from:
http://www.aci.net/kalliste/
Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin
Grabbe</A>
-----
Digital Society
Hacker Housewives Destroy Needlepoint Industry
First there was Napster. Now there is pattern sharing!
LOS ANGELES - If the $40 billion global music business thought it had
problems with the emergence of a revolutionary Internet tool called Napster,
consider the now-terrified needlepoint industry.
For years, hobbyists hungry for doily-and-swan patterns have forked over $6
and $7 for them. Without a peep of complaint, they have provided a steady
stream of revenue to pattern publishers such as Cross My Heart and Pegasus
Originals.
In a good year, Pegasus can pull in about $500,000 from selling the
copyrighted patterns to its customers.
No more. Taking a cue from music-bootlegging teenagers, stitching enthusiasts
have discovered that they too can steal copyrighted material via the
Internet, thanks to anonymous file-sharing techniques.
''I'm only sharing with my friends and their friends,'' said Carla Conry, a
mother of six who runs PatternPiggiesUnite!, a 350-person underground
Internet community of stitchers who swap the patterns. ''Why shouldn't friends
help each other out and save a little bit of money?''
What is neighborly fun for Ms. Conry is outright theft to needlepoint
companies and the artists who create the patterns.
Sales at the South Carolina design shop Pegasus have dropped as much as
$200,000 a year since 1997, in part because of such swapping, said its
founder, Jim Hedgepath. He and a handful of companies and designers are
gathering evidence to wage a legal battle against the stitchers.
''They're housewives and they're hackers,'' Mr. Hedgepath said. ''I don't
care if they have kids. I don't care that they are grandmothers. They're
bootlegging us out of business.''
Like the record industry, the sewing world has been unable to come up with
any practical alternative to innovative file-swapping communities that
proliferate online. Some of the same entertainment conglomerates whose music
divisions are fighting Napster, such as Time Warner Inc., are feeling the
pinch from the pattern-swapping.
Legal experts are just starting to wrestle with the implications of new
technologies that will permit the instant distribution of information.
Business people are trembling at the prospect that file-swapping will not
stop at music, videos and needlepoint. There are rumblings that it has spread
to knitting and crocheting.
''Where will it end?'' asked Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum, 54, who designs
needlepoint patterns. She said she did not understand how people could
''stitch a stolen angel and still live with themselves.''
The little-known debate highlights the legal clash over copyrights in
cyberspace, where many consumers now believe that all information - whether
it is architectural designs or an Aerosmith record - should be freely shared.
If you can digitize it, you can steal it. And chances are someone has.
''People don't see it as stealing,'' said Jonathan Gaw, an
electronic-commerce analyst who tracks Internet trends for the research firm
IDC. ''Things will only change when publishers of all kinds make it easier to
buy and pay for it online than to get it for free somewhere else.''
The stitching debate started about a year ago, when a group of women - who
also happened to have PCs and digital scanners - decided to exchange
needlepoint designs.
The paper patterns, each essentially a large grid filled with thousands of
tiny squares, are the how-to instructions for a needlepoint practitioner.
For years, fans photocopied the patterns and sent them to each other. Not by
the dozens, mind you. Just one or two, tucked inside ''with a recipe and a
note,'' said Carlene Davis, 52, who lives in southwest Idaho. ''Just being
neighborly.''
Ms. Davis went online and scoured various Internet message boards devoted to
arts and crafts. She stumbled onto one board, called
rec.crafts.textiles.needlework, and discovered hundreds of other frustrated
stitchers.
Here was ground zero of a vast network of needlepoint designers and, much to
their chagrin, pirates hungry for freebies. Messages directed board readers
to Web sites and computer servers filled with hundreds of pattern books - all
saved in an electronic format.
Vicious debates over pattern-sharing exploded on the Net, and continue to
rage.
''I'm promoting the designers,'' said Shawna Dooley, 25, a homemaker in
Alberta. ''We're just sampling the patterns. If you like one pattern, you're
going to be more likely to go out and buy a pattern by that artist next
time.''
The needlepoint industry has refused to take the situation lying down. Shop
owners fear that the practice will put designers - who can make as little as
10 cents per pattern sold - out of business.
Some needlepoint designers make a healthy salary off their art: Ms.
Leavitt-Imblum said she had grossed $8 million in sales over the past 14
years. But most designers must have a second job to make a living.
''Without the designers, we can close our doors,'' said Sharon Wainwright,
president of the International Needleart Retailers Guild, a leading trade
association. ''We need to deal with this in order to maintain the health and
integrity of our industry.''
Ms. Leavitt-Imblum has ordered her attorney to start collecting evidence so
she can sue those who exchange copies of her patterns, people whom she
describes as the ''scourge of all that is decent and right.''
The Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
