09-12-2006, 11:35 AM
Quote:A grandmother sits in her sewing room and reads a letter that threatens her with $100,000 lawsuits if she doesn't admit to copyright infringement and pay a $300 fine. Not only might she have no clue as to what she did wrong, she could in fact only be a victim of copyright piracy, not a perpetrator. Unfortunately, this is a scene that, with slight variations, has played out again and again across the country, and it's time we take notice before the copyright lawyers fleece us all.
The people, grandmothers and otherwise, who are receiving these letters are embroidery fans who own computer-aided equipment to stitch from digitized designs. The letter states that it is a legal notice - and "not an advertisement, solicitation, or a scam" as one might assume -- from the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition (ESPC). The ESPC, after an investigation including records recently obtained from eBay or eBay resellers, has determined that the recipient has "purchased and utilized counterfeit and pirated embroidery designs online ... and that these pirated copies of embroidery designs are in your possession, all in violation of the Federal Copyright Act."...
full article: http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2006...82110/2869
Quote:The situation I described in yesterday's story (see "Embroidering on a Copyright Shakedown Theme") raises many troubling questions - questions I must admit I don't have definitive answers for yet. But in looking for answers, I found myself asking yet one more question: what duty of privacy does eBay and its PayPal subsidiary owe customers purchasing goods via their services?
As near as I can tell, the ESPC letters had their origins a little over a year ago when the group settled a lawsuit it had filed against eBay. The ESPC, which then as now seemed to consist mostly of embroidery design house Great Notions and its business partners, had accused eBay of being complicit in illegal sales of copyrighted designs. Terms of the settlement were not announced, but an ESPC legal spokesman at the time made it clear he thought it would enable them to go after the buyers as well as sellers...
full article: http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/ar..._pira.html