Jennifer's Site

I love cross stitch with a passion and have just had enormous fun designing this year's ornament for the Just Cross Stitch 2008 Ornament Issue, but over the past 2 years, I have been doing more and more children's book illustration as well.  This is partly because my income from cross stitch has dropped by over 50% in the past 3 years.  Is all of this due to the rampant Internet piracy or just a change in trends.  I'm not really sure.  I only know that shop owners and designers alike are having to make some tough decisions about how to survive and how to find revenue from other sources.

In this era of sharing everything on the internet, it can sometimes be discouraging when you start to realize just how big the problem really is.  Any designer who has hunted for their work on sites like Multiply, Picassa or foreign sites can find it daunting to sift through link after link, site after site, contact after contact of those who share patterns... without any care for the person who created them!

Copyright law means that only the person who created or published the design, the one who owns the rights to it, gets to decide how that pattern, song, book, image, movie, etc. will be used, shared, marketed or sold.

Explaining this to a younger generation can be almost as difficult as explaining it to the pattern sharers that are so fond of misquoting Article 107 of the US copyright law.  But every now and then, there is a glimmer of hope.  Every now and then, you run into people who will actually listen or actually help tackle the problem.  Every now and then, a company like Multiply or Picassa starts to take notice of how much abuse is happening on their website and works with copyright holders to shut infringers down.

It’s only a tiny step, but at least it is in the right direction.

I had to laugh when one of my favourite people out there in cyberspace sent me the link to this cartoon. If only more kids heard this type of advice from their parents! Thanks for the grin, Erin!!

http://www.bolseye.com/cartoons.29.html

Everyone who posts scans of patterns on the Internet and misquotes Article 107 of the US copyright law (the “Fair Use” clause) should read this...

http://www.smartfast.com/enews/ea_copyright_what_is_fair_use.html

This article, written by a business attorney, is one of the clearest that I have come across on a non-crafting site in a long time. Notice the point about the 300 word excerpt from a 30,000 page manuscript NOT being deemed fair use.

If you are scanning the whole pattern, magazine or book and sharing it with others, then it is NOT teaching or spreading a love of the craft! It is copyright abuse plain and simple.

Misquoting the copyright law on the front of your page does not protect you in any way, it just begs to get you reported, even if you block your images, because it suggests that you have something to hide.

The math is simply SCARY! One designer posted a link on a Picasa site for us to check out to make sure that our work wasn’t being abused or shared illegally. I spent about 40 minutes there (when I really should have been working on the kits for Toronto or the illustrations for the author I meet with on Friday) and picked 20 users at random to visit. Between them, they had 1,755 albums of illegal scans of patterns for everything from cross stitch and needlework to crochet, knitting, felting, tole painting etc.

Just 20 people had more than 10,000 illegal images there to share with others! It made me wonder why anyone would ever pay money for a pattern when there are more designs out there illegally than any stitcher could complete in 8 lifetimes!?

But if it is going to be so easy to steal and share a design, why would any new designer go into this as even a second job? If there are no new designers creating the next trends and exciting designs... won’t stitchers get bored?

I still just don’t get what the appeal of doing this is...

I pretty much dropped off the face of the planet this summer as I spend 5 weeks waiting for tests to determine if I had ovarian cancer or not, but I’d fallen away from Multiply much earlier than that.

Logging on to my site on a regular basis to check for copyright abuse became a daily exercise in torture that only left me feeling more depressed and uninspired. Trying to wade through the huge amount of illegal sites and shut down any that contained my work felt draining. The amount of abusive e-mail from people calling me a troll for defending the rights of the images I’d created was also hard to handle, especially as I began to worry more about what was going on inside my own body.

A few persistent stitchers kept sending me notes and invites throughout it all. As I got my web site redesigned and back on-line, updated my main blog and explained to readers what had been going on, I decided it was time to come back to this site as well and keep it going as a forum for education...

Guess what I found in my guestbook? Just see for yourself.

Those three little words absolutely floored me.

I can see that this woman is a fellow Canadian in Ontario, but she’s made sure that the rest of her site and profile are blocked to me so that I can’t even see what she had posted on her site. Has she put up scans of my patterns to see if I am good at cracking computer code or asking Multiply to check for me? Has she just heard from some of her friends that I am a troll because I speak out against the rampant copyright abuse in the needlework industry? Was she just having a bad day and needed to hurt someone else that she didn’t even know in person?

It is ironic that the Dixie Chick lyrics to “Not Ready To Make Nice” are playing in the background as I type this...

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting

©Coumbia Records. Written by Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines, Emily Robinson and Dan Wilson

If this person truly feels that she is doing nothing illegal, then let’s test it out in the Canadian courts once and for all. Have the courage to send me your real name and address after you post one of my designs on your site and we’ll see what the law really says.

