?

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[dr.badass]

Did you RTFA?

Did you read the comment that I was replying to? Or mine for that matter?

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[cliffski]

of course. thats why maddona and elton john are penniless.
They get a bad deal, but they dont get NO deal. Pretending its ok to pirate because the artists gets NOTHING. is just silly.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[xtracto]

What makes you think that any of the RIAA money goes to the artists?

Yeah, thats completely true, what the original poster should have wrote is "paying to the copyright owners".

Unfortunately for the artists, they conceded all the rights of their creations to the recording industries when they signed those contracts, so, the recording corporations are in their right to protect THEIR intellectual property.

I wonder how long would it take until artists wake up and see how hard are music corporations screwing them...


It goes to pay the record labels, who don't give one red cent to the artists (after all, it's not in their contracts.)

You hit the nail, it is that way and it must be that way, artists SIGN AWAY their rights when they enter into a contract wiht the recording house. They just care about creating a specific number of albums to fulfill the contract.

Everything that happens after that is the music corporation problem, of course these corporations sell them the image that they will "fight" for their (artists) rights, but the truth other.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Znork]

"it is that way and it must be that way"

There is no inherent need for the copyright incentive to be possible to sign away, any more than social security or any other transfer system can be.

It would be perfectly possible to remove the exclusive aspect of copyright, allow the record companies to publish whatever they want to their hearts desire and simply levy a tax off their sales, giving the artists 50-80% of the proceedings, effectively bypassing the entire contract aspect and ensuring most of the money the consumers spend on such material actually goes to the production of more such material, rather than marketing and lawsuits.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[gsslay]

What makes you think that any of the RIAA money goes to the artists?

Because they are part of the same industry. Your comment is about as dumb as questioning where the money goes when you buy software. What makes you think any of the money goes to the programmer who wrote it? It goes to the software company, doesn't it?

It goes to pay the record labels, who don't give one red cent to the artists (after all, it's not in their contracts.)

You have a remarkable insight into artist contracts and the music industry. Care to show us some of the figures and contracts that prove your sweeping statement?

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[codeviking]

I think the idea of any piece of software costing $15,000 is absolutely ridiculous.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[the_arrow]

We're talking $15,000 software for your $150,000 machine. The designs being pirated here probably for this latter kind of work.

Uhm, I did RTFA, and it talked about a lady living on social security. I doubt she has a program worth $15k and a machine worth $150k.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[zotz]

"$15,000 software?"

My cousin used to be into this.

This is a name I remember:

http://www.melcousa.com/

That is the hardware. I don't remember what software he used to use.

Last I heard, this is what he is up to these days:

http://www.nippersbar.com/ - If anyone is interested in more details, look for a way to get in touch with Johnny.

all the best,

drew
(da idea man)

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[kalirion]

Phase 1: Distribute bootleg versions of your software to lots of people.
Phase 2: Sue lots of people for damages.
Phase 3: Profit!

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[soliptic]

you're right and wrong. first, naming elton john and madonna as some sort of proof musicians are so rich piracy doesnt matter and musicians dont deserve to get paid is ridiculous. bill gates is very, very rich from the software industry; that doesn't mean we can rip off any software and all you programmers on slashdot don't want a wage, right? it's easy to pick the exceptions that prove the rule rather than noticing the vast majority of people in that sector are in nowhere near the same position

second, I think you missed the point of GP post. It wasn't that artists get nothing from the labels generally, it was that they will get nothing [i]from the money received in these lawsuits[/i]. Which i would imagine is absolutley true. Major label contracts are basically like this:

• we own your creations wholesale.
• we will pay you
  • $x for every y sold
  • $a for every b sold
  • $n for every p radio play
  • q% for every s sub-licensing (movies, commercials, etc)
  • etc....

anything not explicitly spelt out as a royalty in this fashion, will not get paid. I highly doubt any major label contracts have a clause saying "x% of every lawsuit settlement with p2p companies" since when lots of them were signed lawsuit settlements with p2p companies didnt exist. Plus most artists arent bright enough to ask for it .... and even if they *were*, the labels would probably just play hardball and tell them no way...

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Suidae]

Just some random thoughts on the subject:

The machines that this concerns are usually Pfaff or a competitor (thats pronounced f-ah-f). They are priced anywhere from $3000 to $9000, with a huge variation in price depending on which independent dealer you get screwed by.. er, purchase from. Dealer support is a big factor, the machines do occasionally need service and the users need training. A good dealer makes a big difference in the end-user experience. Shop around and rely on reputations of dealers within the community. Buy locally if you can, many dealers refuse to support equipment they didn't sell.

The machines are precision, high quality CNC systems, very cool. You can upgrade the software in some of the low-end models to the software for the high-end systems and end up with all the capabilities of the over-priced high end system for the fairly reasonable (considering the quality and capability of the machine) lower price. The machines are usually USB connected and allow firmware upgrades. Maybe it'll run linux (but I'll bet whatever motion control software its got on it is vastly superiour to EMC).

The computer software is expensive, dumb and crappy. The users are typically not computer-savvy, and, predictably, often were born before transistors were invented. Unfortunately these users have odd ideas about computers and the software that runs on them. They expect it to work without fiddling with it. Like their Caddy, they want to turn it on, point it where they want to go and have it go there.

The software for producing new designs (in a non-stupid or non-trivial way) is not free or cheap. People who pay for it generally want to make some money doing it. There is a significant amount of work involved in the production of a single design (artwork, CAD work, color selection, ordering of color application, time and materials spent embroidering test verions, etc), and a library of designs can represent many hundreds of man-hours. Unlike most computer software development, you cannot do this (well) without paying for some consumables and access to the embroidery machine.

These people are not compatible with a release-early-release-often software development strategy. You give them a working finished product with a one-click install, a very intuitive interface and simple video-based help system.

The majority of them do not want to produce their own designs. They'd rather spend the time at their craft not producing artwork on a computer. There are exceptions (power-users within the community), but they are few and far-between.

Remember those books that used to come with clip-art CDs? A lot of them like those books. They can sit down with the book, look through it, dog-ear pages with stuff they like, take it with them in their sewing bag, etc.

Most of these people do not use the computer to find new software. They browse extensively at quilt and craft shops, they go to craft retreats to socialize with their friends, and a few of them participate in internet forums (about.com, yahoo groups). Acquiring a userbase for new software would not be a matter of dropping it on sourceforge and waiting.

I don't mean this to sound negative, I just want to point out that the consumers of this product have needs that an ivory-tower developer would not anticipate. There is a lot of interesting potential for software, but anyone who wants the software to be widely used must be very conscious of how the users interact with computers and each other. The developer should actively join the community (or if he feels too girly working with textiles, get his mother or grandmother to do so and tag along) to see what is needed and how to make a successful package.

You can see (and often play with) the machines and software at places like Joanne's or an independent local dealer.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the idea of any piece of software costing $15,000 is absolutely ridiculous.

Ever work in aerospace? How about defense? In both areas I've seen and worked on packages that rival anything on the consumer market and guess what: they solve a set of unique problems and have far less of a user base to absorb the cost. As a matter of fact I've worked on software that goes for over 100k a pop. We're not talking about the next Homesite HTML Editor or even Autocad.

So yeah, when you've got a specialized piece of software that took fifty people with graduate degrees to write over the course of a few years with a possible market of say 100 to 1500 customers, you're going to pay for it.

As far as the embroidery stuff, I'm not seeing any open source solutions so guess what: if you want the work done you're going to pay.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[paitre]

Welcome to enterprise software.

My employer spent (on my team's recommendation), $50,000 for 4 licenses for a very, -very- necessary piece of software for what we're trying to accomplish.

And that's chump change compared to Oracle and Weblogic license fees.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[KDR_11k]

Yeah now what about contract work that produces copyrightable works? Like e.g. programming? If MS had to pay 50-80% of its income to every developer that ever worked on Windows there wouldn't be any Windows. Same for any other commercial piece of software. These programmers are getting hired to write Windows and they get paid for that, if they got a part of the profits MS couldn't afford paying them much and would force them to rely on the royalties after release (which would probably add up to more). Now imagine you're working on Vista...

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah now what about contract work that produces copyrightable works? Like e.g. programming? If MS had to pay 50-80% of its income to every developer that ever worked on Windows there wouldn't be any Windows. Same for any other commercial piece of software. These programmers are getting hired to write Windows and they get paid for that, if they got a part of the profits MS couldn't afford paying them much and would force them to rely on the royalties after release (which would probably add up to more). Now imagine you're working on Vista..."

Why would this be a bad thing?

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Maxo-Texas]

Aye!

Clearly Bill Gates is rich, so EA was not ripping off their software employees and making them work unpaid overtime.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[codeviking]

That's insane. I remember when I was a kid thinking that $100 for a new Sega Genesis release was bad!

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

The money goes to the CON-artists.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Rary]

"Based on figures reported to Billboard Boxscore from Nov. 1, 2005, through mid-May, the Stones' Bigger Bang tour, produced by Michael Cohl, reported $147.3 million in grosses from 45 shows in U.S. arenas and international stadiums." (see here for more)

Artists as enormously successful as the ones you cited have ways to make boatloads of money even without selling any CDs. And, as others have pointed out, they get no piece of the results of record company lawsuits.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[shark72]

"It goes to pay the record labels, who don't give one red cent to the artists (after all, it's not in their contracts.)"

And next week, the meme will be that artists are way overpaid, and piracy is our way of taking them down a notch.

Depending on how the "5, Insightfuls" fly, the Slashdot groupthink varies between "the artists are needy" and "the artists are greedy."

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[shark72]

"Unfortunately for the artists, they conceded all the rights of their creations to the recording industries when they signed those contracts, so, the recording corporations are in their right to protect THEIR intellectual property."

Are you sure about that? I am of the understanding that the artists typically retain the rights to the words and music, while the record company gets the rights to said recording of the music. The record company did not write the words or music, but they do finance the recording.

"I wonder how long would it take until artists wake up and see how hard are music corporations screwing them..."

Some musicians and artists pursue recording contracts. Some don't. Of those who have recording contracts, some like them, some don't. There will always be more artists who want contracts than can get contracts, so they will generally get poor deals, but I doubt very much that Slashdotters are the white knights that will cause the millions of signed artists and musicians to "wake up."

It's the same sad story in my profession, the computer peripheral industry. I think I'm worth about 5X of what I'm being paid, but there's the small problem of there being dozens of other folks who eagerly want to do what I'm doing. Thus, it is generally the companies in the computer peripherals industry who set the salaries.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[club5220]

Absolutely true, regarding the RIAA. In the past, every time artists have sued the labels over accounting, they have found "errors" which benefitted the labels, who them had to pay out to the artists. I repeat - EVERY TIME.

As for the so-called Embroidery Coalition... I called them and told them I thought what they wwere doign was despicable, to which some holier-than-thou southern woman responded that it was all lies (from the grannies) and then hung up on me. Go figure.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[westlake]

I think the idea of any piece of software costing $15,000 is absolutely ridiculous.

not when you are in the business of marketing custom embroidery to corporate clients like Disney. not when you have $150 grand invested in each machine in the shop.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[dr.badass]

I doubt she has a program worth $15k and a machine worth $150k.

That doesn't mean she can't unwittingly buy pirated designs, which is what the accusation is. There are only a handful of common formats, used from the low-end to high-end, so it's quite plausible. I was only trying to correct the assumption that the users of these designs necessarily had the skills to create them.

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which of the following entities has the power to ratify a treaty?

a) My cock
b) Your mom
c) drumroll.... CONGRESS

Re:hmmmm, a way to make money?

[elmarkitse]

There are several posts that I think are missing the point this guy / gal is making and some that try to point it out, can someone confirm that:

The artists are paid by the record labels for their contract, not for specific albums sold, as one poster points out
(Thereby nullifying the loss per sale argument....leaving behind supply / demand type one where a popular artist might be less appealing to a company because more of their 'potential sales' will be 'stolen'....leading to a lower general contract for signing the popular ones)

and / or

The artists are paid estimated on the 'sales' of their item, but not based upon 'lost sales' to piracy
(thereby allowing the corporations to recoup lost sales without having to funnel that back to their artists)

Both are related but both are interesting points that I haven't heard before.

not quite correct.

[geekoid]

" 'Unfortunately, when it comes to copyright violations, ignorance is no defense.'""

heh, thats not quite correct.

If A company makes a book, and I buy it from them, and then latter it turns out they didn't have permission to do that, I still can not be sued.

Re:not quite correct.

[morgan_greywolf]

Now, IANAL, but from what I know, it doesn't actually matter whether or not you knew that company had permission to sell the book.

You see, copyright protects the right to copy. When you're buying a book, you're not making a copy of the book. Someone else is. And that person, company, whatever, is the one who bears the legal liability for making the copy, not you.

Re:not quite correct.

[Fnkmaster]

Agreed, these people don't have a leg to stand on with respect to buyers. Theoretically, if they can show the person actually used the design to sew something, then the thing they sewed could be questionable in legality if there is a trademark involved (I don't see how that could be covered under copyright law, but I guess I'm not familiar enough with this industry to comment).

But there is no way that just looking at a copyrighted data file, assuming that's all that's being done here, by a person who happened to purchase a copy from a person who didn't have the rights to distribute it, could possibly be in violation of copyright law. Or trademark law. Or any law.

Same thing with MP3s - it's always the "sharing" part of file-sharing that gets people. Just having an MP3 on your hard drive that you can't produce a physical CD for does not automatically mean you have broken a law, and I'm not aware of any cases in court where a person has been subject to penalties unless they were distributing copyrighted materials.

Re:not quite correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the FAQ:
What if I did not sell the pirated embroidery designs or software, I only purchased them?

            The purchase of counterfeit designs and software is a violation of federal laws. Specifically, the U.S. Copyright Act. 17 USC 501

Re:not quite correct.

[Doc Ruby]

You didn't copy the book, so you didn't violate the copyright. The company you bought it from is guilty/liable, not you. Similarly, these grannies didn't copy the CDs they bought, so I don't see how they violated anyone's copyright.

