INDEPENDENT NEEDLEWORK NEWS

It seems Donna, Karen Reece, and Rick Abbott (DKR) of Needlework Designs on Demand aren’t happy to leave well enough alone. I thought they’d want to let my last article about them fade away into the archives, rather than call even more attention to it, but I was wrong.

After being dared by Rick to provide my factual and investigative evidence to you, I’ve actually been contacted since I did so by DKR demanding I remove that evidence (their email messages, to be specific). The text of their latest message reads as follows:

Heather,

This is our second request asking you to remove our copyrighted e-mails which we have not given you permission to publish.

A copyright ordinarily vests in the creator or creators of a work (known as the author(s)), and is inherited as ordinary property.

Unlicensed use or distribution of copyrighted works is illegal and may be considered a criminal act. Copyright law grants the exclusive right to use, copy, distribute, display and perform a copyrighted work to the owner of the copyright. The owner of the copyright is the only entity that may grant permission for anyone to use, copy, distribute, display and perform the work.

If one uses a screenshot of a copyrighted work without the proper license from the copyright holder, it is copyright infringement.

Since you, too, have been known to cry ‘copyright infringement’ by accusing others of copying your blog posts (which are PUBLIC) then you know you are in the wrong.

It doesn’t take very long to send a complaint to the DMCA via fax.

Needlework Designs on demand Management

(From the tone, the bullying, and the impersonal sign-off, my money’s on Rick as the author. Anyone else care to hazard a guess?)

First, why would I remove the evidence Rick himself insisted I provide?

Second, why would I remove evidence of specific statements made by DKR, which, if acted upon, could be considered a crime and prosecuted as such? More importantly, why would I remove evidence of specific actions taken by DKR which might already be considered criminal? Removing this legal evidence would mean I would incur personal liability if DKR were ever charged or prosecuted, and while their being charged, much less prosecuted, is an unlikely proposition, I’m still entirely unwilling to take on such liability. It is my LEGAL OBLIGATION to leave the evidence exactly as it is, where anyone who might wish to research DKR can readily find it.

The fact is, DKR only want me to remove the EVIDENCE in order to hide their own wrongdoing. I will not be party to helping them possibly bilk either the designers they purport to help, or the stitching public they claim to serve, nor will I sacrifice my own reputation at their expense for any reason.

If they are so ashamed of what they said in the emails archived here on INN that they wish they could take them back (so that they would not have been archived here), then they need to — FINALLY — do the right thing. That is to step up to the plate and take both accountability and complete responsibility for their own actions and their own mistakes. DKR need to apologize sincerely to both designers and stitchers alike. Nothing less will do, and I think they know this as well as all the rest of us do. They just haven’t been big enough to make that apology yet.

For whatever reason (okay — it’s because I still think Karen is a voice of reason among the three), I still have hope for them and their new venture yet. But it’s the last little bit of hope I can muster for them.

I’d be more than happy to publish such an apology, by the way — but they’ve made no attempt to post to INN since Rick’s last comment got him into this situation in the first place. Too bad for them. They could be using INN as a resource. Instead, they are still playing childish and irresponsible games.

(For your information, no one has made any attempt to post in support of them either, and I have so far approved every comment submitted regarding the discussion revolving around DKR.)

Not that I would remove anything I have already printed, mind you. But I think almost all of us agree that taking responsibility for one’s own actions and owning up to one’s own mistakes can go a LONG way toward remedying a problem, no matter how insurmountable that problem might seem.

Third, I am giving full credit to the authors of the material, and not attempting to steal that material from them. My use of their emails falls under fair use. I am not “performing” their work, but rather have archived it as LEGAL EVIDENCE — and it should be noted that I did so only at Rick’s behest. Had he not made his demand, I would not have bothered writing the article at all. That he does not like the results is not a proper, ethical, or legal reason for him to require me to remove exactly that which he insisted I provide.

DKR are completely misconstruing both the context and the intent of copyright law, and are, in fact, trying to use it to corrupt the law.

It’s really a sordid state of affairs that they try to use copyright law in their own defense when the initial problem was that they STOLE someone else’s trademarked company name — and then they couldn’t even bother to come up with a truly original name when they finally did (to some degree, at least) back down and decide to move to a “new” name and a new domain.

And what if DKR had not done anything morally, ethically, or legally questionable … Would they then have any claim to ask me to remove their emails? The answer is still, “No.”