If you have to hide behind blank screens, user names and still claim that those who protect what they have created are trolls then you must know deep down inside that what you are doing is wrong... it’s just giving you a cheap thrill to get away with something illegal and lashing out at people that you don’t even know.

Being up at my Mom’s for New Year’s has been wonderful! Not only can I spend time with friends and family, I can also get back on the internet. For those of you who have been stopping by this blog and wondering what I’ve been up to need to follow the technology disasters I have been going through by reading my Dragon Musings Blog at http://www.dragonmusings.blogspot.com Being a graphic designer with no computer for over 3 weeks and now no internet connection until early 2007 has NOT been very fun.

Technology is changing by leaps and bounds again and many stitchers, designers and store owners still wrestle with where that will take our industry. Some of us will be going back out into the regular work force for a while or branching off into new directions along with what we’ve been doing because the cold hard fact of not earning enough income at this has finally started to hit home. I’ve been working with my accountant to see if I can’t destroy some of the inventory that is just sitting there in my self-store taking up space, especially the 2,000 custom cut cardboard boxes I ordered 4 years ago when I first started shipping stuff to a US distributor that dealt with the chain stores. I had misread the quote and ended up with far more boxes than I needed and a bill that was twice as much as I’d budgeted for because I didn’t realise that the /M after the dollars in the quote meant PRICE PER THOUSAND!! Live and learn can sometimes be a bit more of a life lesson than we want.

The coolest thing about where technology can take us in 2007 is the way that global audiences are able to access information quickly. Trends will be less regional and even national as the global audience discovers things about the same time. This is going to make for some very fun experimentation on my part as I begin to toy with an idea that has been rattling around in my head ever since I first wrote the Runekeeper Saga back at the beginning of this century (doesn’t that just sound so cool to say??).

This blog and site will remain as one where I voice my concern about the proliferation of copyright abuse on the Internet and the general crumbling of an ethics system into too many shades of grey. The next wave of designers will be much smarter and savier than mine was about creating things that are so easy to steal. Whenever I hear someone complain about the retail cost of a pattern or the poor quality of a design, I simply point out to them that there is far less of an incentive now to spend the time and care to produce high quality stuff because it is just as vulnerable to being stolen and the ugly or awkward designs.

Technology has allowed a vast number of stitchers to play at being designers without taking the time to learn their craft, perfect their marketing skills, produce a quality product, join industry groups or attend shows to learn more about the industry in which they’ve chosen to try to earn some income. Any craft or profession takes time to learn and time to hone your raw talents.

Here’s to seeing just what 2007 will hold!!

The first snowfall of the year is falling softly outside my window. I am doing laundry from being away at a cross stitch retreat for most of the weekend and thought I would add a new post here.

The tiny flakes don’t look like much as they fall, but already the grass is beginning to be coated by a thin blanket of white. They are calling for only half an inch or so ( 2 - 4 cm), just a dusting really, but it got me thinking about how little things really can add up.

We held a raffle on the weekend. Everyone brought a few pink items to donate to 3 baskets so that we could raffle them off for Breast Cancer. When we started to fill them up, we discovered that there were enough donations to make up 5 baskets!! Our group of 65 women raised over $500!! Everyone contributed just a little bit, but it certainly added up to something impressive.

Sadly, negative things can pile up quickly too. Many pattern sharers protest that they are not doing anything illegal when no money changes hands, in total ignorance or disregard for Article 107 of the US Copyright law, subsection 3 & 4. I have posted them here more than once and will continue to do so because it does matter.

If someone is copying the WHOLE chart, it is breaking the law. If someone is sharing a WHOLE pattern, then it directly affects the market value of the pattern and the designer’s ability to make what LITTLE they do (read the blog entry “I’m Tired About The Lies...”) from the sale of each pattern.

“I’m just sharing with a few close friends!” one stitcher wrote to me. Perhaps, but what if one of those friends posts the scan you share with her to a group of 300? What if one person in that group posts it to other groups that are larger? How would anyone feel if they were suddenly told that they would need to work the same hours at their job but be paid $500 less for what they had always be doing? $750?? $1,000?? How long would it be before you looked for other work?

I showed the ladies at the retreat a peek at my “Santa’s Dragon” design which will now be released next summer instead of this fall. While they were sad to learn that I would be focussing more on Children’s Book illustrations for the next few years, they also understood why I needed to scale back on how many cross stitch designs I now release and put out there to sell. I simply cannot keep investing this much time and money in something that is so easy to steal. Will I ever walk away from designing completely? Of course not! Some illustrations just need to come to life in thread and sparkly braid. Would I start charging a lot more for all of my patterns?? Of course not! My patterns have always been on the low end of the price range for their size in order to allow collectors to buy what they like, even if they won’t stitch it right away. Will I continue to speak out against illegal activity even if I get called a troll?? Of course.