This is a different situation than the familiar RIAA vs filesharers. The RIAA is suing the publishers of the files. And even downloaders can be argued to be "making a copy", of the data from their network connection eventually to their HD.

Re:not quite correct.

[MarcoAtWork]

If A company makes a book, and I buy it from them, and then latter it turns out they didn't have permission to do that, I still can not be sued.

are you really sure? If you work at company B and company A repackaged say, photoshop, and called it 'photostore' and sold it to you for $5, I doubt you'd be in the clear from a legal standpoint...

Re:not quite correct.

[zenthax]

I think they probably are correct in this case because it concerns embroidery. Not being a person who does embroidery on a regular basis I can only guess that this software is most likely some type of digital blueprint for embroidery designs. Basically instead of a book this seems to be more like sheet music or even music files in general. Think charges for playing music in restaurant, elevators, etc. The copyright is on the embroidery design it's self and the program hence both the person who made the illegal copy and the one who uses the data on the copy are both responsible for copyright violations. The difference between this case and books are that in this case you are reproducing something tangible where as in a book you are simply reading it.

Re:not quite correct.

[cpt kangarooski]

No, it's correct. It's your example that is in error. If you buy a book that was made and/or distributed unlawfully, you haven't broken the law. Buying an unlawfully made copy isn't infringement. Making a copy, as you necessarily must when you download, would be infringement, OTOH.

Re:not quite correct.

[Kierthos]

Yeah, but that all falls under certain common sense assumptions. If I go into a Barnes and Nobles and buy a book there, the assumption is that the book is a legal copy of the book. If it isn't, it's Barnes and Nobles' fault, not mine. If I go into a software store and buy a copy of Photoshop, the assumption is that it's a legal copy. If it isn't, it's the software stores' fault, not mine.

Now, if I buy Photoshop off of a guy on a street corner, the manual was printed at Kinko's and the CD is obviously a burned version... well, that's where the copyright holder can be upset at me.

Re:not quite correct.

[cpt kangarooski]

But there is no way that just looking at a copyrighted data file, assuming that's all that's being done here, by a person who happened to purchase a copy from a person who didn't have the rights to distribute it, could possibly be in violation of copyright law.

Yes, that's absolutely correct, except that it's completely wrong, sorry:

The first question, then, is whether those who browse any of the three infringing websites are infringing plaintiff's copyright. Central to this inquiry is whether the persons browsing are merely viewing the Handbook (which is not a copyright infringement), or whether they are making a copy of the Handbook (which is a copyright infringement). See 17 U.S.C. 106.

"Copy" is defined in the Copyright Act as: "material objects . . . in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." 17 U.S.C. 101. "A work is fixed' . . . when its . . . sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration." Id.

When a person browses a website, and by so doing displays the Handbook, a copy of the Handbook is made in the computer's random access memory (RAM), to permit viewing of the material. And in making a copy, even a temporary one, the person who browsed infringes the copyright. n5 See MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511, 518 (9th Cir. 1993) (holding that when material is transferred to a computer's RAM, copying has occurred; in the absence of ownership of the copyright or express permission by licence, such an act constitutes copyright infringement); Marobie-Fl., Inc. v. National Ass'n of Fire Equip. Distrib., 983 F. Supp. 1167, 1179 (N.D. Ill. 1997) (noting that liability for copyright infringement is with the persons who cause the display or distribution of the infringing material onto their computer); see also Nimmer on Copyright 8.08(A)(1) (stating that the infringing act of copying may occur from "loading the copyrighted material . . . into the computer's random access memory (RAM)"). Additionally, a person making a printout or re-posting a copy of the Handbook on another website would infringe plaintiff's copyright.

n5 Although this seems harsh, the Copyright Act has provided a safeguard for innocent infringers. Where the infringer "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages. . . ." 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(2).

Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 75 F. Supp. 2d 1290 (D. Utah 1999) (emphasis added).

Computers make copies all the time in their normal operations. It's the way they're built. Unfortunately, this means that it's trivially easy to infringe using a computer, as opposed to by other means. If dear old grandmama buys a printed copy of the pattern and merely looks at it, without actually making a copy of whatever is therein, then that's not infringing. If she looks at the pattern over the Internet, then that is infringing.

And this isn't the only, or even the most important, case along these lines. I just like it because it's very clear as to this point.

Re:not quite correct.

[Amouth]

I have heard this argument before.. and i am supprised it hasn't been twisted to visual memory.

the fact that you can remember anything is because you made a copy of it..

Re:not quite correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

to lazy to login...but anyways..
copyright law says, if you infringe but had no idea you where infringing then there are a few choices.
1. pay up and keep using
2. cease
3. you had no idea there existed anything like it already and came up with the idea completely on your own your ok

what you said, they bought what they thought was legitimate but wasnt but refer to above..

funny thing about copyright law that most people do not know is that there is a flat fee to use copyrighted material.. u send it to the company with a letter saying im using this, and they cant do crap if you paid for the use of it. the only reason you negotiate with a company is to try and get a cheaper price thats it. they can not stop you from using it if you have paid for use of it and you can get use of it even if they try to screw you around by above said flat rate.
check the patent office for current rates on copyrights... :D

no INAL im an independent film maker who made sure that all bases where covered from every angle.. (that and a family of paralegals and lawyers so i had nothing better to read then law books)

Re:not quite correct.

[guruevi]

Well, in the Netherlands the current copyright laws are so broad (thanks to **AA ass-kissing government "non-profit" organizations) that it allows for somebody to be sued because they're playing a legally purchased song. The reason: they are in fact copying the data (from hard disk to memory, buffer, cache) and circumventing the copyright protection (DRM) because technically, all data has to be buffered somewhere analog or digital without encryption to make it come out of the speakers.

Re:not quite correct.

[cpt kangarooski]

Yes, it's silly and oft-criticized, but it'd probably be better to create some broad exceptions that acknowledge how computers work with regard to all kinds of works. And nothing as limited as 117. And some broad exceptions for ordinary people acting noncommercially would also be good.

Re:not quite correct.

[chreekat]

Two things:

1. Whether or not you do something legal is not the issue. Whether a large pile of cash and trained professionals can keep you in litigation for years as you prove your actions were legal is.

2. Man, I wish I woulda been there when the first copyright lawyer discovered that downloads imply copying. I bet *he felt like he'd died, gone to heaven, then died again and gone to heaven's heaven.

-chreekat

* he, she, blah blah blah

Re:not quite correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, when you shine a light on a picture, you make a copy of it, in the form of scattered photons in the air. When you look at something, the cells in your eye are activated in identical form to the original image. Your optic nerve contains a copy of it. Your visual cortext contains many copies. Your mind's-eye contains a copy. Your short-term memory contains a copy.

When I play a tune on my guitar, I am reproducing it in the form of vibrations in the instrument, vibrations in the air, vibrations upon my ear drums, electrical signals in wires, ... reproducing the song in my mind's-ear as well, both as I listen to it (audio cortex, short-term memory, sensory buffer), and as I play it (muscle memory, long-term memory, short-term memory).

There's nothing amazing about the fact that computers need copies of something to manipulate it.

Hell, when you look at yourself in the mirror, the photons carry a copy of your face into the mirror, the atoms catch photons and push into elevated energy states in a replica of your face's image, ... THERE ARE FREAKING COPIES EVERYWHERE. Maybe it's getting into metaphysics, but, if information can be copied, then it has to be...

Re:not quite correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a fine point about the book publishing industry, in that they do not have massive special interest groups capable of getting copyright protectionist law passed, to shift onus onto the end-consumer.

Heck, book publishers can't even stop Universities from working with Google to digitize their still-copyrighted product. OTOH, can you imagine the money and effort that could be saved if Legal Deposit also included a PDF version?

Re:not quite correct.

[MidnightBrewer]

As someone else has already said: using the data is not copyright infringement. Copying the data is. I cannot be held liable for buying something in good faith, no matter what somebody's lawyer tells me. At the very worst, all they can do is confiscate the CDs and I'm out my original purchase price, unless I can somehow get a refund or sue the company that took my money.

Re:not quite correct.

[DigitAl56K]

"Similarly, these grannies didn't copy the CDs they bought, so I don't see how they violated anyone's copyright."

Sure, they didn't copy the CD's, but when they stiched from the digitized designs they reproduced/copied the design. Still, I feel that pursuing the elderly over something like this is very petty and disheartening.

Re:not quite correct.

[WWWWolf]

Making a copy, as you necessarily must when you download, would be infringement, OTOH.

Actually, taken extremely philosophically, download happens this way: The user initiates request (GET /music/britney_spears_-_oops_i_did_it_again.mp3 HTTP/1.1). This is not illegal yet. The server responds (HTTP/1.1 200 OK). This isn't illegal yet. But then happens something: The server fopen()s the file for reading, reads the octet stream and copies it up the wire to the HTTP client. That's the very illegal part. The user receives octet stream the server sends, and saves it to file. That's not illegal; it's the part analogous to when you are handed an unauthorised copy of a book by the unscrupulous book seller.

The "copying" that infringes the copyrights happens at the server end. Just because the only human party that does something in this copyright infringement is the user doesn't mean the serving user is off the hook - the serving user set up the server for specific reason of making available copies of copyrighted material to the users.

If you want an analogy from real life: Make 2000 counterfeit copies of a DVD, and dump them in an empty store. Unlock the door, put a sign on the door that says "free DVDs, come and get some while they last", and walk away. Just because you're not personally handing the copies to random passers-by, and the said passers-by actually have to walk in the store to grab a copy, doesn't make it any more legal. Nor does the fact that no money changes hands.

Re:not quite correct.

[Petrushka]

If I go into a Barnes and Nobles and buy a book there, the assumption is that the book is a legal copy of the book. If it isn't, it's Barnes and Nobles' fault, not mine.

Unless, of course, the book happens to be the new Harry Potter book, and Barnes and Noble sold it to you before they were supposed to. Then it's your problem, not Barnes and Noble's ....

Re:not quite correct.

[jetmarc]

> Ignorance is no defense.

There is a difference between

a) I didn't know I was pirating,

and

b) I didn't know pirating was illegal.

Re:not quite correct.

[Petrushka]

If you buy a book that was made and/or distributed unlawfully, you haven't broken the law.

... except in a case like this, of course.

Re:not quite correct.

[cpt kangarooski]

The user receives octet stream the server sends, and saves it to file. That's not illegal; it's the part analogous to when you are handed an unauthorised copy of a book by the unscrupulous book seller.

I'm afraid not. Copyright law makes it infringement to make copies unauthorizedly. Copies are defined as being material objects in which the intangible work is fixed. So a story is not a copy; a paperback containing that story is. Likewise, a file is not a copy, but the RAM or hard drive or other computer media where the file is stored is the copy, since that's the material object. And we can't move material objects over a wire just yet. This means that whatever copying might be occurring on the server side, those copies can't reach the downloader, and he must make his own.

So let's reconsider what's happening? The information gets sent along the wire. But when the requesting party receives it, he fixes it, probably more than once, into various media. He is making copies. It is not like being given a book. It is like using a notepad to write down what the person on the other end of the telephone is saying to you. Who is liable for making these copies? Courts have said it is the person who causes these events to occur. This means the downloader, since the acts being taken by the other computer are in response to his request. They didn't happen automatically, whether he liked it or not. The other guy is in trouble too, but that won't get the downloader off the hook.

Every case that's looked at this, Netcom, Napster, Marobie, Utah Lighthouse, etc. has found downloaders to be liable for infringement based on copying.

Re:not quite correct.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Now, IANAL, but from what I know,

Hoo boy...

it doesn't actually matter whether or not you knew that company had permission to sell the book.

You see, copyright protects the right to copy. When you're buying a book, you're not making a copy of the book. Someone else is. And that person, company, whatever, is the one who bears the legal liability for making the copy, not you.

Only if the copy was lawfully made. See http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117

Re:not quite correct.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

What do the courts say about that?

Re:not quite correct.

[Kierthos]

I disagree. It's still Barnes and Nobles fault. It is not my responsibility to know when it is the "official start time" to buy a book. If they sell it to me, it is the fault of the person who rung up the sale. If I go in the store, and the book is on the shelf, then it's available for sale. Now, if I wait until there's a commotion at the front of the store, duck behind the counter, slice open the box of books, take one out, throw the money on the counter and leave, then obviously, I know what I'm doing is wrong.

The whole injunction thing (which happened in Canada, as I recall) was a farce. "Oh no, an injunction against reading the book which I have purchased, and have here at home." Unless they were planning on placing an armed guard in the houses of all the people who bought the book early with orders to arrest at the first sign of literacy, it meant nothing.

Re:not quite correct.

[zotz]

"You didn't copy the book, so you didn't violate the copyright. The company you bought it from is guilty/liable, not you. Similarly, these grannies didn't copy the CDs they bought, so I don't see how they violated anyone's copyright."

In my country, the word is that they have made it illegal to possess such CDs and DVDs and there are large fines and jail terms to go along with it.

I think this is old news or at least a variation on such. I have heard of action in this field for years.

all the best,

drew
(da idea man)
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/258456

Re:not quite correct.

[morgan_greywolf]

Section 117 applies only to computer programs, not to books.

Re:not quite correct.

[Suidae]

I completely agree with the logic of your analysis. Works the same as a library copy machine. Whomever causes the copy to be made is at fault.

Last I knew the (MP|RI)AA were going after users who share media, not those who download it. Are they just depending on the fact that they can beat individuals into submission by virtue of having vastly superior legal resources and the cooling effect that would have on file sharing?

If this is what they are doing, is it illegal? Could someone initiate a lawsuit against them for that?

Re:not quite correct.

[KDR_11k]

And Barnes and Noble weren't liable for fraud by selling you an item under the pretense that you can legally use it?

Re:not quite correct.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Hmm, yes. I actually meant to point to the entire chapter, not just section 117.

Re:not quite correct.

[ScrewMaster]

No ... you can always be sued. Get that through your head. People seem to have some idea that the protections afforded individuals under copyright law are some kind of magical shield that prevents those evil-doing rightsholders from taking them to court. Nothing could be further from the truth: the RIAA's asinine campaign against file sharers has brought that realization home to a lot of people. If you buy that pirated book (and I'm using the term correctly: a publisher who sells unauthorized mass-produced copies of a copyrighted work is, indeed, a pirate) you can claim ignorance but it will be up to the court to decide if you actually are that ignorant. Either way, it's a rough road and you don't want to go down it.

