Saturday, June 10, 2006

Alice Starmore copyrights paranoia

As much as I admire Alice Starmore's work, it is hard to continue being a fan of her when she shows such a paranoia regarding her copyrights.

Just yesterday, eBay removed one of my listings because I had taken pictures of a couple of the designs inside one of her books that was for sale. She took the time to email E-Bay requesting the listing to be removed. Now, the estrange thing is that as far as I understand, you can take pictures of things, what you are not allowed to do is to use for example the picture taken by someone else and use it in your listing. This is what the eBay copy right tutorial says:

"That's right! When you copy a manufacturer's pictures or product description, you're violating its copyright. That's why you should write your own content and take your own pictures."

So, if I took my own pictures, just to describe the book I was selling, how am I violationg copy rights?

I have been an Ebayer for 6 years, when trading knitting patterns (buying or selling) usually you have to see a picture of what your are buying, otherwise how in the world are you going to know if you are going to like it, specially when what you are buying is a book that costs over $150, people should not buy it without seen it first, don't you think?

The Girl from Auntie has disclosed this issue in her blog (see favorite blogs in the right side of my blog). She says that Alice even got to the extreme of asking a Nordic website called traditional knitting, to remove pictures from their gallery of finished items, these where pictures of Alice Starmore Designs that people had knitted. If things keep going this way, pretty soon we won't be allowed to knit her sweaters... In which case, what would be the point on buying her books?

The fact that companies like AMAZON show the inside of their books for sale and even have an option for users to post pictures of the books inside, tells me that maybe Alice is exaggerating a little bit and I really don't see what is she accomplishing by having my listings removed. I am just going to list them right back, this time just with a picture of the cover. So what?

Unlike other type of books, knitting books need to be seen before buying them because other wise you might be investing in patterns or material you are not interested at all.

If you don't want anyone to see your designs, maybe you should make them for your own enjoyment instead of publishing them on a book.

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