When little things pile up into something big, I hope it is more often for the positive than for the negative. Each of us is given the incredible ability to affect other lives with our actions, our words and our deeds, but that also come with the responsibility to help not harm, heal not hurt and hug not hate.

I am getting SO tired of the boldface LIES that some stitchers who share patterns illegally try to perpetuate about designers and the high cost of patterns. Of course it is far easier to hide in some dark corner of the internet and make up stories so that you come across as a Robin Hood type of stitcher, stealing patterns to share with the unfortunate because designers are just rolling in dough, living in huge homes and laughing all the way to the bank. It is much easier to justify illegal actions if you portray the enemy as a wealthy, uncaring, greedy person who has never known what it is like to struggle to earn a living or work a regular job. What a bunch of rubbish!

Most designers out there are the second or third incomes in any family. Often, they design at night or on weekends, attend shows during their vacation time from their first jobs or make other sacrifices because they simply do not make enough from being a needlework designer to pay them a regular salary or support their family.

“Patterns are TOO EXPENSIVE!” the sharers insist. Let’s look at some very basic math.
Most of my patterns now retail for $10.00 US at any of the local shops that I deal with, or $9.99 in many cases. Of that $10.00, $5.00 is kept by the store. That is because they carry the inventory, heat their shop, pay rent, pay staff etc. The $5.00 wholesale price is what I get to keep as the designer. In most cases, for my full process colour leaflets or bagged chart pack designs, that $5.00 must cover the actual cost to produce the product, the cost of materials to stitch the piece (I buy most of my materials at retail prices from our local store and just keep the receipts) and the cost of framing the piece. Since I do my own photography and computer layout, I don’t have to factor that into the cost, but if I was paying someone else, I certainly would. The cheapest cost for producing one of my colour leaflets is just under $1.00. The chart packs cannot be produced for under $1.50 because of the bags and the heavier paper that I chose to print on in order to give stitchers a quality pattern that will stand up lots of handling. I factor in another $1.00 on top of that, minimum, to cover the materials and framing costs which leaves approximately $2.50 - $3.00 of “pure profit” from the sale of each leaflet.

I can just hear the pattern sharers now... “$3.00 profit per leaflet is a lot!!” Out of that income, I must cover the cost of storing my patterns ($135.00/month in the self-store) and invest in attending trade shows to promote my designs to shops.

But what about distributors?? They help you sell patterns all over the world! Yes, they do, but they take a 30 % cut of my wholesale price to cover their costs. That means that instead of $5.00 wholesale per pattern, I get $3.75, narrowing the profit to a wonderful $1.25 - $1.75. Golly Gee! Distributors also require that you cover the costs of mailing the product to them out of your own money, since they cover the cost to ship to shops. The Hoffman order I shipped a few weeks ago was $35.00 to ship 275 leaflets down to the USA. I will see the money for whatever they sell from that lot in about 90 days. Distributors also take a cut on some of your most popular leaflets as a fee because they place ads in major magazines.

“But designers sell thousands of leaflets every month, so that really adds up!” Yeah, right!
See how easy it is to mislead other people by innuendo and outright lies?? The facts speak for themselves. Here are the number of leaflets sold and my payment from my largest distributor for the last 3 months that I have cheques for:

May 2006 279 leaflets sold Paid for 261 Cheque amount $783.65
June 2006 183 leaflets sold Paid for 175 Cheque amount $491.40
July 2006 125 leaflets sold Paid for 125 Cheque amount $346.15

No wonder I took on illustrating a children’s book, designing 2 logos and working extra shifts at Weight Watchers to help bring in more income for our family!!!

Designers DO know what it is like to count pennies because we sink so much of what we earn back into our own businesses. We know what it is like to lose income from a job because the plain truth is that pattern sharing has had a devastating impact on this and many other segments of the crafting industry. Scrapbooking is feeling it, Knitting and Crochet is seeing sales slip by over 200% in some areas.

This is what Article 107 of the US copyright law is all about. There is no getting around it and misquoting the first parts of the fair use article on your website only proves that you have something to hide.

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
1 the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of
commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2 the nature of the copyrighted work;
3 amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted
work as a whole; and
4 the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work.

When you copy the WHOLE pattern, it is not FAIR use. To say that what you are doing has no effect on a designer’s ability to earn money from their creativity is a lie. To say that if designers charged less for their patterns that more stitchers would by them is also misleading. My grandmother said it best. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

It all goes back to what I said about integrity yesterday. Those who have to hide their identities, lie about others, spread false information, call honest copyright holders who are trying to protect their designs TROLLS because they get websites shut down or IDs banned simply simply have no way to justify what they are doing.

