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.'"
hmmmm, a way to make money? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
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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.
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Re:hmmmm, a way to make money? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Did you read the comment that I was replying to? Or mine for that matter?
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The machines that this concerns are usually Pfaff [pfaffusa.com] 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 t
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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?
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No, really, its required for more than that: (Score:2)
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
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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.
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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.
Nope. (Score:2)
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.
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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 th
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.
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Hoo boy...
Only if the copy was lawfully made. See http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117 [copyright.gov]
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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 happe
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Yes, that's absolutely correct, except that it's completely wrong, sorry:
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the fact that you can remember anything is because you made a copy of it..
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A simple solution (Score:2)
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; inste
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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
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.
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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...
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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 burn
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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 ....
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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 medi
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There is a difference between
a) I didn't know I was pirating,
and
b) I didn't know pirating was illegal.
ther FAQ is sickening. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shit (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Turkish Law is better than U.S. law in this shi (Score:2)
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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.
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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
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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.
Fake? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fake? (Score:5, Informative)
Fake? doesn't seem so...scary is more like it! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Francisco Rangel (Score:3, Interesting)
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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? (Score:4, Informative)
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Let me be the first to welcome our Embroidery Coalition Overlords.
There. That should about cover all the usual
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Re:Fake? Yup it's a SCAM! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Embroidery as a high tech craft (Score:2)
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 [hancockfabrics.com] $3000
Melco EP1B Port [allbrands.com]
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I assume your mom tracks the market value of the paper eph
yep (Score:5, Funny)
In this day and age, it's also not a barrier to using a computer.
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Thank you, Microsoft!
To quote Weird Al (Score:2)
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
I'm torn (Score:5, Insightful)
Dave
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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 Grandm
VERY flawed anology (Score:2)
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 [bootl
You just... (Score:4, Funny)
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MIL/.
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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 [wndu.com]
====
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my employer, my
friends, nor (as she often tells me) my
Software Costs (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Sounds like the RIAA has been an inspiration.... (Score:3, Informative)
""" The group, EmbroideryOrganizationInformation (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EmbroideryOrganiza
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." """
I think I remember these guys... (Score:2)
What they need is to sue some granny who has a terminal illness and a shotgun.
Cue massive backlash in 3...2...1... (Score:4, Informative)
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... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/ESPC_v_Ebert/ [eff.org]
No joke.
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.
I'm glad this story was posted (Score:2)
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 m
Embroidery Machines (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
FAQ stupidity (Score:2)
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 man
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.
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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... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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 lau
This is great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sort of (Score:2)
Crisatunity! (Score:2)
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
Who's up for some for fun with skype? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
My favorite quote ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Surely even the ass clown that wrote this FAQ had to appreciate the double-speak. Good is evil. Awesome.
BSA Target anybody? (Score:2)
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17 USC 501(a).
I don't see a mens rea element there.
Contrast with a civil remedy for computer intrusion:
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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 ben
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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.
Re:I just checked (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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