Grannies and Pirated Software 280
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.'"
not quite correct. (Score:3, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:hmmmm, a way to make money? (Score:4, Insightful)
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. [creativecommons.org] 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.
I'm torn (Score:5, Insightful)
Dave
Re:not quite correct. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:2, Insightful)
Pity it's hard to legally prohibit excessive greed (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:not quite correct. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
But maybe they're right... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
This is great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmmmm, a way to make money? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.