What a FRIDAY the 13th!! It has been a frantic week. We had company all the way from Dawson City, Yukon for Thanksgiving and I spent much of this week helping Nick’s elderly and semi-infirm father and his wife get around town. She was a great help snipping things for the kits I need to assemble for the show in Toronto next week, but it was very hard to have so much to do and not just be able to hide in my office and get all my work done.

I’ve also spent much of the past 2 weeks working on a pair of jeans worn by Canadian comic Rick Mercer to auction on Ebay to help the festival raise money for SickKids hospital in Toronto.

All that time, all the materials for the jeans is something I wanted to do to help. I even set up a blog about the adventure at http://TheseJeansTook22Hours.blogspot.com

This morning, I get a blog entry from Multiply that just has my mind reeling. Here’s what was posted to Mireblast’s site:

anonymstitcher wrote today at 9:06 AM
Many stitchers recently saw their albums with posted patterns in them deleted because of people like you, Mirebast or you Dragondreamsjen!!!!! It's a shame to play the part of the troll. What do you think? That you will gain a trophee or endless confidence because you did this? Not at all!!!!!! My feeling is that you are only narrow-minded who can not even understand other people. If designers want to avoid illegal trade, they should at the very first place produce their patterns at a much lower price than they usually do!!!!!! When you work, when you have a job, you first start with small wages and then as time passes by, your salary gets bigger. If you want to become a designer and sell patterns, consider the fact that people don't always have the necessary money to afford expensive patterns. This is the golden rule to you. Would you prefer lower prices but many customers or expensive patterns and no customers at all? It's up to you to decide now, but just remember one thing. Multiply is just one site where people post copyrighted patterns, there are many many other sites where people do it and exchange. EXCHANGE is NOT bad because we make no financial business, we just help each other, that's good. You should be recognizeful because this means that we like what we exchange and this contributes to make the designers we like being known!!!!!!! Stop being hypocrites and leave us alone. Playing the spies and denuncing people will not bring you customers!!!!!!!!


Tell me how it makes sense to complain about the cost of the patterns when the materials to stitch any project are so much more. Do they steal thread and fabric from Walmart or cross stitch shops? Exchanging charts, even it there IS NO MONEY CHANGING HANDS is still illegal. This is why Multiply must shut down a site if the actual copyright holder complains.

When it comes right down to it, this fight is all about integrity. I don’t hide behind anonymous identities or pretend to be someone I am not. I have always said that if a pattern sharer truly believes that they have done nothing illegal, then post as who you truly are so that designers can settle this in a court of law. Watching CSI last night reminded me that even if a moral compass points in the right direction, you cannot force someone else to follow it. I will not go out of my way to hassle people who aren’t doing anything wrong, but I will protect what I create.

Life has been busy with getting the children's book to the printer's and preparing for the book launch on the 27th of September. We drove down to Saint John, NB as a family on Saturday for 4 hours at a local cross stitch shop to meet some stitchers and show off patterns. Nick took the kids to the New Brunswick Museum while I stayed to meet and greet. I also got a lot of stitching done... and had lots of time to chat with stitchers.

Teaching people about what you can and cannot do under copyright law is a SLOW process. Most of the time, people just don't understand why they aren't allowed to do whatever they want with the pattern that they bought, including scanning it in and sharing it with others on-line. I try to politely and firmly explain that it is the COPYING process that actually breaks copyright law. You can sell, donate, destroy, lend, bequeath the original pattern that you bought, but you cannot make copies for friends or scan it in to share it with on-line friends!

Misquoting copyright laws and calling something FAIR USE when you are displaying the WHOLE part of the pattern, colour key, cover page etc. does not make what you are doing any less wrong or illegal.

I managed to make one person totally reconsider how she'd been enjoying her hobby online and this morning, I read a post on the copyrights group from another person who had never really understood how her actions affected designers or the industry as a whole.

Change is slow. It begins one person at a time. It is speaking out instead of giving up. It is showing that there are other ways to enjoy making friends, bragging about your work, exciting other stitchers and sharing links in needlework online that do not involve scanning in or sharing complete patterns illegally.

For today, I will be content with slow but steady. After all, the turtle did win the race!

I was trying to wrap up some of the last items on the Back To School lists for both girls and was amazed at how quickly the prices of things added up. I am sure that I am like many parents who juggle things carefully, hunt for bargains and try to make budgets stretch a little farther this time of year. Yet at NO point during the day did I ever think “This pair of leggings is too pricey... I’m just going to tuck them in my bag and take them home without paying for them!”

