There was only today a feature on GMTV (Good Morning TV for those of you in the US) on Piracy of labelled clothing and DVDs etc. A mother had gone to a local market, spent £200 on pirated goods (designer handbags, DVDs of the latest Harry Potter movie which isn’t out on Video as yet, English football shirts) as a test to take a look at the piracy business. Like most people, the person concerned was aware that most of those goods she bought had to be copies because of their pricing compared to how much originals cost. Even the TV presenters admitted they might contemplate buying some copies like that, for Christmas presents etc.

The thinking behind this is that it does no harm. The presenter then went on to tell us that piracy is causing billions of pounds worth of damage to the UK marketplace, and could put people working on creating those originals out of a job, if it continued to impact the sales of originals.

Food for thought, when considering the huge problems recently in the piracy of digital scrapbooking designs.

There is a Yahoo group which has blatantly been sending through and swapping digital designs created by other designers. No one will name the group, as this might actually advertise the fact that designs are being given away there. However, several digital designers have written and complained about file sharing of their designs which goes against their terms of usage after someone has personally bought those products. The moderator / owner of the group has been emailed, and has had some blatantly ridiculous things to say in response. The latest disclaimer put up by this owner on the yahoo group reads this -

"DISCLAIMER: We do not claim to have made all of the items that we are sending to this list. They come from a wide variety of web sources & are therefore deemed to be public domain. As far as we are aware they are licensed for personal use only and are copyrighted by their respective owners. Each member is responsible for their own sends and owner of said group will not take responsibility for group members actions, may they be in question.  Any infringement of said copyright is non intentional & will be rectified upon notice & proof of ownership"

That is an inadequate, as far as I am concerned, disclaimer for any group owner to take. And there is no shirking responsibility in owning a means to provide pirate copies of something anymore, even as a yahoo group.

There are several file sharing companies on the internet which provide a much needed and utilised service towards allowing digital file sharing. In fact, many designers starting up in digital provide freebies from websites and blogs, and use these services to distribute those freely. However, noticeably, services like YouSendIt, Mega Upload and  Rapidshare all contain terms and conditions towards taking off any illegal file shares as soon as the original designers notify them. Digital Designers are constantly having to make use of these notifications through these services, as unscrupulous digiscrappers continue to share designs via these services.

If you are a member of this yahoo group, or have previously sent through purchased digital kits to friends without thinking about the repercussions, I no longer believe you towards innocence. These are not consumable items like traditional scrapbooking stash. If you choose to give away a set of spare brads or stickers to a scrapbooking friend, then you choose to no longer make use of that giveaway. In the case of digital file sharing, you get to still use it. And so does your friend. You are, in effect, duplicating or copying something, and in bigger effect, taking money away from designers, and threatening their digital livelihoods. You are a pirate.

Worrying, quite a lot of freebie digital designs are being re-distributed like this also. Some people must think that just because they are free, they are legal tender in sharing. That, again, goes against the original designer’s terms of usage, and copywrite over their designs. They distribute the freebies so that they can also have a credit if you choose to use them. If you re-distribute these without the originator’s name or terms of usage, you are in effect breaking the terms of usage you signed up to personally in accepting them in the first place. And you are a pirate.

And if you read the terms of usage, 99% of these tell you that the designs are for personal usage only. Personal usage means to be used by yourself and yourself only. Not to redistribute to someone else. Not to share with anyone. If you share, you are breaking that terms of usage again. And you are a pirate.

Although I am certain that many people don’t contemplate this, and most are aware of the situation, given the constant problems around this area, if I can get the message across to one single person doing this kind of thing, and hit that message home, then we produce a more stable environment for those digital designers out there who are producing such generous and relatively cheap re-usable digital elements. And perhaps we will see more freebies come through.

If you want further information on Digital Piracy, a blog has been created to contain digital piracy information. You will also notice more and more designers producing banners and graphics enforcing this information to you.

 

If you are offered a kit, or element which you know was not created by the offerer, give that person a small reminder. Remember what is happening to the digital music industry towards digital rights management, and the problems with file sharing there. It is no different for digital scrapbooking designs. In this day and age, there is no longer an excuse of ignorance. Piracy hurts an industry that we love, and designers we love even more.

Published Tuesday 12th Jan 2006, you will find this new Scrap Musings from Scrapability, at UKScrappers