Re:not quite correct.

[Pofy]

Which doesn't change the fact that what the person you replied to says is correct. There is no similar section for books or other types of work. It only applies to copmuter programs nothing else.

Re:not quite correct.

[Grail]

Note that the judgement you refer to makes no reference to the important qualifier in the statement, "sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration."

It seems to me that making a copy of something implies that you could refer to the copy later at whim. When I browse a web page, that page is gone when I open a new web page, close the browser, shut down the computer, etc.

Once the definition of "transitory duration" can be clarified to mean "while the viewing environment is not disturbed", then I'll start accepting the argument that browsing a web page is somehow copyright violation. If, however, "a period of more than a transitory duration" means that the copy must be perceivable, reproducable or otherwise communicable after the user has cleared the browser cache and moved on to a new web page, I will have faith that the legal system is not yet totally insane.

FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Whaaaaa? This is news?

ewrer55

[Anonymous Coward]

df fhh j44uj dhngkk7i .

satire

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a satire?

Re:satire

[Simon80]

I know! WTF? I'm incredulous..

ther FAQ is sickening.

[geekoid]

"What if I am innocent and did not know the designs or software were counterfeit when I purchased the designs?

            It is your responsibility to investigate any designs or software that you purchased over the Internet or from online auctions. You must take steps to insure that they are legitimate original embroidery designs or software, not pirated copies."

Great, so now we need to research every product we buy to be sure the company didn't do anything illegal.

I think not.

Re:ther FAQ is sickening.

[tritonman]

It's enough to make you sick. The same thing goes for a software developer. Anything I develop could be dangerous. Unless I do exhaustive searches on every single thing I do in a program, it could turn out that some feature or algorithm that I am developing has some patent related to it. Then I can get sued. Am I supposed to do these crazy exhaustive searches before writing any code? Of course not, I am supposed to pay a lawyer boat loads of money to do it for me! Hey, I wonder who comes up with these crazy patent laws??? And we wonder why there are so many "dead lawyer" jokes.

Re:ther FAQ is sickening.

[Shemmie]

From the FAQ:

If a brain surgeon opens your cranium and takes a peek inside your brain, does he see ideas and intelligence? Just because he only sees a brain, can he determine the content? And if he cannot measure any content, does that mean you are mindless?

You are not mindless. Give us money. Mmmmm, brains.

Re:ther FAQ is sickening.

[cpt kangarooski]

No, they're correct. Copyright is a strict liability statute, like, oh, statutory rape. If you do it, you've broken the law, regardless of whether you intended to or not, or how cautious and reasonable you were in your attempts to avoid breaking the law. Mental state is not a factor.

It can be useful in reducing statutory damages, and it makes you fairly sympathetic, as if grannies that embroider aren't already, but it does not get you off the hook.

Patents work the same way. What protects ordinary people is that generally no one is interested in going after them. It's not economically worthwhile or anything.

Re:ther FAQ is sickening.

[DragonWriter]

Hey, I wonder who comes up with these crazy patent laws?

Lobbyists for big industries that want to create additional barriers to entries for the small guys. Lawyers (at least, both the law professors and those that practice law; people with law degrees working as politicians, lobbyists, political staffers, corporate execs, etc. don't count) are often in favor of streamlining and simplifying the law.

Re:ther FAQ is sickening.

[delinear]

Except they're not the ones making the copies, they're simply buying a copy from what they (most likely) believe to be a reputable source. In a statutory rape case it's the one who commits the act that is responsible under the law, regardless of mental state or intent. Copyright is the same. This is just a scare tactic to make old women think they're going to be sued so they'll buy their software direct rather than shopping around for good deals.

Fake?

[Cheeziologist]

Does this story not strike anyone else as to be so ridiculous that it must be one of those things set up just to see what community reaction is like? Like a researcher at a university doing a sociology experiment. I mean..."Embroidery Software Protection Coalition"...come on!

Re:Fake?

[Bender Unit 22]

I was expecting a foot in the right side of the story.

Re:Fake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Defnitely seems like a very early/late april fool's to me from some reason...

Re:Fake?

[Elemenope]

Perhaps. Their homepage provides a phone number though. Anybody from PA who can call and check it out? (I hate long-distance charges.) As far as the story being ridiculous...I don't know. If you had asked me 20 years ago if I believed that the music industry would be hauling their customers to court for making personal copies of songs and trading songs with friends, I'd have called you crazy. And yet, here we are.

Re:Fake?

[johnlittledotorg]

"The ESPC targets those persons whom violate our members' copyrights and will continue to fight the pirates. So while sailing the high seas of the internet, be careful of the Pirates... they are there lurking and waiting for you."

http://www.embroideryprotection.org/

Re:Fake?

[One Louder]

Well, the domain has been registered since 1999, by the folks that run sewing.org, which has been registered since 1995, so if it's a hoax, it's a bit more elaborate than normal.

Re:Fake?

[lottameez]

Well it's just another example of the disdain that the Bush administration has for Grandmothers. Are you happy now SCO? Darl? you Listening!!??? It doesn't run on Linux, and Micro$oft will just try to steal it for Vista. Google's version is better anyways and runs on my IPod.

Let me be the first to welcome our Embroidery Coalition Overlords.

There. That should about cover all the usual /. responses...Nothing for you to see here. Move along.

Re:Fake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it sounds crazy, hear this similar but different story:

My mom sells books on eBay that she buys at book fairs, etc. Often, people will pay $25 or much more for what is as little as 8 pages. She's smart enough not to spend a great deal on these books, since they have no real world value...that is, if someone were to buy one each of a huge number of these and scan them, the digital versions would be just as useful as the physical books, but the value due to difficulty of finding them would be eliminated.

It brings up an interesting point...when something can be digital copied for next to free, can it have value? Can any value be given to a physical version other than the possible convenience it offers? There's no inherent value in a freelance magazine article being shopped around...the value being offered for sale is the opportunity to place it next to advertising in a printed physical copy, which offers convenience to the reader. Does the article have any value?

Re:Fake?

[westlake]

My mom sells books on eBay that she buys at book fairs, etc. Often, people will pay $25 or much more for what is as little as 8 pages. She's smart enough not to spend a great deal on these books, since they have no real world value...that is, if someone were to buy one each of a huge number of these and scan them, the digital versions would be just as useful as the physical books, but the value due to difficulty of finding them would be eliminated.

I assume your mom tracks the market value of the paper epherimerals and books she buys.

The pros here eye the charity sales as others would a gold mine. Collectors have no more interest in a scan of a book than they have in a snapshot of a porcelain vase.

Re:Fake?

[jZnat]

What's sad is that I thought you were serious for a minute there. I need a break from here...

Re:Fake?

[Tim C]

the music industry would be hauling their customers to court for making personal copies of songs and trading songs with friends

DO you have any links to back that up? Obviously I've heard about court cases against p2p users, but suing over personal copies or sharing with friends is a new one on me...

Re:Fake?

[Jedi Alec]

So while sailing the high seas of the internet, be careful of the Pirates... they are there lurking and waiting for you."

and embroidering to pass the time? arrrrr!

Re:Fake?

[delinear]

Well... the internet is like one big happy family... so you're just sharing with a few billion close friends.

Re:Fake?

[delinear]

You forgot to get excited about a beowulf cluster of these things, damnit!

"/." ignorance is defensable.

[Anonymous Coward]

"'Unfortunately, when it comes to copyright violations, ignorance is no defense.'"

Do you know of any civil or crimminal acts that are?

Re:"/." ignorance is defensable.

[jr87]

well ignorance is a defense if they are not the copiers themselves, just the person making copies and selling/giving them are the guilty party. That's just copyright.

Re:"/." ignorance is defensable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many. For example, "receipt of stolen goods" requires that the criminal knew the goods were stolen. See, for example, 18 USC 2315.

By the way, the ESPC FAQ cites 17 USC 501 to claim that purchase of counterfeit designs is a violation of the Copyright Act, but cites no authority for its claim that lack of knowledge of the copyright violation is not a defense. I call bullshit.

Re:"/." ignorance is defensable.

[morgan_greywolf]

Yep. There's a difference between "willful" copyright violation and "incidental" copyright violation. Guess which one allows you to collect more damages?

Re:"/." ignorance is defensable.

[cpt kangarooski]

No, it's true. In fact, they're even citing the right statute:

Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 ... is an infringer of the copyright....

17 USC 501(a).

I don't see a mens rea element there.

Contrast with a civil remedy for computer intrusion:

Any ... person aggrieved by any violation of this chapter in which the conduct constituting the violation is engaged in with a knowing or intentional state of mind may, in a civil action, recover from the person or entity, other than the United States, which engaged in that violation such relief as may be appropriate.

18 USC 2707(a) (emphasis added).

Re:"/." ignorance is defensable.

[DragonWriter]

17 USC 504(c)(2) spells out how innocent infringement acts as a mitigation of statutory damages (which, in the types of cases being discussed, are likely to be the issue; actual damages are almost certainly negligible in most cases); further, an innocent infringer is likely relying on deliberate representations of a willful (likely commercial) infringer, who almost certainly can be impleaded by the innocent infringer in any action for the violation.

Re:"/." ignorance is defensable.

[91degrees]

Ignorance of the facts is usually a defence. If you have every reason to believe you have a legitimate copy and can prove this then you're probably in the clear.

Re:"/." ignorance is defensable.

[cpt kangarooski]

I know, and it's great for the purposes of computing statutory damages, but it does nothing for the elements of the offense to begin with. An innocent infringer is still an infringer, and still liable for his infringement. He's not innocent at all, he just wasn't even negligent. It's not the best piece of terminology.

Of course ignorance is no defense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise everyone would just claim ignorance when they get caught. However, it is pretty weak to go after grandmas like this; the real money lies with the grandpas.

Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shit

[unity100]

Well, here is some point where turkish law is better than u.s. law.

Recently a high court whose decisions are exemplary and binding have decided that it is not the customers' responsibility to know what they were buying was pirated or not - the SELLER of pirated stuff is guilty. And it is the companies' responsibility to protect their own copyrights.

Which perfectly makes sense, as no inhabitant of this planet has to maintain a list that contains which company holds the rights to what product.

yep

[User 956]

On the ESPC faq page they scare these grandmothers by telling them even if they didn't know the software was pirated, that 'Unfortunately, when it comes to copyright violations, ignorance is no defense.

In this day and age, it's also not a barrier to using a computer.

Re:yep

[morgan_greywolf]

In this day and age, it's also not a barrier to using a computer.

Thank you, Microsoft! ;-)

To quote Weird Al

[monopole]

Oh, you don't want to mess with the RI-double-A
They'll sue you if you burn that CD-R
It doesn't matter if you're a grandma or a seven-year-old girl
They'll treat you like the evil hard-bitten criminal scum you are

Re:To quote Weird Al

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't Download This Song" is available on CD from Volcano Records, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony BMG Entertainment. Buy it and "fight the man."

This is It - Our Chance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, our chance to bring disgruntled grannies into the Free/Open Source fold! We'll get quality Free/Open Source Embroidery software AND some killer milk and cookies. Who's with me?!

Hmm.

[GotenXiao]

I'll copyright the O2 molecule. Using it without my express permission is copyright infringement.

IGNORANCE IS NO DEFENSE.

Re:Hmm.

[pla]

I'll copyright the O2 molecule. Using it without my express permission is copyright infringement.

No, copying it would infringe, not using.

Fortunately, I only consume O2 - I do, however, produce CO2, of which I declare myself copyright holder.

Hope y'all know how to metabolize hydrogen sulfide...

Fake? doesn't seem so...scary is more like it!

[jargon82]

Dialing... (after hours, clearly) 1 2 3 4 rings You have reached the legal dept for the ESPC. Our office hours are Monday - thurs 9:30am through 4pm Central standard time. Please leave your name, number that you can be reached at between those hours, thank you. Why Central, if it's in PA? Monroeville is near Pittsburgh... it's a pity it's a PO box because I am there about once a month. Anyone got a better addy? :)

Re:Fake? doesn't seem so...scary is more like it!

[jargon82]

I'd further like to point out that the number is 888-921-5732. Thats a toll free number for US callers. That means, it costs them money, not you. Thats right, everytime you dial 888-921-5732 and listen to that voice message, it costs the owners of 888-921-5732 some amount of money. Again, that number is 888-921-5732. Or something.

I don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

as there is no torrent

I'm torn

[n9uxu8]

This is clearly a case of a coalition getting together to become the next RIAA. However, my mother makes her living making embroidery machine instructional videos and custom designs (http://littlebrownjugdesigns.com/ for those interested...I didn't code the page, it's not my fault). Anyway, the granny-embroidery crowd can be viscious and there is an embedded culture of one person buying a design and giving a copy to everyone they know. This isn't really a big deal, however. The big deal is when an embroidery supply store buys one copy of a training dvd or design pack and just burns a copy to sell whenever a customer expresses an interest. For a one-person-show, it's impossible to track down all the stores operating this way, so some sort of industry coalition makes sense, but it should target infringing merchants not the Grandma who just wanted to stitch Faye Valentine on her grandson's backpack.

Dave

Re:I'm torn

[overlordmead]

mmmmm Faye. Nice Bebop reference.

Re:I'm torn

[YrWrstNtmr]

The big deal is when an embroidery supply store buys one copy of a training dvd or design pack and just burns a copy to sell whenever a customer expresses an interest.

Liken this to music 'sharing'. How often is that meme presented as an end result of the general file sharing thing?
One copy of YouFaveBand is sold, and then put up on Kazaa, eMule, torrent..for everyone to have. The artist and production team gets the proceeds from exactly one sale.

but it should target infringing merchants not the Grandma who just wanted to stitch Faye Valentine on her grandson's backpack.

And now, we've come full circle. Napster, et al, gets sued, the general hue and cry is "Don't sue them, go after the illegal distributors" (thee and me file sharers). That happens, and now the call is to go after the hub. Granted, the 'hub' here is theoretically making money from the deal. But what if they were merely 'sharing'? Giving it away to anyone who asked.