What irks me the most about most pattern sharing web sites is that they continually quote just a fraction of the FAIR USE section of US Copyright law, Section 107 to be exact. I have actually added a link to the government’s web site so that more of them can properly inform themselves. Those who persist in posting a fraction of the law on their sites may actually end up flagging themselves as sharers rather than proclaiming their innocence.

Anyone who misquotes the “Fair Use” section should be aware of the four factors that this government site says should always be considered, especially number 3 and 4.

Number 3 deals with the amount of the portion that is used in relation to the whole.

How can you share ALL of a pattern, including stitch diagrams, cover artwork, chart and colour key yet claim it is for “Fair Use” or educational purposes. You are not teaching anything except that stealing is acceptable.

Number 4 deals with the effect of that “Fair Use” on the market potential and value of the work.

How can sharing a pattern electronically so that less and less people actually purchases legal, physical patterns not have a direct impact upon designers everywhere? I have watched designers and shop owners alike juggle finances to attend trade shows, go without things to pay for a press run or bring in inventory that their customers want to see. I overheard one established designer that I respect very much state earlier this year that the days of a designer actually supporting themselves or their families were gone forever.

Let these words from the government web site be a guide to anyone who considers sharing patterns...

‘The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.’

© US Copyright Office FL-102, Revised July 2006
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

After getting home from the trade show and tackling mountains of laundry, I also had to take care of another nasty and dreaded task. Quite a few stitchers had reported some illegal sites under our "Dragon Spotter" program and I had to spend 3 hours checking them out, sending out messages and getting a few of the sites shut down.

With the deadline for the children's book just 3 weeks away, I'd much rather have spent that time drawing, getting the house back in order, cleaning toilets, flossing a cat... etc. But if I don't try to protect what I have worked so hard to create, then those who share patterns will have won.

One site that I had the album removed for had 27 of our designs, a full quarter of what I've designed in the past 12 years, up for grabs. How do they expect that not to make a difference?? Several shop owners I spoke to at a recent show are so angry about this pattern sharing that they now refuse to sell to customers who just bring in copies or computer printouts!

Which brings me to some questions that I am dying to know the answers to. Perhaps some of the pattern sharers who visit this site and read the blog will actually share their thoughts on these.

Do you actually stitch even a small percentage of what you share?

Do you wait for someone else to send you a pattern that you want when something new comes out?

Do you share because you honestly feel that everything in the craft industry is overpriced?

Do you believe it is wrong for anyone to make money from something that they imagine, chart, stitch, publish, produce and sell?

Is it at all thrilling to do something that is considered illegal if you think that you won't get caught?

After more than 6 years of trying to defend my designs against on-line theft, I am still no closer to being able to understand the thought patterns of those who believe they are aren't hurting anyone when they share patterns with people all over the world.

Perhaps someday, someone will be able to explain it to me without swearing at me or calling me a troll.

Cross posted from my Dragon Musings Blog because of the postage issues... not the rodents!!!

It was just one of those days... Nick got home yesterday from the conference, but looked absolutely green around the gills and was suffering from either a flu or food poisoning. He seemed a bit better today, but went back to sleep for almost 3 hours after I got the girls up so that Erin could get off to her last day of sports camp.

He got up to shave and looked out the window only to bellow “He’s BACK!!!” Sure enough as I ran to the kitchen window, I caught a glimpse of familiar gopher butt disappearing under the shed. Remember those Disney movies where the pets travel incredibly long distances to be reunited with their families? I guess a few city blocks just wasn’t far enough. The furry little devil even got half of my pea pod crop before we managed to trap him again. This time Nick and a friend took him for a LONG drive to a local gravel pit/ wooded area just outside city limits. Be a nice rodent and go make friends in the WILD!!!

I did also promise that this blog would be a realistic peek into an artist’s life. Here’s a good example of how hard it can be not to freak out when pattern sharers tell me I am being a greedy designer to get upset over them sharing a “few” patterns with their closest friends all around the world.

I head off to a major trade show in 2 weeks and like many other Canadian designers, I have been wrestling with the need to adjust my prices. When the US dollar was stronger, my cheques from the US used to get multiplied by 1.5. The last batch of cheques went through at 1.12 which is a huge change. That extra exchange used to cover the fact that postage from Canada to the US is outrageously more expensive than mailing things from within the United States.

Today, I took 3 orders up to the post office to ship out. The first one could go regular letter mail, which is a bit scary because I cannot track or insure it once it leaves the country, but it only cost 50 cents more than the 10 percent shipping and handling on her order. The other two contained button embellishments which need to be protected and therefore had to go in a box instead of a padded envelope. The first one cost 6 dollars more than the shipping covered and the second one cost 10.75 more than I actually charged.... so on the three orders I shipped out today, I actually paid 17.25 extra to earn the money from those leaflets. How does that make sense when the news reported that Exxon made 10 billion dollars in profit last quarter? Maybe I should train those gophers to dig for oil in my backyard!!!

