INDEPENDENT NEEDLEWORK NEWS

Distributor Norden Crafts has a very informative article called Copyrights and Copywrongs on their website.  It gives you the basics on copyright law as it pertains to the needlework industry.

This article is about as close as you can get to finding copyright information pertaining to the needlework industry “in a nutshell.” Even though I have been studying copyright law with regard to needlework for many years now, even I still find it confusing at times. 

In fact, that is one of the biggest problems with copyright law, in my opinion – that it is so confusing.  I focus on it often here on Independent Needlework News as a service  to you and to the industry I love because, most of the time, understanding is the key to compliance.  It is difficult to follow a law you don’t understand because you don’t know if what you are doing is correct or not.  However, ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, and the penalties for copyright infringement are too high — this is DEFINITELY one law you do NOT want to break for a MULTITUDE of reasons.   

Norden Craft’s article helps answer some of the more confusing questions in a fairly clear way. I recommend it to you as something to read today, and then as something to review perhaps once every six months or so — just to keep these thoughts fresh in your own mind so that your actions are always clearly in line with copyright laws.

Bookmark this site, too, for those times when you have questions!

By the way, if you are wondering why a needlework distributor is interested in copyright law, it is because needlework distributors are affected by the illegal copying of needlework patterns, too.  Copyright infringement hurts the needlework industry AT EVERY SINGLE LEVEL.

Let’s say this distributor normally sells ten copies each of ten different patterns to each shop (100 patterns total). If one customer from each shop buys one copy of each of those ten different patterns and makes ten illegal copies of each of those patterns, which they then illegally give to ten different friends, then those friends do not need to buy the original patterns (which means the shop loses their business).  Now the other nine of each of those patterns waiting to be bought by customers are still sitting on the shop’s shelves …

And let’s not forget to do the math, either.  Suppose each of those ten different patterns retails for $10, which is getting to be a fairly average price nowadays.  Just one set of those ten patterns at retail value would be $100! With just one customer from each shop giving away ten copies of ten patterns to ten friends, the shop would lose $1000!  Nine more shops around the country would also lose $1000 each!

When the shops don’t sell the patterns they expect to sell, they don’t reorder as soon as they expected to and/or they don’t have the funds to place new orders for other products. This means the distributors are now not receiving orders like they used to — either they are receiving smaller orders, or their orders are coming in farther and farther apart.

It took a little while, but in the end, both the shop AND the distributor lost business, and that is why Norden Crafts has made this article available to you. They want you to understand that if you make a copy of a pattern for a friend or accept a copy of a pattern from a friend, it is hurting their business, too.

What’s more important, perhaps, at least to you, is that Norden Crafts wants you to understand that when you cause your shop to lose business in this way, then you give your shop two choices, neither of which is particularly appealing: raise their prices or go out of business. Which one do you prefer?

I prefer my shop stay in business AND be able to keep their prices lower, so I refuse to make or accept illegal copies of patterns. Please do the same.

JUST SAY NO TO COPYWRONGS !!!

Technorati Tags: Norden Crafts, copyrights, copywrongs, needlework, copyright, infringement

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 10:22 am and is filed under Copyright and Needlework, Heather's Favorite Posts, Helpful Hints, Tips, & Tricks, Interesting Articles, NEEDLEWORK STYLES AND TECHNIQUES, Needlework Facts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.