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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.'"
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.
Read radical news here
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.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
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.
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? :)
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.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
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...
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Most definitely is fake. In fact it's a scam.
0 00117763&tstart=0&mod=1156813029715
a m.pdf
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2
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_Progr
Where they procede to take $300 a piece from unwitting cross-stichers.
cat sig >