One of my fans sent me a list of Multiply Trolls that is making the rounds of the multiply users that still use this wonderful site to share illegal cross stitch patterns with each other and the world. This got me thinking about what exactly defines someone as a Troll, especially since 5 of us on that list are just designers trying to defend the copyrights of the designs that we created and are being shared illegally.

Wikipedia defines Internet Trolls the best at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll as someone who disrupts the flow of discussion on a group by posting rude, inflamatory, offensive or repetitive messages. I guess if we designers repeat the fact that scanning in a leaflet and posting it electronically is ILLEGAL, then we are being repetitive... so then I AM a troll.

But if you read further articles about troll culture, true internet trolls pride themselves on remaining anonymous. Going in as DragonDreamsJen is about as UNanonymous as I know how to be and my profile certainly never tries to hide who I am... so then I am NOT a troll.

If you read even further down to the Alternate Views section, it shows how people often get called trolls for holding a different opinion from the majority in a group, so by that definition, I AM a troll to all those who use multiply to share patterns illegally, but I like how that is defined as a "logical fallacy"!

So am I a Troll or not? I guess if I get called a troll for speaking out against something that is illegal and ethically wrong, then I will accept the label... and maybe I'll just draw a little troll cartoon to go along with my profile.. but being a mythical dragon is a LOT more fun!

Elsie/CraftyMom4040's post replying to Mirebast got me thinking about the many excuses that those who share patterns use to justify their actions.She wrote:

"To answer mirebast question its on ebay, 2 copies ( A Celebration of Stitching) as a matter of fact so selling on ebay is fine but sharing isn't? I just BOUGHT some great books off of ebay cheap and they are almost brand new, No artist is making any money off of ebay. "

Some of what she says is true. Many artists ARE at risk from illegal CDs and scans or items that turn up on Ebay and the new VERO program is helping us get such auctions closed down faster than ever, but it is time consuming. I lost 2 hours yesterday tracking down, reporting and closing sites that violated my copyrights. Time I would have much rather spent stitching, designing, drawing, gardening.. almost anything even housework!

What most pattern sharers don't seem to get is that you ARE allowed to sell the ACTUAL pattern!! These books on Ebay are the real books and the owners are allowed to do whatever they want with that physical copy- sell it, trade it, lend it, destroy it. What they CANNOT do is to make illegal copies or scans of any of the designs in there, make up multiple items for sale from any of those designs without the designer's permission or incorporate any elements of those designs into a design for print or sale.

When anyone make an illegal scan and shares it, they are CREATING an extra copy that did not otherwise exist and that the copyright holder does not authorise or get any payment for. That is why it is illegal. Many of the multiply sites are now quoting parts of Article 107 of the US copyright law on their sites as follows:

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this
message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for non-profit research and eductional or criticism purposes only, and is NOT an infringement of copyright.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

If you click on that link, here is what that section of the law says in full:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Notice (3) and (4)?? Notice how THOSE parts are not being quoted on websites? THAT is the part of the law that ANY illegal scan breaks. When you scan the WHOLE amount of the pattern, ALL of the information and share it, it becomes theft. You are not providing portions for educational purposes, you have made a complete, illegal copy that directly affects the market value of that design and any artist's livelyhood. It is stealing the product that they chose to create and sell to the world.

As I said in the very first entry of this blog. If any pattern sharer TRULY believes that the law is on their side, let them post and share under their real name, address and identity so that any copyright holder being infringed has the chance to protect their work in a court of law.

Jennifer Aikman-Smith, Dragon Dreams Inc.

Yesterday, a stitcher sent word that her local shop, Count Your Blessings in Rosedale, Maryland, had closed its doors and so she would now need an on-line source for my patterns. Luckily, I had a wonderful on-line shop to recommend to her, but she was saddened by the fact that she would no longer be able to go into the store to touch the fabric, fibers and browse the patterns.

This shop, under different owners, started in the industry just about the same as I did. They were one of the first shops we worked with for trunk shows and even designed a special pattern for them which got me started on the whole little angel series. It was called Count Your Blessings, just like their store and featured a little angel with two wooly sheep looking up at her and some lovely overdyed thread stitches. I still have the second model I stitched for myself tucked away in my cupboard.

Here is the reality of how this industry has changed since 2001. It becomes almost a chicken and egg type of problem and the only thing that truly suffers is the cross stitch industry as a whole. Last week, our local paper ran a story about crafting and how relaxing it was, how beneficial... and quilting, needlework or cross stitch weren’t even mentioned!

