GUYS! This is important about our patterns!

[Blink190]

Reading everything, I guess the best option may be a watermark of some sort. Passwords and locks and read only and what not can always be circumvented in this day and age, and I don't know if there's any tough standard we can have. Since the part of the point of SpriteStitch is to get people stitching, the patterns are obviously important and restricting wouldn't be too fair. Making things private and password protected wouldn't stop anyone from logging on, getting the password, downloading everything, and then selling it on their own. Some kind of difficult watermark would be the easiest way to prevent people from stealing patterns, though its not that difficult to create a pattern to begin with. I don't know, I just feel bad that people could be losing money cause some idiot is out there stealing work

[Kevin18875]

I also have advice. Try to put a kind of copyright logo on the PDF pattern you give out, to show its your work. Might be an idea.

[kuja.girl]

The most useful article that they sent us is the one on Fan Art. It's a good review of the US Fair Use copyright "loophole" that would be used to judge most of our patterns.

It is easiest to defend the free patterns - as we are just providing instructions on how to create something, not providing a product or making money. In these cases I think we can tell Etsy that they are "copies" and/or "knock-offs." They're right, it's not really copyright infringement - but it is selling of something they don't "own" and have not licensed.

As I don't sell any of my patterns I can't really weigh in on that - I think it is a murky area and it's something I don't even want to risk.There's one set of patterns I've made for personal use that I've considered selling because they took me a long time to make and are all original work - I didn't use any sprites as a templates or otherwise - but I've sat on them for this very reason. Some day they will likely end up on here instead.

[Jigokushojo]

well ppl can register just to steal patterns. I think that if you want to atract new members you can always put small files so they can see, and up the premissions for the other charts and pdf, like a "honor" system or so. This happens in some forums and site's i've seen. Truth be told it's hard not to fall in love with all the patterns here and you guys put alot of effort and love on your things that it's unfair for some ppl to ask for money for the patterns you make. If they were selling the already stitched cloth and credited the person behind the pattern...
*shrugs*