Who is the bad guy here? If anyone?

Re:I'm torn

[RimfoMan]

Don't be too torn.. The ESPC is tring to also wipe out any small player (like your mother) They have shutdown several independent designers, who were selling original designs, by threatening them and their customers.

There was some good coverage on this about a year ago on a loca TV station, WNDU-TV in South Bend, IN.
Here is the link.. http://www.wndu.com/news/contact16/092005/contact1 6_44586.php

====
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my employer, my
friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife. Any resemblance to the views
of anybody living or dead is coincidental. No animals were hurt in the
writing of this response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants to
go outside NOW!

Re:I'm torn

[sparkz]

It sounds like you know something about the culture... what are the issues? Is this about software, or pattern designs? Individual designs, if someone feels so inclined, could be licensed under the Creative Commons license. If it's a software issue, as some posters suggest, what are the requirements? I would have thought that the problem-space of converting a pixellated picture into a set of instructions along the lines of "stitch the red thread from cell C83 to cell K32" should be pretty straight forward; in this case, an open source application should fix your Mum's legal problems, and be quite easy to write/support. Just my cut $0.02, cross $0.02, pearl $0.02

Those dangerous grannies...

[Anonymous Coward]

First they pirate software, then they engage in gangs -- such as "The Hell's Grannies" -- and disrupt the lives of the law-abiding Citizens of this Country:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CStfT8gCrjM

Re:Those dangerous grannies...

[chgros]

Make tea not love!

Not Only Embroidery ...

[djtachyon]

My mother is into bobbinlace, lace, tatting, etc. These programs that are used to design these can be very profitable. She uses hers mostly for charity, but they are very effective and rather esoteric. With the amount of older people becoming familiar with the Internet and these types of programs becoming more well-known, the once extremely over-profitable niche market, is being balanced out by the Internet as well.

When i was your age

[revolu7ion]

When I was your age, companies used to sell you their digital patterns for half a shilling, and Sue was Bob's wife - not a lawyer's favourite word

Re:When i was your age

[Anonymous Coward]

You had shillings? Why, when I was a kid, we did embroidery with stone knives and bearskins. And we liked it.

Re:When i was your age

[PhxBlue]

Oh yeah? Well, when I was your age, Sue was a boy's name!

Re:When i was your age

[revolu7ion]

Stone knives? We could only dream of stone knives! I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah You tell that to people these days - they wont believe you...

Fake?-Opinions.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't know. If you had asked me 20 years ago if I believed that the music industry would be hauling their customers to court for making personal copies of songs and trading songs with friends, I'd have called you crazy."

1) "But it's not piracy because we never would have bought it anyway".

2) They're NOT being sued for making personal copies for their use.

3) Trading songs with "friends" all over the planet.

"And yet, here we are."

Still getting modded +5:informative, to hell with truth.

That's a big hole!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come see my big hole!
http://amtgard.shop.tm/

Called it, seems legit... sort of

[Xocet_00]

Yay for VoIP. I called the number and got an answer after five or six rings. The voice mail message says something along the lines of "You have reached the legal department of the ESPC. Our hours are blah blah blah" in what sounds (to my Canadian ears) like a southern accent. The hours match those listed on the site. Note: the message didn't expand the acronym, so it this IS a prank, they could just have pulled the number from some other legal department and made up a ridiculous-sounding agency to match.

Oh, I called at around 10:50pm Atlantic (9:50pm EST) on Tuesday the 12th.

the law and public relations disasters

[davidwr]

Firstoff, digitizing an embroidery design is itself a creative work, much like creating a good translation of text from English to Japanese. As such, copyright protection is appropriate.

Now, as for suing end-users who unknowingly bought a pirated design, well, that's like suing teenagers for buying what they thought were real music CDs from their neighborhood music store or pawn shop. A PR-savvy company would go after the music store or pawn shop, or in this case eBay or eBay's sellers, NOT the end-user.

Re:the law and public relations disasters

[cpt kangarooski]

Firstoff, digitizing an embroidery design is itself a creative work, much like creating a good translation of text from English to Japanese. As such, copyright protection is appropriate.

That's only one hurdle. We also must consider whether copyrights for such patterns will produce a net benefit to the public. We must consider how many designs would be created and published without copyright, and whether any copyright would result in more creation and publication, and if so, whether it would be enough to benefit the public more than they would be harmed by the existance of the relevant copyrights. (This is because the public benefits from having original works created and published, from having derivative works created and published, and having no or minimal copyrights on those works so that everyone is free to use the works as they like. Encouraging one at the expense of another isn't good unless the net result is better for the public, and all three are ultimately satisfied anyway)

I would imagine that some amount of protection might be appropriate, though I'd want to see some hard numbers first. But it probably ought to be a fairly minimal amount of protection. I don't expect that embroiders are significantly incentivized to create and publish patterns because of copyright-related potential revenue. Other incentives might be stronger, and I'm fully prepared to let artists create and not get copyrights if they're going to create anyway. Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free, after all?

Re:the law and public relations disasters

[kfg]

Now, as for suing end-users who unknowingly bought a pirated design, well, that's like suing teenagers for buying what they thought were real music CDs from their neighborhood music store or pawn shop.

Traditionally this would not be allowed. Copyrights do not address possession, they are copyrights.

But the law creeps, and one of the more pernicious ways it has found to creep of late is the redefinition of words with well understood legal meaning for the purposes of a single bill:

"For the purposes of this bill when we say "cat" we mean dog and when we say "dog" we mean your sister."

Thus it is now sometimes necesssary to build a glossary just for a single law to be able to read it and understand what it means. Black's is a useless anachronism for these bills.

And you can blame one of the granddaddies of the modern slippery slopes; the "war" on child pornography.

You see, the justification of anti-child pornography laws is the direct harm to children. The harm comes in the production, not in the possession. In the production illegal abusive acts are actually perpetrated against actual children. The mere images actually had an umbra of Constitutional rights about them.

So to arrest and convict a child pornographer you had to actually catch them in the production phase committing an actual illegal act. Doing something proscribed to a child.

But criminals have this nasty habit of hiding their crimes. The bastards. Catching them was difficult. It required investigative police work. We hate doing that, especially in this case where it often required cooperation across international legal frontiers.

So a new law was created to get at them without having to actually get at them directly. Promotion of child pornography was made a crime. This stretched the law a considerable bit, but didn't go so far as to actually break it. Now the word "promotion" has specific legal meaning. Distribution, sales and directly related activities. Ya know, "promotion."

The idea being that by making the business too risky and breaking the profit chain production would be curtailed and we could now go after a broader range of activities much easier to see, since promotion is harder to hide than production, since, well, to promote you have to promote. Become visible to your customers somehow.

Funny thing is, the law didn't work. Oh, sure, a lot of porn store owners were arrested and convicted of promoting child pornography, but production, i.e. actual abusive crimes against actual children, didn't diminish, at least in part because the increased strictures increased the profitabilty (see the war on drugs we're morally opposed to for some reason), thus justifying the increased risks involved. Go figure that strengthing contraban strictures only serves to strengthen the black market. We never saw that coming.

Something "had to be done," and here's what that something was:

They passed an anti child pornography bill that, for the purposes of that bill only, redefined "promotion" to include purchase, because if something is shown to be ineffective the obvious cure is to do it more and harder. This didn't merely break the law, it literally twisted it into unrecongnizability.

But here's the really pernicious step:

Possession was then held to be defacto evidence of "promotion" as defined in the bill. To have it, you must first have recieved it (this is not only a fracture of law, but of logic, but, weeeeeeell, they're just scum, right?)

So now some poor schmuck with a picture of some kid that gives a judge a hard on is "guilty" of the crime of possession, even though possession is not a crime (and with the side effect that often there is no actual primary crime even involved in the matter, an actual criminal act against an actual child. We now simply need to make a moral judgement against an image to convict).

And they got a

Re:the law and public relations disasters

[Anne Thwacks]

Firstoff, digitizing an embroidery design is itself a creative work

Technically correct, but I have software, supplied with my sewing machine (not a cheap one), which allows me to take a bmp and create an embroidery pattern from it. This is like scanning, in the sense that pretty much anyone can use a scanner, but only a tiny percentage of the population can set the DPI, scaling, colour, gamma correction,etc to the optimum values.

There are people who make a living from emboidery patterns, some of which are even worth paying for, but most designs are not worth the time to download them.

I have a web site from which patterns I created can be downloaded for free, and at one time got quite a few hits from downloaders, but I am not going to mention it here, because the server is an AMD k6, and I dont want it /.ed.

Software Costs

[jhines0042]

I've actually looked in to getting an embroidery machine. (My mother actually has one too)

Here's the rub. The machine costs $5000. The software for loading your own designs into it... another $5000 (last I checked)

Yes, these machines hook up to a computer via USB, they have their own CD drives and their own format for embroidery patterns. The patterns you can buy on CD for a pretty penny, more expensive than a music CD for sure.

So, no, I'm not surprised by this at all.

Re:Software Costs

[Martix]

WOO!!! 5000 bucks thats nuts.....If they sold it at a good price it would not be an issue.

Dont agree with stealing but this price is nuts and I thought Autocad was expensive.

Re:Software Costs

[tbuskey]

Embroidery patterns are inherently 3D as well. You can expand/shrink patterns to a point, but the thread sill has to provide coverage/fit in the space. They type of thread you use makes a difference. If you shrink the pattern too much, you get a hard patch instead of a flexible one.

The patterns are kinda like fonts. You're always looking for the right one. It's hard to design a good one. It's easy to design a bad one.

Why yes, my wife has an embroidery machine....

Re:Software Costs

[Shadowlore]

You need to check again. My wife is looking at picking up one. It is less than a grand including "digitizing software" (their term not mine) that turns any jpeg image to a pattern. It's got a farily good sized hoop and capability. The software is run via a PC connected over USB as opposed to being built in. I've seen them work and they are pretty cool.

I dont' recall the model but it is made by Singer. I can ask my wife if you want to know the details.

Sounds like the RIAA has been an inspiration....

[zappepcs]

From the website at http://www.infotoday.com/linkup/lud090106-goldsbor ough.shtml

""" The group, EmbroideryOrganizationInformation (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EmbroideryOrganizat ionInformation), is a Yahoo! Groups discussion group that was set up in response to piracy and copyright infringement charges made by ESPC against those who share embroidery designs obtained from embroidery software and from embroidery design companies.

Many of the participants have elected to participate in the discussion group on an anonymous basis. In response to this, ESPC obtained a subpoena to force Yahoo! to reveal the identities of these people in addition to filing defamation claims against individual members for what they wrote.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in turn, filed a motion to block this subpoena, which it described as "brazen" and "heavy-handed." """

ESPC with the emphasis on "C"

[GeeBee]

I went to their Web site. It is a bad joke designed to intimidate the uninformed. Their symbol is a big embroidered copyright (C).

This is nothing but a shakedown of grannies. Sending a letter to let folks know they have been victimized by counterfeiters and asking them to destroy the CD is fine. Threatening them with a $300 fine is nothing but a racket.

I also looked at the Great Notions web site. They sure don't give these designs away. Maybe if they made them a little more affordable people wouldn't be looking for designs on eBay. I hope that the ESPC victims can band together and sue the pants of this outfit for their heavy handed ways.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[gumbi west]

So, if I go to Thailand and buy Microsoft * and Adobe *, I own it all? I can't believe that.

If true, why wouldn't every company spin off a subsidiary that would make and sell cracked software to the orignal company and then *surprise* not have any money when the license owners goes after it -- and every board member and executive happens to live in Cuba.

From the FAQ...

[jargon82]

Follow the instructions exactly. Call ONLY the Legal Department of the ESPC at 214. 350.1892. Sounds great. Thats a Dallas area code. In fact, google lists it as belonging to one Francisco X Rangel, of Dallax, TX.

Next stop, Dallas... someone wanna confirm THAT number?

I just asked mine as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

My grandmother said that the ESPC could suck her old, dry, shrivled member.

Re:I just asked mine as well.

[krakelohm]

Uhh Grandmothers are not supposed to have 'members', dried, shriveled, or otherwise. I advise you to drive her to the doctor.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[DragonWriter]

I would not assume that the self-serving FUD of an industry group accurately reflects US law. In US law, innocent infringement is not a complete defense to civil infringement, but does mitigate damages. Furthermore, if the innocent offender was sold or given the material b someone who represented it as legitimate, they likely have a claim against that third party for any damages they would be liable for for the infringment, and more, either on a theory of fraud or some other related basis—and could likely drag them into any suit over the infringement.

I think I remember these guys...

[russotto]

Are these the same thugs who were suing grannies for making multiple items from the same (paper) pattern?

What they need is to sue some granny who has a terminal illness and a shotgun.

Cue massive backlash in 3...2...1...

[compro01]

someone please tell me this is merely a bad joke... if it isn't, there is gonna be some serious crap going down. seniors vote much more than average citizens. up here, IIRC, 87% of senior citizens voted, vs. 65% of the general population. i can imagine that there is a comparable phenomenon in the US.

and plus, the whole suing old people raised a PR firestorm upon the RIAA, so i can expect a similar effect on this.

provided again that this isn't a really early april fools joke...

Re:Cue massive backlash in 3...2...1...

[Anonymous Custard]

I had to look it up to tell if it was a joke...

http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/ESPC_v_Ebert/

No joke.

Interesting FAQ Entry (FTFA)

[manastungare]

But it's just a disk, some paper and a plastic bag.
If a brain surgeon opens your cranium and takes a peek inside your brain, does he see ideas and intelligence? Just because he only sees a brain, can he determine the content? And if he cannot measure any content, does that mean you are mindless? No.

From: http://www.embroideryprotection.org/faqs.html

Re:Interesting FAQ Entry (FTFA)

[Anonymous Coward]

What a ridiculously bad analogy.

Re:Interesting FAQ Entry (FTFA)

[ketamine-bp]

Although I'm not a neurosurgeon,

I suppose it isn't that hard to spot brain atrophy even on CT/MRI (not even an open brain). If i can see nothing but bunches of grapes inside i suppose the patient is mindlesss.