It is time for the industry to find a voice. It is time for us to promote our craft, teach techniques and speak out about proper copyright behaviour. This isn’t just a question of Miss Manners and etiquette... about whether “sharing with friends in the love of cross stitch” is polite or friendly. It is a question of law and perhaps even a question of survival.

I will be teaching at the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival all weekend in Toronto and plan to do all three with equal enthusiasm; Promote, Profess and Protect!

One of the publishers in the cross stitch industry who knows that I started a blog on Multiply.com to try to educate pattern sharers as to how much their actions were hurting the industry they claim to love and promote sent me these scary facts and powerfully written message.  They did ask that they not be named, but I hope that these facts act as a wake-up call to even ONE person who now shares. They wrote:


In 2000, we published 52 cross stitch books. These ranged in size from leaflets to 48 pages. By 2002, we were down to 31 cross stitch books. In 2003 as scanning and posting charts began to get really bad, we started devoting our publishing dollars to knit, crochet and quilt because the copyright violations seem to be less prevalent among those consumers. We published 26 cross stitch books that year. In 2004, we published 25 cross stitch books. Last year we published only 11 cross stitch books. Through the first 5 months of 2006, we will publish only 3. I don't know how much more proof you need to show what copying has done to the cross stitch business.

There are other implications beyond the atrophying of our cross stitch book output. Very few of our profits are reinvested in cross stitch, as they have been for 30+ years. What little dollars we do spend on cross stitch are spent on kits which, of course, are far more expensive for the consumer to purchase. We have a higher profit margin on kits than we do on books, a lower initial investment, and when the kit chart is scanned and posted online, it's only one design, not 103 that we're losing the sales on.

The few cross stitch books we have published in the last couple of years have been published at a higher retail. We expect to lose a certain percentage of our sales to copying. Therefore, we have to raise our retails to make up for the lost margins. This is identical to what retailers have to do to make up for shoplifting.

And sadly, we haven't been able to publish any of our big 48 page books, which are such a tremendous value to the consumer, in nearly three years. We simply can't afford such a huge investment that we know we'll never be able to recoup because of copying.

The irony here is that these women, who so clearly love cross stitch, are single handedly destroying the pastime they love and, in the process, ensuring that designs cost more and more to buy. Their mentality reminds me of litterbugs who so blithely toss a coke can out the window and say to themselves "It's just me and it's just one coke can. It won't make any difference." Oh how wrong they are!

There's really nothing that I can add to such a scary, informative and eloquent message.

In the interest of making this site educational for those who think that scanning in patterns and sharing them around the world isn’t actually stealing, here’s a look at the journey from idea to finished leaflet and the costs involved.

First of all, a design starts with an idea. Nick is allergic to chocolate and one night in a snowstorm, when I had no chocolate in the house, I actually contemplated melting one of those squares of bakers chocolate and adding sugar. “If I were a dragon,” I thought, “I wouldn’t collect treasure, I’d hoard chocolate!” That was the idea behind my design Why Hoard Gold When You Could Hoard Chocolate. Getting the design stitched out on graph paper took about a week because I wanted her behind to have a bit more ooomph, yet still be graceful. Back when I first designed her, I didn’t have a computer program and produced all of my master charts by hand, drawing the symbols with a rapidograph pen and using a liquid paper wand with just a few bristles in it to fix mistakes.

Now, once I have the composition of the design roughed out on graph paper (which can take anywhere from a few hours to a few years depending on when I get it to where I like it) I can just enter the backstitch outlines into my computer program and add the symbols there. I still have to get out the actual fibres and floss, braids and beads to put them on the fabric and see how everything looks together, especially since my computer screen can duplicate the sparkle of braid, but putting an actual chart that a model stitcher or I can stitch from into the computer takes between 4 to 8 hours, depending on how complex the design is. That’s just to enter the pattern itself. No instructions etc.

Then it comes time to stitch the design. I am a VERY slow stitcher, but I don’t have to pay myself! I can pay Nick in other ways too, so often, we try to stitch the models ourselves because that is the cheapest route. I am blessed to have some very talented and wonderful model stitchers who help me out as well. I wish I could say that I pay them what they are worth, which would be hundreds of dollars, but even my largest designs seldom pay more than $175. Often model stitchers are willing to work for stash, patterns, extra stitching goodies etc. I just knit one model stitcher a shawl as her payment since I love to knit in the car on trips.