Remember, their emails were PUBLIC. Anyone could read them if they had DKR’s Yahoo Group information. That’s why when you look at any of their archived emails, “Messages” is shown as a Hyperlink in blue, while all the other options (Post, Files, Photos, Links, Database, Polls, Members, Calendar, Promote) are grayed out and available to “Members Only.” Regardless of their intentions, DKR’s messages were NOT private; their messages were public.

Independent Needlework News is a NEWS source. INN is no different than any other news source, except for the subject matter on which I focus. I do my best to conduct myself professionally — just like the reporters for CNN or any other professional news source try to conduct themselves. In looking at stories with a different subject matter which have been reported by the news media including CNN, all the major print media, all the major networks, and so on, a consistent pattern emerges of making public exactly the type of information I have made public — and this kind of publicizing is frequently done for far less honorable reasons than my own reasons in this case. I am simply doing what all good reporters do — printing my story and providing my proof.

Do you recall this very recent case? A principal did not cancel school on a day which might otherwise have been called a snow day by someone else. A student found the principal’s phone number listed in the phone book, or with Information, and called the principal. The student left a message for the principal criticizing his decision not to cancel school. The principal’s wife returned the telephone call and left a message on that student’s answering machine. The student apparently made the principal’s wife’s answering machine message available over YouTube, and it became what is called a viral Internet message. Her message was fairly heated, the blogosphere discovered it and gave it enough attention that the news media noticed it, it was replayed over and over again in the news media (along with the transcript being printed onscreen), and the entire story garnered a huge amount of attention in the news media — just look at all the hits a Google search for it results in to see all the different news agencies (online only, television, and newspaper) who reported the story. No matter what you thought of this story (which you had to be totally out of the loop to miss, in which case you probably don’t know Heath Ledger passed away either ), the point is that neither the principal nor the principal’s wife could stop the tide — or cry foul over something they initially thought private being exposed to the entire world by the news media.

There are numerous other examples. There have been any number of cases in the news about emails which, once sent, the sender wishes he or she could take back. These cases involve all kinds of email subject matter from negative comments made about one’s boss or one’s employer, Dear John letters, and even emails in which someone writes about a successful (or unsuccessful) sexual escapade with the recipient — in all of these cases, the message generally comes back to haunt the sender.

When you send an email, you’d better be certain the recipient is someone you can trust if you’ve written anything you wouldn’t want to see on the evening news because once it’s out there, the damage is already done. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a single one among us who can say this has never happened to them. I’m no exception, but I learned my lesson. I don’t share news by email with groups of people anymore. Keep in mind, too, this was GOOD news when I sent my email — but it still came back to bite me in the behind — and I never did learn which of my fifteen or so “trustworthy” Internet friends let the cat out of the bag. More than likely, whoever it was (and it might well have been more than one person) only shared the “secret” with a handful of people she thought she could trust, and only because she wanted to share the good news, rather than to cause the whole thing to fall through. But at this point, it doesn’t matter because … you guessed it: the damage is done. So, yeah, I had my say in my personal blog when I was angry and not taking responsibility for my own mistake that caused the whole problem … but this is now, and I’ve moved on and learned my lesson from that little episode.

In the world we all live in, the one with camera phones, IPODs, answering machines, etc., etc., etc., along with the blogosphere which often carries breaking news stories faster than the mainstream news networks, there is very little such thing as privacy anymore. If you say it or write it anywhere that it can be recorded, then you should expect that it not only IS being recorded, but that it might be used against you. In today’s world, we must always think before we speak or type. Once we put it out there, we can’t take it back.

So far, DKR are handling this situation as if they’d accidentally passed gas in public. Although everyone else knows DKR are the ones who made the awful stink in the room, DKR thought they’d been really silent and sneaky about things, so they are still trying to pretend they aren’t responsible, which only makes them look foolish because we already all know they’re responsible for the bad smell.

DKR need to have their say, too — but that say needs to be an APOLOGY to everyone for their lies. Afterward, perhaps we can all move on, and perhaps we can all do so with a clean slate. I’m certainly willing to try if they’re willing to take accountability for their actions.

Technorati Tags: copyright, Rick’s Charts, Stitch A Painting, Art of Stitching, Deanna’s Designs, infringement, Needlework Designs On Demand, Rick Abbott, Karen Reece

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 4:24 am and is filed under Copyright and Needlework, Designer Information, Heather's Favorite Posts, Posts Containing Information about Heather. 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.