journal

By the way…

You people posting your little diatribes about “stitch and bitch” to the SFSE guestbook? You’re not helping the anti-SFSE “cause,” so to speak.

You people who don’t know the difference between copyright, trademark, and patent? You’re not helping set a groundwork for meaningful discussion or analysis.

You people telling others that a trademark registration has no usefulness if it’s proved that a trademark phrase was “used” in a 1940s yearbook, which is not the way the law actually works? Ditto.

Sorry — this morning, when I peeked at the SFSE forum, I saw nothing productive in all those guestbook posts. And sometimes I feel tempted to subscribe to LJ Knitting just so I can post some clarifying remarks. But then I’d be tempted to violate one of my cardinal forum rules, which is to avoid being particularly active on a board where one of my patterns gets discussed, because I don’t have time to consistently respond to forum questions or comments (as opposed to answering inquiries directly by e-mail).

I was interested in the last comment that was posted in the latest reprise of the SFSE thread on LJ:

I think if this community as a whole supports the protection of copyrights then the community should also support the protection of the trademarks. The argument made above is that by enforcing her rights she is alienating other crafters makes as much sense as saying one can’t make a copy of an old pattern published in 1940…

I think she’s the first person to point this out. Unfortunately it came in rather late, once the thread was a day old and bumped off the first page, so there are no responses to this. I wonder, was there this much angst and anger when the first SnB book was published over the co-opting of a decades-old phrase?

One Response to “By the way…”

1. 1
   Kathryn said on June 4th, 2005 at 2:56 pm

   Hi! I’m the self-appointed copyright meanie on LJ Knitting, and if I’m doing stuff wrong, you may feel absolutely free to contact me and let me know. You certainly know more about it than I do, and I would welcome corrections. My LJ username is kathrynt.

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