>
>> I think most designers fully expect and grant license to someone to stitch a
>> piece as many times as they want. With the exception of doing it for
>> commercial production. The controversy is about the swapping of used
>> charts. I've seen some interesting discussion about this on designer's
>> trade group chats, and IIRC not very long ago in either the ANG or EGA
>> magazine. Some feel it's fine to swap used charts, or sell them as used -
>> others, I think philosphically, don't. It's the murky area of copyright law
>> applied to this.
>>
>>
>> Ellice
>
> The term copyright broken down is copy right. We don't have the right
> to copy the original pattern and keep the original, or sell copies.
> There are designs I've seen which have actually said on the chart that
> this should be stitched only one time. That is the will of the
> designer, not part of the copyright law, as I know it. I am not
> absolutely sure. This is needlework not rocket science secrets. >
> How then is it any different when I go into a used book store and buy
> used DVDs or Books, or any number of things they well used in the
> stores of all types, including thrift stores. Am I breaking copyright
> laws because I buy from these used stores? I think not.
Copyright, as it pertains to intellectual property versus works of art, etc has many different qualifications to the rights and restrictions legally given. One of our close friends is a patent attorney, and his firm has a copyright group - we talked about this last year. He says in his opinion (and he's a pretty sharp guy, also professor at Georgetown Law) copyright law is about the most difficult to practice. Very complex and every area of application has something different about it. The way copyright is applied to books is different than to things like XS charts, which are a form of artistic license to create a copy of the original artist's work in a specific medium. Which leads to the infamous MLI suit over a woman doing one of her angels as a quilt which was entered in a contest winning money and commercial benefit.
> I think also that, a designer has nothing to say about what you do
> with the original design chart provided there is only one copy of it.
> Now, if I offered to make copies and send those around, we'd be having
> a different discussion. Obviously, that is not fair because more than
> one copy of the original is out there.
> Victoria
>
And your opinion is shared by some, and not by others. It's a blurry area, IMHO.
ellice