Pity it's hard to legally prohibit excessive greed

[TheLink]

Because this is excessive greed.

As for prohibitions against copying, one should consider the scalability.

If everyone was prohibited from using each others ideas without permission, it won't scale well if you have many billions or even trillions of people. Unless you assume that it is typical that only a very few of the billions are creative enough to have new ideas.

If I came up with a unique thought first, others should not be prohibited from thinking it, they shouldn't falsely claim they are first or the only ones because that would be lying.

I would have thought that civilized nations would have plenty of ways of keeping inventive people alive and reasonably contented even if they don't get to have monopolies over everything. And the "expanding markets and thousands of new types of jobs" would be good enough.

In fact I think it may actually be all the excessive greed that's causing it to not be good enough.

It's like the starving in Africa - not due to there not being enough food, but evil and greedy leaders. There are more overweight and obese people in the world than starving people - so there's more than enough food to go around.

german law

[AlgorithMan]

in german law it is like this: you buy something, it belongs to you... if the seller didn't have the right to sell it to you (for example he didn't have a copyright to a software) it is his problem... if you get caught, then he has to settle for the damage. for example he has to buy the licenses he sold subsequently (and make lots of loss *haha*) - this is not your problem, because to you the transaction is finished, you bought a legal license and he has to deliver a legal license... even if this means that he has to pay more for it subsequently than you paied him, because thats what his part of the contract was, he also can't demand more money, because the price you paied is the price in the contract for a legal license...

now if this story is for real then I say it is FUD... those guys figured that grannies can be scared easily and beleive you and pay out of fear from punishment... they will rott in hell...

Re:german law

[TFloore]

you buy something, it belongs to you

If you buy a pressed CD with printed label on the disc, that makes perfect sense.

If you buy a CD-R of software with the title and S/N written on it with a Sharpie... Do you have an expectation of having bought legal software? Are you making a legal transaction, or are you knowingly buying infringed goods? Somehow that doesn't sound nearly as bad as "buying stolen goods" does it? There's probably a reason for that... But if you buy stolen goods, the cops can confiscate the property from you, and return it to its rightful owner. You forfeit it because it was stolen. Why not with software or other intellectual property? If you unknowingly buy stolen goods, can you sue the seller for your money back when the cops take the item away from you?

There are limits to how much protection a consumer should have. Usually that limit is where it damages another citizen. But if you buy something that looks like a legit product, yes, you bought it, and the seller should be responsible for making it right. Because, for software, that is just a monetary payment, you are not depriving the copyright holder of any property, only income.

Re:german law

[AlgorithMan]

If you buy a CD-R of software with the title and S/N written on it with a Sharpie

well the thing about this is: you are legal owner of the thing you bought, IF you have no good reason to beleive it was illegit... otherwise you have to go to the police or you make yourself complicit and can get in trouble if you are cought

But if you buy stolen goods, the cops can confiscate the property from you, and return it to its rightful owner. You forfeit it because it was stolen. Why not with software or other intellectual property? If you unknowingly buy stolen goods, can you sue the seller for your money back when the cops take the item away from you?

no, they can't take stolen goods away, because you are the legal owner, because you have a contract with the seller - he makes you legal owner of the item for the agreed price... if he didn't have the right to, then HE has to make you the legal owner subsequently (for example by paying for the product he sold to you)

Re:german law

[Pofy]

As allready mentioned, that is how it works, the buyer owns that copy. It is irellevant if it was created in an infringing way or not. Ownership has NOTHING to do with copyright. There is further, in most countries at least that I know of, no exclusive right for posession of works, so posession can never in itself be an infringement. Your babbling about "stolen goods" is a completely different issue, since that is indeed about ownership (as oposed to copyright), that is covered by very different laws and has to do with the fact that the goods has another owner than the owe selling it to you. That is not the case with copyright since copyright doesn't define ownership.

I'm glad this story was posted

[ovapositor]

I hope that this nonsense comes home to roost!

Let me explain.... my parents would often lament the state of our country. I would inevitably come to the conclusion based on discussions that they have turned over a totally screwed up country to the generation(s) that follow. When I suggested that to them they were not pleased... but I maintain it is the truth.

They allowed this nonsense to fester for quite a while... the impact of their apathy goes way beyond this specific case.

I just don't see how th US can maintain any type of global leadership in the future, let alone hold its ground with the legacy we have to deal with now. This crap is like quicksand!!

Re:I'm glad this story was posted

[Sir_Lewk]

We distain our current situation, and thus there is hope. The day we really *are* in trouble, is the day that we don't care anymore.

has to be fake

[Anonymous Coward]

i looked up their domain and it came back with 32 other results..

http://whois.domaintools.com/embroideryprotection. org

http://www.domaintools.com/reverse-ip/?hostname=em broideryprotection.org (requires free regsitration)

the guys will rott in hell, not the grannies...

[AlgorithMan]

I mean the guys will rott in hell, not the grannies *lol*

Embroidery Machines

[beadfulthings]

I want to express this with all due respect to the grannies involved, as I'm certain this has come as a shock to some of them.

However (ahem). Today's sewing/embroidery machines aren't the straight-needle treadle-operated Singers of yore. They come equipped with flash drives, USB ports, CD/DVD drives, and network connections. Many are Internet-upgradeable. Even to buy in at the low end of the market, you have to come up with about $1,500 - $3,000. Upwards of $5,000 gets you a respectably flexible and powerful system. Manufacturers who formerly dealt only in industrial sewing machines (such as Juki) seem now to be involved in the home market. Manufacturers of traditionally high-end home machines (Viking comes to mind) have a glittering array of semi-professional options with price tags to match. They are also specialized, with machines available for embroidery, quilting, overcasting seams in garments--lots of features formerly available only in industry.

I guess what I'm saying is that you have to come up with a fairly substantial investment to get into this game in the first place. Maybe what we need is an open-source embroidery pattern movement (Tux would make a cute embroidery pattern), but a lot of these designs are licensed (such as Disney characters), and to me it stands to reason one would have to shell out substantial money for them.

It's also a bit of a slap in the face at the idea of the ditzy old lady bereft of any technical smarts at all. Not the case if she's just logged into Husqvarna for the latest update to her Viking SE.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[stubear]

That's the way it is in the U.S. The details you failed to mention however are what happens to the infringing material once it is discoverd that the seller violated copyright? In the U.S. the buyer is out the cost of the intellectual property (If you're buying a copy of Photoshtop for $150 you get what you deserve) but no other legal action can be taken as they did not violate the copyright. I'd be willing to bet that it is very similar if not identical in Turkish law as well.

Come on...

[BunBun007]

...that's old news. :)

Re:Fake? Yup it's a SCAM!

[zifferent]

Most definitely is fake. In fact it's a scam.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=20 00117763&tstart=0&mod=1156813029715

You see they get these sewing people all scared, work them up into a lather and then direct them to the "Amnesty Program" here:

http://www.embroideryprotection.org/Amnesty_Progra m.pdf

Where they procede to take $300 a piece from unwitting cross-stichers.

Re:Fake? EFF doesn't think so!

[Anonymous Coward]

EFF doesn't think so: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/ESPC_v_Ebert/

FOSS to the rescue!

[nandnor]

c'mon people, who's going to step up and create an OSS alternative?

Re:FOSS to the rescue!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "Free/Open Source Sewing" ?

FAQ stupidity

[roman_mir]

FAQ: But I bought the disk therefore I own it and I should be free to do as I wish with it. I own my car and I can let others use it--what's the difference?

When you buy a disk, all you truly own is the physical diskette itself, not what is on it. The designs are licensed for you to use in a specific way; the copyright holder owns the content. When you share designs, you are typically not loaning the disk to another person, you are giving them a copy of the disk--in other words, you have become a bootleg manufacturer. When you loan your car to another, as long as they are using the car, you cannot - you are not duplicating the car so that you each have one.

This is really wrong. The copyright law does not require the user to agree to any license to use the material. The buyer does not have to agree to any license, he really owns everything he bought, the disk and the bits on it. However, the copyright makes it illegal for the owner of this copy of the material to make other copies and distribute them for any purpose (excluding legal fair use clauses.)

So, if you bought a disk, you can put it into a computer and legally modify the contents and then use the modified contents from the disk. However you cannot create exact or inexact copies of that material for illegal distribution. To distribute/redistribute the copyrighted materials you have to get a license - a permission from the copyright owner. That's the only correct usage of the license concept, not that the user has to agree to a license to buy anything.

But maybe they're right...

[davmoo]

Even though this goes against the principles of Slashdot, I did in fact RTFA. While I don't agree that its a good idea from a PR standpoint to go after grannies, I also don't see anything in the article, or at the organization's web site, that is factually incorrect. They are merely exercising their rights under US law. Don't like it? Then don't buy their product. Don't want to get in trouble? Then besides not buying their product, don't *cough* acquire *cough* their product either.

It works the same way with the RIAA. I think the RIAA sucks. Suing teenagers is usually not a good idea from a PR standpoint. That's why I don't buy their product. I also don't *cough* acquire *cough* their product either. But regardless, most of what the RIAA says (and noticed I didn't say "all of what they say") is in fact correct under US law.

Its also quite obvious in reading most of the replies here, that none of you have ever made or marketed a product that has a very limited pool of customers. Just like most of you have never created music, artwork, or software for sale. If you did, and someone started passing your creation around and cut in to your sales, I bet a lot of you would be changing your responses (and hiring lawyers). If you want to create something and give it away for free, that's your right to do so. But its equally someone else's right to create something and offer it only in exchange for money. You only have two choices in this debate...to pay and use, or to keep your money and not use. You never have the right to steal their product because you don't like their policies or prices.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you agree with the principle of copyright and intellicutal property (I.E. are a capitalist) the companies are COMPLETELY in the right.

Those of us who don't believe in the Grand Ole Party economic system, need to find a way to fight the landlords of intellecutal property.

When possible we must create our own content, and unlike those who want to maintain propertiary control, we must share our creative output.

We must support Independent Artists, Open Source Software, and Creative Commons.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[westlake]

Even though this goes against the principles of Slashdot, I did in fact RTFA.

When the Geek sees the word "embroidery" he sees Granny and Sylvester. He does not see small business. The embroidery machine as a $5000-$10000 commercial grade color printer.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[vorpal22]

You only have two choices in this debate...to pay and use, or to keep your money and not use.

I disagree. I think that there's an entirely reasonable third choice: (1) to pay and use when the price is reasonable and the company behind the product respects us, and (2) to protest through whatever means we feel are appropriate when the price to end users is completely absurd or the company treats us like garbage.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[davmoo]

Even if I were to agree with you, stealing the product is still not a legitimate form of protest. Whether the price is absurd or the company treats users like garbage does not change that.

Go get 5 gallons of gasoline and then drive off from the pump without paying. When the cops show up at your house, tell them "I'm protesting the absurd price of gasoline and the poor treatment of consumers by big oil companies" and see how that affects your situation. The only way it will help you is if the cops are laughing so hard they can't arrest you.

And no, this is not "apples and oranges". Theft is theft, and the only people who try to say otherwise are people doing the stealing. The fact that one product (gasoline) is a physical thing and the other (the software or designs) is intangible is totally irrelevant.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its also quite obvious in reading most of the replies here, that none of you have ever made or marketed a product that has a very limited pool of customers.

I have a friend artist who do, and he's always happy when he sees his music on fileshares. "Free advertisement" he calls it.

You have a very narrow view on the whole copyright thing. In Norway it is legal to share a copy to your friend, and this happened all during the rage that was the VCR-boom too.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[gsslay]

(1) to pay and use when the price is reasonable and the company behind the product respects us

Who decides what is a reasonable price?

You have no right to demand respect from a company that you have no relationship with. If you do not buy a company's product they have no obligations to you, nor you to them.

(2) to protest through whatever means we feel are appropriate when the price to end users is completely absurd or the company treats us like garbage. Who decides when the price is absurd?

Sorry, but it is anyone's right to value the product of their labour at whatever price they like. If you don't agree with them, then don't pay. Go someplace else or do without. You do not have any relationship with the company, are not their customer, they have no contact with you, so how can they treat you like garbage?

The tone of your post appears to be that you have a right to others work, and if they're not prepared to sell it to you at a price that you like, it's because they don't respect you and treat you like garbage. So its ok therefore for you to just take it anyway.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[silas_moeckel]

The grandparent is correct if your talking about tangable items, abit missing option 3 make one yourself. When talking about intangable items that are protected soly by copyright then protest is an option as it's an artificial market, createted soly by copyright law.

Re:But maybe they're right...

[drew]

One thing to point out- it sounds like the problem that these companies is having is not so much granny going out on Kazaa and downloading all of their software and patterns. The big problem is small shop owners or individuals who buy the patterns and then sell copies via their shop or ebay, or whatever.

In this case, it's not 'granny' who is violating copyright, but rather the ones who actually made the copies. Those are the ones that ESPC should be sending the letters to. And telling people that 'ignorance is no defence' isn't really true. (Actually, it's the worst kind of untruth- it's literally completely true, but also completely irrelevant in the context) If a person buys a product that they believe to be legitimate, and it turns out that the seller violated copyright, then as far as I know buyer hasn't done anything wrong. (Note that this is different from the case of buying stolen goods- despite what the 'ad' on the begining of my new DVDs tells me, theft and copyright infringement are still very different things. If they really are the same, then why isn't shoplifting a federal offense punishable by up to $750,000 and 10 years in prison?)

Re:But maybe they're right...

[crabpeople]

"most of what the RIAA says (and noticed I didn't say "all of what they say") is in fact correct under US law"

so was slavery at a time.

Shared culture is how humans evolve, culturally. If you want to pass laws that stagnate human development by all means pass them. I personally wont be following any of them as seeing things like When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (torrent) enhances my life and actually evolves my mind. People shouldn't have to pay for any education that they can get for free. Im sorry but thats h0w society evolves. You don't like it? feel free to stagnate.

ARR!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome aboard Grannies!

This is great!