Once a piece is stitched, I have to sit down and fix any changes that might have happened so that the model and the chart match as closely as possible. If the model stitcher notices any boo-boos, I fix those. If I have made a major change to the design as I stitch it, I have to be sure to match the chart to what I have stitched. In the case of Dragon of the Deeps, this was an extra 2 hours of checking the design line by line and recharting the whole mermaid’s tale to match what I stitched.

At this point, if I want to sell the design to a magazine, I can always make a photocopy of the stitched piece unframed, since many publishers prefer to finish the piece a certain way. If I am producing the design for myself, then it needs to be framed so that I can photograph it for the front cover of the design and take it to trade shows to show shop owners what the design looks like stitched. I tend to frame fairly simply because I want a stitcher’s eye to notice the pattern first rather than the framing. I don’t put my work under glass because that can break too easily with all of the shipping my models need to endure, but framing still costs anywhere from $40 to $175 per piece depending on the size and type of frame I choose. I also pay to have my framer wash and lace the piece for me since I am absolutely miserable at doing that myself.

Now that I have the piece stitched and framed, I am ready to shoot the cover photo that will hopefully entice people to buy the pattern. I just switched to a digital camera 2 years ago because of the immediacy of importing the files right from the camera instead of shooting a roll of film , getting it developed, scanning in the photo I liked best, retouching it and then placing it in my desktop publishing program. I am lucky enough to be able to do all of my photography and graphic design myself. I did my Fine Arts Degree in Photography and still work as a freelance graphic designer/illustrator to earn most of my income.

Next I need to lay out the chart, instructions, cover and back page of the leaflet or chart pack in Quark Xpress, my desktop publishing software. I make all of my own stitch diagrams and write all of my instructions then usually get at least 3 people to read everything over to catch spelling mistakes, instructions that don’t make sense, etc. At this stage, most designs take me between 4 and 9 hours of further computer time, depending on how complex the layout is. Since the chart was already laid out in another program, I can just import it into Quark to lay out the other information around it.

Once the chart is proofread, I burn everything needed for the print job to a CD. I’ve usually called my printer ahead of time to get a quote on quantities and to find out what the press turnaround time is like. I try to print between 1000 and 1500 of a design because that keeps the cost of the printing for that leaflet between $1.00 and $1.50. For chart packs, I have the cover page printed on card stock at my printers, order the bags 1,000 at a time and then have Business Depot do the photocopying of the inner pages onto a 32 lb. bright white paper. I believe that the stitcher should feel the quality of the paper when stitching it and the heavier weight paper holds up much better to the handling that happens when you stitch a piece. Either way, I pay for the whole press run at once, however, and then keep them in my self store to sell. A good design can have a shelf life of years rather than months, so up until pattern sharing became so commonplace, it didn’t worry me if half of the press run sat there for a year or so.

Once the design has been printed, I mail at least 100- 150 off to my US distributor. I am responsible for those shipping costs, but then the distributor covers the cost of shipping my patterns out to the shops. Major distributors take between 25 and 30% off your WHOLESALE price to cover their own expenses, but you always hope that the volume they sell will help offset that price. When my kids are sick or I have a day working on another project, it is good to know that shops anywhere in the world that deal with them can still order my patterns. I get a cheque for what is sold 45 days after the month ends. For example, on January 31st, they mail out the cheque for what sold in December. It usually takes 10 days to reach Canada and then between 5 to 10 days for the bank to clear the cheque. So by the middle of February, I get paid for what they sold in December.

Before a pattern even gets to the world, I’ve had to invest quite a bit in each design financially and creatively as well as emotionally. My wholesale prices are designed to cover my PRINTING costs and add in a small cushion to cover postage, damage, storage etc. I’ve always wanted my patterns to be affordable enough for stitchers to collect, even if they aren’t going to stitch them right away. Very few, if any designers try to put in the costs for their time. I once figured out that I’d be working for pennies per hour at that rate or having to charge $20.00 wholesale per pattern, neither of which are reasonable! A designer DOES make money if they manage to get beyond a certain volume of designs sold or if a design remains popular for many years. 6 of my designs have been reprinted more than once. At that point, other than paying for each new press run, the cost of framing, photography, stitching etc. have been covered.

If you purchase one of my patterns, you pay for that physical copy. You may sell it, trade it, auction it, donate it, loan it etc. without breaking any copyright laws. The minute you scan in the charts to trade with someone on the Internet or make photocopies for friends, you have broken copyright law by making more copies that the ones I released into the world. It may not feel like much to you, just a few extra pieces of paper or a digital scan floating around there in cyberspace that you passed on.... but that may translate into 500 actual copies that sit in my self-store already paid for because no one wants to pay money for something they could get for free.

Whenever you share a scan of a pattern, you are telling the person who created it then paid to produce the originals that they should have done all of that work for nothing... or for the love of the hobby. How can you expect any business to survive that?