Pokemon Home Sweet Home

[Pyper]

Its good to have this sorted out a bit. Its always confusing when copyright comes into it, and I have always wondered about the legality of selling fan art on etsy etc. Does us making patterns from copyrighted images (eg games, anime, disney etc) count as illegal as we are not drawing a profit?

[spinuntilyoufall]

Its good to have this sorted out a bit. Its always confusing when copyright comes into it, and I have always wondered about the legality of selling fan art on etsy etc. Does us making patterns from copyrighted images (eg games, anime, disney etc) count as illegal as we are not drawing a profit?

It's a sketchy grey area, technically it's totally legal since we are not trying to sell them, however we are "mass distributing" them by having them online (although we are encouraging it for personal use, not gain, so Sprite Stitch would never get in legal trouble over it.) As far as that goes, though - it would be a lot iffier if we were making homemade games or if the actual companies sold cross stitch patterns of their characters (how cool would that be?) - but as we aren't in any way shape or form competing with the owners it's not really a problem. The worst thing that would ever happen would be being asked by a company to take a pattern down if they really got their panties in a twist. It seems that they pretty much just don't care (or actively like it!), though, as you don't really want to complain about people loving your games enough to do crafts about them.

[rosey175]

Wow, what an interesting thread! When I'm filling a request, I try to hunt up info surrounding it and include it in the comments section of the pattern. On my blog patterns page, I post a longer disclaimer: "I try to credit the original artist in my patterns and, if possible, obtain their permission. Sometimes this is impossible, or the information is unknown, so I provide a link to the website where the image was found. I mean no copyright infringement, but if the artist of a particular pattern would like it removed, please e-mail me and I will take it down."

Of course, these are the freebie patterns so I'm not making a profit (or encouraging others to make a profit from them). I was considering selling my larger FF logo patterns on Etsy to fuel the floss addiction but it gets into that murky area of "it's not my character/design/etc." so I find myself questioning my legality. Even if "everyone else is doing it!"

...if they really got their panties in a twist...

You are the only other person I've ever heard say that phrase, haha. I usually say, "Don't get yer panties in a knot."