[grapeape]

The more copyright and patent issues encroach into the lives of the less geeky the better. Bring on the lawsuits for quilt patterns, sewing patterns and wood working designs (im going to lay claim to the spindle). The more insane the lawsuits get the more likely it is that the sheepish masses will finally wake up and see just how jacked up the current laws are.

Re:This is great!

[mdielmann]

im going to lay claim to the spindle

Hey, I have a spindle here, let me return it to you. Now just bend over....

Re:This is great!

[GWBasic]

Overall, I really don't think that copyright law is completly "jacked up"... It's more that the information industry is keeping their prices too high. One of the posts claims:

Here's the rub. The machine costs $5000. The software for loading your own designs into it... another $5000 (last I checked)

The same can be said about the music industry. Why should I pay $16.00 for a brand-new Beatles or Pink Floyd CD? The recordings have amortized their production costs, and I can buy a DVD for $10-$20.

Re:Fake? Yup it's a SCAM!

[KwKSilver]

I'd mod you up for informative, if I had points!

This is interesting..

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at the second comment on this forum: http://www.designsbysick.com/forums/viewtopic.php? p=18907 "Donna McCauley is not a legal professional in any capacity, she works in the HR department of CI Host and is Carole Faulkner's sister. Carole Faulkner is the mother of Chris Faulkner who owns CI Host. She is not located in Dallas........her offices are located in the CI Host building in Bedford Texas at the intersection of Airport Freeway and Central Dr. Janice Blasko is a real person, she lives at 416 Citrus Drive in Maittland Florida. She IS the Abbey Group, aka Pure Whimsy, aka Home Sewing Association. The 412 area code number goes to a Primerica Financial Branch located at 3843 William Penn Hwy in Monroeville. The Abbey Group is actually out of Las Vegas Nevada, and Carole Faulkner is also operating under the fictious name of The Stitching Station."

Ignorance is not an excuse?

[GR1NCH]

"Ignorance is not an excuse" really confuses me. If someone is selling something how are you really supposed to know that it is not a legal copy. I mean if my grandmother wanted an embroidery pattern for a gift, I wouldn't know who owns what. Even if the patterns themselves said (c) MyBigCompany, which was different than EbaySeller how am I supposed to know that EbaySeller is not selling a legally licensed copy? And whats to prevent MyBigCompany from paying EbaySeller under the table to sell unlicensed copies of their patterns so they can later sue everyone that paid for an illegal copy. It just seems like there are so many holes in that concept. I mean the only person that for sure is knowingly and willfully doing something wrong is EbaySeller. Sure it may be hard to try and stop every single person distributing/selling illegal copies... but is it really that much easier to go after all of the illegal buyers that may not know they did something wrong?

Re:Francisco Rangel

[KwKSilver]

Interestingly, further google-work led me to this page, an arson case grief provied the site by the ATF. A Francisco Rangel was involved in some business involving computer theft ($1.5 million) and arson ($4.5 million) in the vicinity of Carrollton, Texas [Area code 202, back in 1995 and is still wanted on various Federal and State charges related to that stuff

Crisatunity!

[GeneralEmergency]

But don't I only have to change it 10% to make it my own?

No, this is a misconception about copyrights as it applies to the graphic arts industry. In fact, by changing the original design and then selling the new version of the original in any manner, the person doing this has moved into additional violations of law, not only copyright law, but general tort laws.

Um...seems to me there's an opportunity here to hoist these folks with their own petard.

The designs must be an open standard because it stated that individuals can create their own. So just write a program that converts a design to a graphic, modify the graphic 10% and reconvert back to embroider code.

What am I missing?

Re:Crisatunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I missing?

A clue.

Embroidery as a high tech craft

[westlake]

Does this story not strike anyone else as to be so ridiculous that it must be one of those things set up just to see what community reaction is like? Like a researcher at a university doing a sociology experiment. I mean..."Embroidery Software Protection Coalition"...come on!

The Geek sees Granny in her rocking chair.

The reality is that embroidery has become a high-tech craft and small business. Here are three examples from Froogle:

Quantum® XL-6000 Embroidery Machine by Singer $3000
Melco EP1B Portable Commercial 5.5x9.5" Single-Needle Embroidery Machine (Head by Janome) & Design Shop Lite $5000
Brother PR-600 Single Head 6 Needle Embroidery Machine # PR600, P-R-600, P-R600, PR 600 $7000

You can spend thousands more for a commercial-grade freestanding machine.

The sewing machine as a Windows peripheral begins at $400-$600. Commercial designs for home craft work in fabrics have been big business for a very long time. Butterick, perhaps the most familiar name, has been around since 1863. Our History

A good thing (let me explain)

[lineman60]

This is a good thing, one thing almost every one knows is that the elderly Vote. the way things are going The *AA have been suing mostly younger generation. This might be an avenue to get the laws changed. If grandma sue gets sued and talks about it at her church social. The political impactions could be severe.

No, really, its required for more than that:

[DragonWriter]

For most copyright actions, registration is an absolute prerequisite (see 17 USC 411).

In addition, if you register before filing suit but after the actual infringement occurred, you can't, even if you do win the suit, recover attorney's fees or statutory damages. So that means you won't get any more money back, in most cases, than you can prove either you lost or the infringer made because of the infringement, and a big chunk of that is going to attorney's fees, so net you are likely to lose money on such actions, not turn a profit. Your only chance of profitting is if you can "prove" that you lost money that you actually didn't. You can't even get the benefit of the extra recovery for proven willful violations, since that is just an enhancement of the statutory damages, which you can't recover.

I stand by my original characterization.

Re:Pity it's hard to legally prohibit excessive gr

[Anonymous Coward]

then the solution to that is simple, don't give the fat fucktards any service. Let them starve to death so they will eventually be taken out of the gene poll.

GO AHEAD, FUCKING FLAME AWAY OR
WASTE YOUR GOD DAMNED MOD POINTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE.

You just...

[ModernGeek]

...slashdotted your mother.

Re:You just...

[smoker2]

EEeeew !

MIL/.

A simple solution

[DragonWriter]

Would be:
1) Eliminate statutory damages for innocent infringers, and
2) Disallow court costs and attorney's fees against innocent infringers, and
3) Expand the definition of innocent infringers to, in addition to its current scope, include all people who had a reasonable belief that their use was "fair use" under the law who were acting without commercial intent when infringing.

This would eliminate all incentive to pursue charges against innocent infringers who aren't causing substantial actual damages; instead, companies that became aware of such infringement would send "cease and desist" notices, and the infringer would either cease further infringement or stop being an "innocent" infringer.

Re:A simple solution

[cpt kangarooski]

No, I'd rather just have a blanket exception: if you're a natural person, and you're acting noncommercially, you're not infringing, whatever you're doing, and whatever your mental state is. Copyright would only be a factor in commercial matters, or for organizations, corporations, etc.

I'm ambivalent about adding mens rea to copyright, since it would seem to encourage people to be deliberately ignorant of the copyright status of works, so that they could get away with things.

Also your third exception is all tangled up. Commercial fair use is possible, commonplace, and still entirely fair, so why treat it differently? And why only invoke fair use, when there are a whole panoply of exceptions to copyright other than fair use? First sale is an entirely different creature than fair use, so why wouldn't it protect people who think they're sheltered by that doctrine?

Re:A simple solution

[KDR_11k]

I'd make that "commercial or large scale" since making tens of thousands of copies, even if not for profit, does cause damage to the copyright holder unless all of those are archive copies (and who needs that many archive copies?), never mind that that's most likely a commercial operation using a loophole to avoid being counted as such. Losing ten thousand potential customers can be a sizeable chunk of the market the copyright holder could possibly reach. Also such copies should only be legal to make of a copy that was approved by the rights holder (to prevent "viral" spreading of a work), although you are only liable if you can be reasonably expected to know that the copy you used was not approved. Though I think "reasonably expected to know" is a basic requirement for any kind of charges to stick since otherwise you were clearly doing the right thing from all the information you had and should have (if you lack information you should have you were being negligent and thus at fault).

This would still outlaw sharing over P2P or Warez sites but why exactly should that be legal anyway?

Re:A simple solution

[DragonWriter]

No, I'd rather just have a blanket exception: if you're a natural person, and you're acting noncommercially, you're not infringing, whatever you're doing, and whatever your mental state is.

Well, sure, that would create the broadest license, but that would also greatly reduce the commercial viability of many products that are sold for noncommercial use, and discourage their production. While the law may be practically unenforceable, the risk that brazen enough violations could bring action exerts some control, and keeps a lot markets viable that otherwise wouldn't be. Now, sure, you may be happy to kill all but the biggest creative industries that aren't centered around personal performance, but I'd rather let them live.

I'm ambivalent about adding mens rea to copyright, since it would seem to encourage people to be deliberately ignorant of the copyright status of works, so that they could get away with things.

Mens rea is already a factor in copyright, as it effects the remedies. But valid notice on the copies to which an infringer defeats any claims of innocence based on ignorance of copyright status. I wouldn't suggest changing that if innocence were a complete defense rather than a mitigation.

Also your third exception is all tangled up. Commercial fair use is possible, commonplace, and still entirely fair, so why treat it differently?

I disagree that its tangled up: commercial actual fair use would remain protected, but innocent erroneous intended fair use in a commercial context would not be protected from statutory damages because those using other works in a commercial setting ought, IMO, have more responsibility for assuring that their use is proper.

And why only invoke fair use, when there are a whole panoply of exceptions to copyright other than fair use?

Because the fair use exception is particularly important, particularly in noncommercial contexts, because of its connection to 1st Amendment rights.

First sale is an entirely different creature than fair use, so why wouldn't it protect people who think they're sheltered by that doctrine?

Because first sale is an entirely different creature without the kind of fundamental importance that fair use has. Which is why already certain noncommercial infringers are already protected this way for innocent infringement that is reasonably, though wrongly, believed to be fair use; I simply would expand that protection to be more general than it currently is.

Re:A simple solution

[DragonWriter]

I'd make that "commercial or large scale" since making tens of thousands of copies, even if not for profit, does cause damage to the copyright holder unless all of those are archive copies (and who needs that many archive copies?), never mind that that's most likely a commercial operation using a loophole to avoid being counted as such.

Note that I didn't advocate legalizing anything, only narrowing available remedies to actual damages. So even "innocent" large scale infringement, if (as you argue) it causes actual damages, would still allow recovery. My proposal is about reducing lawsuits and milking of innocent infringers as a new kind of revenue stream (either through lawsuits or "amensty" blackmail) its not about allowing infringement that is currently illegal.

Re:A simple solution

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, sure, that would create the broadest license

No, it would not create a license at all. It would reduce the scope of copyright. To the extent that you were engaged in a use that fell under the exception, no copyright would exist at all. A license can only exist where a copyright exists and is applicable.

but that would also greatly reduce the commercial viability of many products that are sold for noncommercial use, and discourage their production

Maybe, but I'm not confident that that's true. Furthermore, would the benefits to the public of such a broad exception outweigh the detriment of whatever lessened creation and publication occurred. Honestly, I suspect that it would. It also has the benefit of bringing copyright law into line with social norms, rather than trying to fight them. Given that the law is meant to serve the public, rather than artists or publishers specifically, adhering to these norms is a good idea. I don't like it when laws are flagrantly broken, but unless the law is really important (and copyright is not) the solution is to stop having that law or to make it more tolerable to people, not to fight them.

Because the fair use exception is particularly important, particularly in noncommercial contexts, because of its connection to 1st Amendment rights.

No, all the exceptions establish limits on copyright. In the absence of applicable copyright in those areas, all that remains are the First Amendment rights of the users to do as they like. Fair use is a catch-all, but it's no more or less important than, say, the 110 exceptions.

Which is why already certain noncommercial infringers are already protected this way for innocent infringement that is reasonably, though wrongly, believed to be fair use

No, they are not. Innocent infringement applies regardless of why the infringer reasonably thought that he was not infringing. It isn't limited to attempted fair use only.

Re:A simple solution

[cpt kangarooski]

Losing ten thousand potential customers can be a sizeable chunk of the market the copyright holder could possibly reach.

I know, but I think that the public benefits outweigh the public detriments. Fewer works created and published can be compensated for by greater freedom with regard to those works. The point is not to help copyright holders, but to help the public. Doing this might incidentally involve helping copyright holders, but only as a means to an end. C.f. setting up a public transit system might harm cabbies, but if it's still better for the people of the area when all is accounted for, it's the right thing to do.

Also such copies should only be legal to make of a copy that was approved by the rights holder (to prevent "viral" spreading of a work), although you are only liable if you can be reasonably expected to know that the copy you used was not approved.

Well that's just insipid. Rightsholders can already authorize any damn thing that they want. An exception is a limit on their ability to prevent people from doing things.

Though I think "reasonably expected to know" is a basic requirement

You're basically saying you want a negligence standard.

This would still outlaw sharing over P2P or Warez sites but why exactly should that be legal anyway?

The correct questions are why should we have copyright at all? And if so, precisely how much? I think that copyright is a good idea, but only to a point. That point is the point of maximum public benefit. Encouraging creation and publication of original works is one kind of public benefit, but only one kind. Of equal importance are encouraging the creation and publication of derivatives, and in having no, or minimal copyright, in both term length and scope. Also, copyright should not fight the public norms; it's just not important enough. Copyright is like Prohibition, not Civil Rights.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[DragonWriter]

An innocent buyer would no doubt have a claim against the fraudulent seller for at least the amount paid, and possibly for the fair market value of the product the seller agreed to sell but failed to legally provide (and, depending on the jurisdiction, possible some damage multiplier for the deliberate fraud, as well.)

Hire laywers, not engineers.

[bruno.fatia]

Unfortunatelly, lawsuits have become nothing more than another source of income for companys.
As Denny Crane and Alan Shore (Boston Legal, ABC Show) state, "It's all about the money. It's always about money". I'm still wondering how can the judges let it happen. I mean can't they see?!

Re:Hire laywers, not engineers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not that they cant SEE. Its that they have the legal obligation to follow through with legal action and to persue "justice". Its their job... Sucks to be them.

Re:Hire laywers, not engineers.

[DragonWriter]

I'm still wondering how can the judges let it happen.

