I'm angry and disappointed, and my Star Wars knit and crochet chart page is down for the time being.
Why? Someone didn't honor the injunction that they were for personal use only and not to be used to make items for sale and have used not
1, but 2 of my charts to make a scarf they are now trying to sell on Ebay.
A friend reported them, since I don't have an Ebay account, but for now, my page is down until this is taken care of.
Sheesh, you try and do something nice, and some dweeb is always going to try and make money off your work, aren't they? I wanted to keep these free, but maybe, since this is the second time in a few months someone has wanted to try and sell them (the first being a publisher who wanted me to enter a contest in which the "winners" would give up their copyright so these people could put their charts in a book and SELL them to make money for themselves), just maybe I should jump on the greed train and charge for them. .
Oh I'm so sorry that has happened! I mean, it's one thing to use the pattern to make personal gifts but quite another to sell them for profit when that has been explicitly prohibited by the author. What a shame! and shame on them for doing such a thing. Are you getting in touch with the seller about this? I honestly don't know how I myself would handle it. On the one hand, righteous anger can feel heartwarming. On the other hand, life is too short to get involved with fools and legal issues. Let us know what you do. I'm sure others here could find themselves in the same position.
I dunno....I guess for me? if I were to post a pattern, I would do as I've seen others do--ask for a simple byline of recognition when using the piece. It's almost impossible to legislate what the public will do, so we can only put out there what we expect to be used in any way anyone wants to use it (I'm a very pragmatic soul), simply for the joy of sharing. It's a very personal decision whether to share for profit or share for free.
On a similar note---I'm one of those souls who will gladly share a recipe with anyone who wants it. I am an avid cook and love tinkering in the kitchen. For me, the fact that they are enjoying the recipe in any way they choose does not diminish MY joy when I cook it at home for myself. But that may not apply here, who knows.
I don't have an account on Ebay, but a friend does and reported the page. We'll see if the item is pulled. If they say they aren't going to pull it, my friend is going to post a question for everyone to see about copyright/use violation using the ask the seller a question form which will be publicly posted on the item's page. A few people have looked at it, but no one has bid.
So far, everyone else has been great. I search for my work on the net every so often to make sure no one is trying to sell my work as their own, and I've found where people have made things using the patterns. I've heard of people using them to knit, crochet, and do cross stitch using the crochet charts since they are designed on a square grid.
I had exactly this with my westie coat patterns Leah, I reported the sale of my patterns which included photo's of the coats with my dogs in my home modelling them, and the sellers pages were removed immediately. Hope this is resolved for you soon higz Cher
Not really, unless the copyright statement specifically allows this, and I can't imagine that the Star Wars people have included "okay for personal use only" statements in their copyrights.
The questions asked of sellers are not REQUIRED to be posted publically. They only are ABLE to be posted publically.
I hope this comes across kindly -- with how incensed you are about someone using something you created, don't you feel that the person who created Star Wars in the first place should also be angry that his/her intellectual property is being used without permission?
The reason I ask is because I spent four years fighting someone who was copying what I wrote in public and placing it on her web site in a manner that made it appear that I supported her philosophy of my profession, which I totally opposed, and regardless of whether she was making money on her web site or not, I still held the rights according to copyright to insist that she remove every word or mine that she manually spliced into her web page. I didn't have to put up with it just because she wasn't a business.
I did some reading about copyright. The characters belong to Lucasarts, having been created by that company/entity. However, the way I understand it, the work I did in creating something tangible, knit and crochet items with a color images on them, belongs to me.
I have never tried to sell these to make a profit. However, I was recently approached by a book publisher wanting me to enter their intarsia design contest, and if deemed a "winner", the fine print said that I'd lose the copyright to my work, and they would then own it for the length of copyright, meaning they could sell and resell my work for profit as often as they wanted. I doubt they'd be able to legally do that if my work was considered the property of Lucasarts.
Plus, the only image on my page that I did not copyright was a derivative work, based on someone else's work. She did a square crochet chart of the Rebel insignia that I based my knit chart on. I didn't think her Rebel insignia was accurate, but since my work was heavily based on hers, I understood from what I read that my derivative work could not receive a copyright. Therefore, I attributed my derivative knit chart to the original creator, notified everyone on the page that the image does not qualify for a copyright, and I also placed a link to her page on my site.
So what this long-winded post is saying is that I understand if it's your original work, you can copyright it. If it's a derivative, you can't. Some may argue that since my images are based on characters created by Lucasarts they are derivative works, but my interpretation of the law, which I hope is correct, is that since those knit and crochet charts I did copyright weren't based on someone else's knit or crochet charts, they are unique, and they did qualify for copyright protection.
I have to do more research, but I've heard it said if you state someone can't use your work for profit, whether they pay you for it or not, they are not to try and do so.
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