The law allows pretty heavy minimum statutory damage awards, even (though lower than otherwise) for innocent infringers. Legally, there is little judges can do. The problem is with the law, not the judges following the law. That's Congress' job.

Who's up for some for fun with skype?

[loraksus]

Call ONLY the Legal Department of the ESPC at 214. 350.1892

Would hate to be checking messages on their machine tommorow.

And yes, I'm saying go and call. These groups should realize that threatening the buyers with lawsuits and prison time will not go without retalitation. This is the equivalent of the RIAA hunting down the people who bought copies of professionally pirated, legitimate looking cds and demanding settlements or threatening to sue. While a C&D may be appropriate, legal threats are not. Harrassment of the victims is just despicable.
Fuck them and their $300 settlement.

Re:Who's up for some for fun with skype?

[UltimApe]

hehe, thank god microsoft didn't take this approch with WGA...

I'msure someone's said it but...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Unfortunately, when it comes to copyright violations, ignorance is no defense.'

Even more unfortunately, neither is innocence.

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't bought a CD since the RIAA showed their true colors, and if I was an old lady, I'd seriously think twice before buying anything that has one of their member companies' names on it.

On the upside, this actually *could* advance the art, by motivating people to make their own designs instead of buying them.

The fall....

[one_red_eye]

One day, the American economy will simply collapse unter the weight of big corporations and copyright law. That's when we'll have the second civil war. Only it won't be North vs. South, it will be Consumers vs. Corporations (with lots of money to buy foreign armies). And when there aren't any consumers left, the corporations will die giving rise to the Industrial Revolution.

Re:The fall....

[Colin Smith]

It'll be the poor vs the rich, and it's called a revolution rather than a civil war.

Re:The fall....

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be the poor vs the rich, and it's called a revolution rather than a civil war.

And the poor will win, just by sheer force of numbers.
This time, at least, the poor can't be starved into submission,
because there will be plenty of fat lawyers to barbeque.

Sort of

[babbling]

This is actually the sort of copyright hell that we have been dreading. The good thing about it, as you pointed out, is that it raises awareness about copyright laws being ridiculous. Presumably this will lead to copyright laws eventually becoming an election issue, and then finally being overturned. This will probably take an extremely long time to happen, though, and in the meantime people will end up being treated very unfairly.

My favorite quote ...

[pamdirac]

And as an individual, you can spread the word that sharing is stealing.

Surely even the ass clown that wrote this FAQ had to appreciate the double-speak. Good is evil. Awesome.

Deja Vu.....

[IHC Navistar]

This is very reminiscent of the massive media circus that happened about 10 years ago when ASCAP, )American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) tried to sue the Girl Scouts so they would stop singing "Happy Birthday", because it was a song that they (supposedly) owned the copyrights too.

There should be a point where patents should no longer apply, when it comes to this type of thing. Being able to maintain copyrights to a true creation, especially a tangible invention (machinery, materials, compounds, chemicals, etc.) is different, and a hell of a lot more important that phoney-baloney patents on every bit of data under the Sun.

Patenting methods, i.e. Amazon.coms "One-Click" thing, Friendster's patent on social networking methods, and other procedural/methodical crap IS NOT an invention. Labeling a method as a service IS NOT an invention. Also, things that are ubiquitous to society should not be patentable, or at the very least, under VERY SPECIFIC PATENTS. For example, I could dig up a ton of iron ore on my privately owned land, smelt a bunch of iron ore, turn it into liquid iron, and pour it into a mold of an iron bar, then I have created an iron bar, and it would then be patented as an "Original Work". Then, I can claim that I invented this iron bar, and that future replicas and likenesses are imitations of my original creation/work (Yes, technically, I did "create" the iron bar) and that I am entitled to royalties. (Man, I would have the construction and metal industries screwed to the wall! $$$) and that I am therefore entitled to royalties. This, sadly, is what the Patent concept is turning into. It's a giant Rugby scrum, but instead of a rugby ball, it's money.

Lawsuits are the brain cells of desperate individuals.

-----

Sig Sauer

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[Anonymous Coward]

Um yes, you would actually, at least in microsoft's case - they give you free genuine copies for fake copies if you rat out the company you bought it from.

Nope.

[hummassa]

AFAIK, pirated copies are not sold copies. Artists get a cut of _sold_ or (publicly) _performed_ copies (after ALL the costs or producing are deducted), but they don't get absolutely _nothing_ from piracy settlements and lawsuits.

no, It isn't a joke but a scam

[poojac20]

No, It isn't a joke but a scam. Just reading their FAQs section gives the scam vibes.

One of their victims took professional help, here's what he found:

I saw a copyright attorney yesterday. He agrees with some of the other posts here-the letter was not written by an attorney! Yes, they are a real organization, but basically these are cease & desist letters. They are putting us on notice that they are watching us. If you buy something else now-they can sue you. My attorney is 99.9% sure they will not go through with this-as they would have to hold court in the Dallas Cowboys stadium! This is a copycat of how the music industry went after the people using Napster. Whoever wrote the letter is quoting non-existent laws, no such thing as Federal Copyright Law, it's just Copyright Law. Also, the sections of the law they are quoting are incorrect. The ESPC has no right to enforce "fines." Until you receive something with court documents attached-it means nothing. And-they would have to send it certified mail.

And so on ..
original link http://forum.freeadvice.com/showthread.php?t=20248 3

SCO - is that you?

[backwardMechanic]

They even have an amnesty program - although I don't think they've quite understood how an amnesty program usually works. From TFWS:

You are eligible for the Amnesty Program only one time. If you have not received a letter from the ESPC then you are eligible for the Amnesty Program. If you have received a letter from the ESPC, you are not eligible for a release through this program. You must contact the Legal Department at 214.350.1892.

The cost for a full release and assurance from the ESPC members who own the copyrights to the designs that were counterfeit is $300.00, plus the return of the counterfeit embroidery designs and software with the documents which show the purchase of the designs. Regardless of the number of designs you have in your possession, all are to be returned under this program for a full release.

Sounds very familiar. Remember the business model of our favourite Unix vendor?

For those of you inside the US, how about calling that number on your coffe break? Ask some dumb questions, just to make sure you're not cheating the law. You know, ones that take a while to answer. After all, their time is money.

VERY flawed anology

[Secrity]

A more accurate anology is where a bunch of kids (or grandmas) copies music CDs (or embroidery patterns) and trades them around. The grandparent post indicated that this sort of trading of embroidery patterns is not considered to be a big problem by at least one embroidery pattern maker.

The grandparent post indicated that there is a problem when an embroidery store [or music store] copies embroidery patterns [or music CDs] and then distributes them for commercial purposes in violation of the license [bootlegging]. I do not know of very many people who would consider it defensible for a music store to copy and distribute bootleg CDs.

Re:VERY flawed anology

[n9uxu8]

Thank you. That is correct. Sales will be lost by people making copies and passing them about to friends, but hopefully it at least puts the designers name in the back of people's minds. For an actual business to be bootlegging and selling the designs/training videos/etc is a whole other issue and is a problem.

DAve

BSA Target anybody?

[Marcus Erroneous]

I would be fascinated to see what the results of a visit from the BSA to all of these concerned businessmen would turn up. Somehow, in their greedy obsession with squeezing every last sou from anybody that they think could possibly owe them, I suspect that their licensing of Microsoft products is lacking. Hmmm, come to think of it, I'd be just as fascinated to see the results of a sweep through the RIAA and MPAA offices by the BSA.

machine and human translation

[davidwr]

The bmp->embroidery "push a button" software is like Babelfish. The resulting "translation" is hardly worth copyright and courts would probably not uphold it. Some courts have rejected copyrights of "mere" photographs of public-domain artworks, for example, ruling there was no creativity involved.

Now, as you said, getting all the settings right takes skill, much like doing a good language translation. The resulting work of art is worthy of at least legal protection.

Even more worthy of protection are professionals who digitize "from scratch." This is an art and skill akin to translating poetry - you know the end result won't be literally what is on the original picture, but the design will contain the essential elements and the finished product will look professional.

copying an idea

[CarpetShark]

It should not be illegal to make an entirely new copy of something from a pattern. It doesn't hurt anyone for me to make my own chair, just because someone else also makes chairs. If it does, then it's because that person is basing their live around being "special" through their ability to make chairs, which in fact is a lie. If anyone can make a chair, then anyone SHOULD be able to make a chair. The better chair maker should get the sale, not the original designer of the chair. Moreover, if I have the wood and the time, I should be able to invest THAT in acquiring a chair, rather than my money. Money is essentially a time-token anyway, which says, "I did this many hours of work for the community, and so you can give me something worth this many hours in return." If I want to work for myself instead of the community today, and copy my own chair, or my own DVD (using my own broadband, power, and blanks), then there's no moral reason to disallow that.

Software Costs Realities free.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a niche product in a niche industry (the hobby part. I'm not talking about commercial embroiders). Of course slashdot doesn't have to buy the "smaller customer pool/costs more" argument. They can just get off their collective butts and create an alternative. In the mean time those who want to get things accomplished NOW, have to spend money (darn you Roddenberry and your utopia).

GO GET EM!

[nihaopaul]

this is the best piece of news i've heard all day, now come christmas if my gran gives me a crappy jumper (you all know the ones i'm talking about!) i'll turn her in for copyright infringment, then i'll have the last laugh this time and i believe it will drive the nail into why you never see that jumper after i leave your place gran!

W00H00, come get er!

owning information

[Phantom of the Opera]

Owning information is just silly. Having a song stuck in your head would be an offense

--- phantom of the operating system

Re:owning information

[cliffski]

what bullshit. So why exactly would anyone on earth ever develop intellectual property of any kind ever again?
well done, you just blew out of the water any chance of us discovering a cure for cancer,aids,alzehimers, or any disease you care to name. Ditto the death of the movie industry, book industry, game industry and software industry.
People have owned information since the concept of ownership existed. the only difference now, is that with digital copying, and the web, thieves think they can get away with it.
If someone creates something, even if its digital information and wants to sell it, you have no right to take it without paying. If you assume you do, that makes you a communist, which is ok if you believe in it, but at least admit it.
or grow up and admit you steal because your too tight assed to pay for stuff.

Re:owning information

[Svartalf]

what bullshit. So why exactly would anyone on earth ever develop intellectual property of any kind ever again?

Hm... Seems to me that there's been quite a LOT of work without consideration of IP as we see it these days:

Mona Lisa
Steam Engine
Antibiotics
Vaccines

The list is long and varied, but they did ALL of this work without IP as a goad. People will keep doing
things regardless of whether they can extract a government granted monopoly on things.

Here's a hint: Patents and Copyrights are only as good as the money defending the same.

That's right. If you think that real innovation comes from the big boys, you'd largely be mistaken-
and it's the big boys right now that are the only ones that can actually take advantage of the
laws for "IP" the way they've been written and being used.

And before you spout off about me not knowing what I'm on about... I've got one Patent pending
and about to have 6 more. I'd have done the stuff anyway- but now my employer's happy and the
VC's and Investors are happy. But...the damn thing's not worth the paper it's printed on unless
you've got the money to back an infringement lawsuit; because that's the ONLY way you're going
to get someone to really stop unless they're honest and they didn't deliberately infringe on
my Patents.

Re:owning information

[Gulthek]

Your thesis: creative people only create for financial gain.

Counter: there are creative people who create regardless of financial gain.

Examples: Wikipedia, Slashdot (originally), amateur photographers, amateur musicians (e.g. http://ghostnotes.blogspot.com/), Linux, Monster Island, etc.

Of course financial gain in some of these cases is a bonus, it was not the primary impetus for their creation.

Re:owning information

[Phantom of the Opera]

So why exactly would anyone on earth ever develop intellectual property of any kind ever again?

I enjoy inventing for the sake of inventing. There will be people like that.

IP laws hurt inventing. It is pretty easy for someone to rip off someone else's invention and patent it away. Look at what happened to Philo T Farnsworth.

Why bother inventing something when someone with sneaky tricks and a better attorney can snatch it up from you.

Re:owning information

[eno2001]

So... you think that the only motivation for anyone to do anything is purely ownership and the prospect of making a profit? Tell that to those of us who work in the non-profit sector simply because we believe in causes. My cause is to share as much information as freely as possible with everyone. That's why I work in a public library. Now... tell me about your childhood.

Re:owning information

[HiThere]

What you say is true. The examples you mention are true.

NEVERTHELESS:
Some inventions require a lot of up-front investment. Those inventions would not happen without the promise of payback. (They rarely happen anyway.)

This is not to defend the current copyright and patent laws, but to assert that some laws of a somewhat similar nature may well be needed.

I'm all in favor of a copyright that's good for two years, or as long as the work stays in print and is sold to new customers at a rate of over 10/week with a limit of 17 years.

I'm all in favor of SOME sort of patent law. Not the current system, and nothing closely similar to it. It should require FULL disclosure. And the full disclosure should be filed as a public record. For software full disclosure would mean sufficient to compile from human readable source code. I think the term is too long, also. Perhaps the term should be one year at a cost of $10. Renewals should be allowed indefinitely, also for a period of one year, but each time the cost should be the square of the previous time. If it lapses, it's lapsed, and there's no recovery.

Copyright should also require full disclosure. Full disclosure would include the requirement that it could be read without special codes. You could have your signed and trusted media...but works in such form would not be elgible for copyright protection. ASCII or Unicode would be required...or some open graphic or audio format. (Ogg-Vorbis?) Tex would also be acceptable (it's ASCII after all, with a well known decoding system).

Everything that was to be legally protected would be required to be archived in an "open format" where open means that the source code and design specifications were available all the way back to bare metal. (This isn't unduly restrictive...ASCII, unicode, gtk, gif, jpeg, ogg, vorbis, etc. all qualify. I'm not sure about any digital AV formats. The lossless ones may all require proprietary codecs...but that would mean that they couldn't be protected by governmentally authorized monopolies.)

So... SOME sort of patents and copyrights are needed. Just not the ones we've got. The ones we've got are worse than none.

Re:owning information

[cliffski]

some stuff is created without an expectation of financial reward. whoopy do. the vast majority does not fall into this category. There are no open-source hobbyist drug companies that I know of that are making strides towards cures of major diseases. Those activities cost a fortune, and require a huge workforce, those people need to pay their rent. Same with big movies. The existance of some small amateur movies that have very little exposure is truivial in comparison with the big name movies that cost millions to make.
Just because the end result of 200 people working for 3 years can be burned onto a single DVD, does not mean it should be freely available to all. If it is, thsoe people dont get paid and wont make another movie. Even if the director and actros would do it for nothing, the set designers, carpenters, caterers, publicists, continuity staff and costume makers won't.
Pretending that we can all switch over to a system where nobody is paid to generate information is just plain stupid, and is the weak argument trotted out by people only too happy to steal commercial work of others.

Re:owning information

[Mateo_LeFou]

The most intellectually & culturally productive time in human history was called the Renaissance, and it predated patent & copyright by a couple of centuries.

Re:owning information

[Gulthek]

Then we agree. I have always argued for only a slight modification of the copyright law as defined in the US Constitution (14 years with an optional 14 year renewal).* As originally intended, the public domain was the ultimate home for all creative works; now *nothing* has gone into the public domain that hasn't been explicitly placed there since the 1920s.

*My modification is that software and movies should be limited to 7 years with an optional 7 year renewal.**

**It'll never happen.

Re:owning information

[cliffski]

and the people making that art were paid for their work by wealthy people. They still did not work for free.
Nice try, but not vaguely comparable to justifying some clueless 13 year old downlaoding DVDS.

Re:owning information

[Phantom of the Opera]

Your argument boils down to "People who do work or invest in it should be compensated for it and have control over it." That isn't something outlandish, but that still does not convey an "ownership" of information. If you removed these patent and copyright laws people would still entertain and invent.

Inventing side :
These days, it is not so much the people who come up with ideas who reap the rewards from them, it is the people who either invest in those ideas, or who use underhanded tactics and expensive lawyers (reducing the desire to invent if you know your invention will be stolen). If there weren't these patent laws, companies would have to maintain some secrecy and do a better job building their inventions. Mercy! Disaster!

Music/Media side:
You seem more worried about people pirating a song or movies. If these laws didn't exist to protect their work, they would have to give concerts, only release their work to movies. Oh, they wouldn't rake in millions? Awwwwww, so sad.

If I listen to a song, I have the information of that song as a memory in my head. No one else can own that. That would be silly.

Re:owning information

[Cal Paterson]

A reply you made to a story about light bulbs, where you pretend you've been called a communist, and take offence:

Do you have any idea how paranoid this sounds to someone not from the USA? Jesus christ, you cant suggest the government legislates on energy efficiency without being labelled a communist.

Well, it seems like you've returned the favour. Except this time, you decided to bring out the "communist" cat-calls over a story dealing with embroidery.

Looking down what I'm able to view of your posting history, I'm again able to see lots of other posts dealing with calling each other communists/fascists. Including one were you spelt both "communist" and "fascist" wrong.

Keep up the good work.

Re:owning information

[Mateo_LeFou]

I didn't say they worked for free. Your sputterings are almost totally incoherent, but surely you can see the faulty reasoning: 1) People can't eat without money. 2) Treating information as something that can be owned is one way that people can make money. Therefore 3) Information must be treated as something that can be owned.

Hint: "one" way.

Other hint: it's actually not the govts. job to make sure everyone gets paid. As it turns out, I agree with you that government support of the arts is a great thing.

You've slowly backed of from "there won't be ANY more movies or pieces of software EVER AGAIN!!!! WAAAHH!!" Thanks; that was a really dumb point to try to make. Can you go all the way to "There will ONLY be teh quantity and quality of art & culture that we had in the Renaissance!!!! WAAAHHH!!"

Re:owning information

[cliffski]

whats your problem exactly? im not throwing around communist as an insult, but you probably assume that, if your an american. This kind of desire for everything people make to be free IS communism. try reading up on it before you wade in.

Re:owning information

[Cal Paterson]

whats your problem exactly? im not throwing around Communist as an insult, but you probably assume that, if your an american. This kind of desire for everything people make to be free IS Communism. try reading up on it before you wade in.

You see, this is exactly the issue I'm talking about. Total, and utter bullshit assumptions. I'm not an American, for one (not that it should make any ideological difference to those to whom political arguments stand on their merits rather than on foolish labels). The assumption I don't know what I'm talking about is another big assumption - seeing as, until this post, I hadn't actually detailed what my opinion was - I'd only pointed out that calling people Communists was wrong in this case.

I realise you're not insulting people as "Communists", but what bugs me is that you obviously have no idea what political ideologies you're dealing with and your insistance on calling them Communist is extremely mistaken.

Pirates aren't Communist. You're severely mistaken there. While "common ownership" is a feature of Communism, IP-related piracy and Communism are normally unrelated. Common ownership under Marxist and Communist ideologies does not relate solely to IP - if these pirates where actually Communist as you say, why aren't they sharing physical property, such as computers or food?

(Ideologically justified) Piracy is much, much, more closely related to branches of Libertarianism. Pirates are not advocates of shared physical property, as Communists are, but rather are advocates of high levels of freedom and ownership in personal property. They generally believe they have a moral right to copy the data off the media they own, if they wish, and share that with others, if they wish.

Piracy is based on a strong belief of personal ownership of property, not of a strong belief of public ownership of property.

Unless you hadn't noticed, Libertarianism and Communism are at opposite ends of the fucking political spectrum.

Also, if you respond to this post, please make an effort to use correct spelling, grammar and capitalisation.

Re:owning information

[cliffski]

please make an effort to be less of an arrogant misinformed cunt, and maybe i will.

Re:owning information

[cliffski]

grow up and get a job little boy. then maybe you will realsie the need for people who create things to be paid. Till then, go clean your room.

Re:owning information

[Mateo_LeFou]

Wow; my first foe. You don't know anything about me or the other people who try to point things out to you. When you guess, you tend to be wrong about 80% of the time, as here. But you feel perfectly free to insult us/them rather than answer the points being made.

The only thing worse than a dumb ad hominem attack is a dumb ad hominem that doesn't even have its facts straight about the hominem in question. "Don't vote for John Kerry; he's just a typical short, hispanic California pinko."

RE:My favorite quote

[Nonillion]

"And as an individual, you can spread the word that sharing is stealing."

Uh, OK. So all those years as a kid growing up are you saying that the kids I shared my toys with; were actually stealing the privilege to play with them because their parents didn't buy them. Are you saying I should tell my children to not share their their toys with others because the toy manufactures might sue me? Take your self righteous bullshit and shove it up your ass.

Re:Really?

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

Read gp again. What he said was basically that artists don't get any of the money from settlements because it's not in their contracts. They get money for sold CDs and for concerts, but not for settlements.

Call the 888 number

[iambarry]

If you look on the Embroidery Protection Website, there's a phone number: 888-921-5732.

Seems to me, that if you want some more information about them riping off grandmas you should call their toll free number. Talk to a representitive and ask them why they want to fool those that can least afford it out of $300.

Spend some time on the phone with them. Its a free call for you. Sure, they may end up with a high phone bill this month, and may have to pay some overtime to their operators, but its worth it to get the real story straight from them.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[tehcyder]

Well, here is some point where turkish law is better than u.s. law.

And amusingly enough you're probably ahead on human rights laws as well.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[unity100]

Well,

It definitely wasnt so earlier, but after the latest "anti terror" laws the bush adm has passed, even this might be true.

How ironic...

[Captain Sarcastic]

These people, in order to attempt to defeat piracy, have taken on the tactics of an older group of rovers by offering Danegeld.

Readers of Kipling may be familiar with the line from his poems: "Once you begin paying Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane."

Law of the jungle.

[jotaeleemeese]

That is what you are advocating.

The only legitimate way of fighting an injustice is within the boundaries of the law, unless the situation is so opressive or life threatening that such course of action is no longer reasonable.

As much as I hate conglomerates that are abusive using hteir legal rights, I can't condone battling them "by any means" as you suggest.

In democratic societies that is a recipe for disaster best avoided.

Read the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, that should clarify the issue, from the horse mouth so to speadk, of an authentic freedom fighter.

A grandmother is a normal person

[Maxo-Texas]

who happens to be female, older, and have a child who has had a child.

Most people are still the same person inside when they get older.

The outside just changes appearance.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[Maxo-Texas]

Man... you say that like

a) we all know the fair market price of photoshop
b) there are no used or last version copies being sold at discount
c) there are no unusually inexpensive holiday sales.
d) there are no special back door prices for students, teachers, employees of select corporations, etc.

I could buy the current version of Office for $10 bucks last year. I think it is $20 this year. That's direct from Microsoft. I'm in a selected group of people who qualify for that deal.

As far as photoshop, I (and many others) have no idea what a fair deal is for it.

Re:Pity it's hard to legally prohibit excessive gr

[shark72]

"Because this is excessive greed."

I have a question about the term "excessive greed" as it applies to copyright violation.

If you are selling an easily-copyable item for $X, and you insist that people pay you for it, rather than copy it for free, so that you can be $X richer, I think most Slashdotters would agree that this is "excessive greed."

But if I insist on copying it rather than paying you for it, so that I don't have to be $X poorer, is that also "excessive greed?"

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[Em Adespoton]

So, if I go to Thailand and buy Microsoft * and Adobe *, I own it all? I can't believe that.

Too bad you can't believe it. As long as you're in Thailand, it's true. However, if you try to import that software into the US (or the EU, or Canada, or anywhere else that upholds the Berne convention), it would be illegal.

Truly, a dizzying intellect

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Well, bugger me timbers, matey,"

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means...

Re:Truly, a dizzying intellect

[Walt Dismal]

Well, to get pedantic, I am fully aware what it means, AC, and it's called 'using absurdity as a joke while riffing off piracy as a theme when writing for people with Asperger's Syndrome or worse.' But thank you for the input. Why yes, there are 152 toothpicks on the floor, Rain Man.

Re:Francisco Rangel

[StikyPad]

Interesting, but Francisco isn't an unsual latino name, nor is the surname Rangel. It turns out there are at least 22 of them in Texas alone. Further, your site references a Francisco H Rangel, while the GP mentions Francisco X(avier?) Rangel. This guy is enough of a jerk on his own; there's no need to bring in the implications of involvement with arson without more than (extremely weak) circumstantial evidence. Please mod parent OT.

What about the employees and workers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it is a way to make money, more a way to stay in business. The embroidery industry is a niche market, therefore not privileged with endless customers like Microsoft. Developers of software struggle with piracy, and the change in the market is proof of that. Years ago there were a good 15 or more embroidery software developers who were very active in the market. Now you can count the active members on one hand.

It's good to protect the granny downloading illegal things, but it's just as important to protect the workers, their families and kids of people who are employed by software and design companies.

Education is a major factor, and perhaps the ESPC should spend more money on educating customers and industry, than spending money on suing them.

I can only guess that education would cost a whole lot less.

P.S. I am not writing this in ignorance. I am writing this as an employee of a major player, feeling the very real and very powerful pain of piracy.

Re:Pity it's hard to legally prohibit excessive gr

[TheLink]

Well it's actually $X * N richer and $X poorer for each of the N. Is one copy excessive greed?

Personally I believe restrictions on copying are becoming more and more harmful.

Imagine if there were advanced technology to create any arbitrary food given a "blueprint". And practically everyone had one of these devices at hand.

And I come up with an extremely good cheesecake "blueprint". Why should people be prevented from copying and using it? They shouldn't be able to claim it's their design if they copied it though - because that would be lying.

Of course currently scarcity of resources is still an issue, but if we are not careful artificial scarcity due to monopolies could end up being the main problem rather than real scarcity.

I think we must always be careful about artificial scarcities. Seems the current justifications for many artificial scarcities are "right to make profit" (which is ridiculous - no such thing), or "it's the same as property" (which is a lie).

Sure we don't allow people to forge money - there are many good reasons for that. But if you look at those _retroactive_ copyright laws, DMCA etc, I'm starting to see more and more disadvantages than benefits to everyone for the long term.

Maybe one day I'm going to come up with some cool stuff and as part of the license, I'll require people to legally work towards reducing the strength of copyright and EULAs ;).

Lastly: Deuteronomy 23:24-25
If you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. If you enter your neighbor's grainfield, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to his standing grain.

Even today many farmers practice something like this. They are humble enough to know the harvest is never entirely due to their own labour.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[Pofy]

This has nothing to do with the Bern convention. It has to do with US copyright law stating so. The Bern convention doesn't make that requirement at all.

Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi

[Pofy]

By the way, in addition to what I said above, someone importing single copies for private use can do so regardless as that type of import is excepted. it is always better to actually know the law than to make up your own. here is a relevant link:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/us c_sec_17_00000602----000-.html

Go ahead and laugh...

[wilec]

...but if the p0rn industry starts to get seriously stupid about copyright issues a lot of you would be in deep hooey. The only thing is I suspect most of them figured out a long time ago that loose controls on the distribution of their content actually drives up their sales. But if you geeks let your little habit get out of hand they may change their minds.

Wabi-Sabi
Matthew

Just ignore him...

[Svartalf]

When arguing with an idiot, it becomes difficult to distinguish which is the idiot.

In his case, I suspect he's one of four categories of people typically arguing from this position:

1) Owns "IP" and thinks that he has something to gain from it.
2) Hopes to be in position #1
3) Is an IP Attorney that stands to gain from people in position #1 or #2.
4) Brainwashed by an IP Attorney that's in position #3.

But what the people in group #3 won't tell you is that you have to have something special
(Like the adhesive for PostIt Notes...) or a popular song, movie, or book for it to be
honestly worth anything. And then, you have to have a LOT of money to defend
the "IP" rights from infringers in the form of money to spend on IP litigation.

No cash? Too bad- no Patent, no Trademark, no Copyright Registration for YOU!
Got the grant of Patent, Trademark, or Copyright? Good. Got money to pay me
to mail threatening letters or take an infringer to court? No? Too bad- good
luck on pursuing the infringers!

This is not to say it's not worth it. I wouldn't have one Patent Pending and 5-6
more about to start that process. But it's not the rosy world that the person's
arguing with you about- it might have been at one point in time, but it's not that
way now.