Gina Jane Johnson of daisiecompany.com wrote up a GREAT article for this site, called "About Digital Piracy: Prevent Plundering of Your Portfolio." It is chock full of information, the most important of which is how to deal with the FBI about these problems. Click on the link below to read, or download the entire article. Download the article in Word format here.
Many of the groups actively involved in acts of piracy thumb their noses up when contacted by the designer to end the copyright infringement often because designers don't follow up by filing complaints with the appropriate authorities.
In the Australia reports may be filed with the Australian High Tech Crimes Center (AHTCC) which is a nationally coordinated body ::
The AHTCC is staffed by members of the Australian Federal Police and State and Territory police from throughout Australia, as well as representatives from private industry and government departments. (ref AHTCC About Us)
You can find the Online Crime Reporting submission form here which is specifically for the reporting of instances of high-tech crime in Australia.
If you are an Australian designer that has been affected by an act of piracy, it is well worth filing a complaint with AHTCC as well as the Internet Crime Complaints Center (IC3 - the US based FBI/National White Collar Crime Center partnership) because of international cross-over of jurisdictions between designer, selling point (ie the digital scrapbooking store/s that the designer sells through) and the location of the individual/s or group/s that initiated or is involved in that act of piracy.
If you ever come across an interesting and informative website that you think would fit well here, please e-mail me and let me know! (jenstrangeATgmailDOTcom) Here are a few websites a friend shared with me that are a great source of information.
Canadian Intellectual Property Office
Arts and Crafts Law
-- Articles: on this page are three articles.
-- Recommended Reading: a list of books you can buy at Amazon to help understand copyright as it relates to crafts and creative arts.
Rights for Artists . org
-- Examples: this page at the top has links to examples of communications that artists might need to use -- terms of use, cease & desist, to a site host, to a collection site.
Here is a statement from their abuse page:
" Unfortunately, not all Uploading.com users keep to the website’s terms of use. Uploading.com has been designed for file sharing purposes, in cases when files can not be sent as email attachments. Uploading.com does not in any way support computer piracy or any other forms of illegal info copying.
If you happen to possess information on the files that match the description above and that you know are stored on our website, please fill out the form above indicating the link to the file, as well as your name, name of organization and your email address so that we could contact you. All the information on the matter would be essential as well. Your message will be considered as soon as possible. Illegal files shall be removed from the site and put on the blacklist file filter.
We apologize for the illegal use of our service by dishonest users and promise we will do our very best"
To report an illegal use, click here and fill out the form.
If you need to report illegal file sharing activity to Pando, the contact information is here. <----------
I thought this might be of interest to some other readers, so I'll post the information here. Someone recently left this question in the comments:
Just a question - Is it OK to make a card with a kit? I love the computerscrapbook website (with the e-cuts cards) and have wondered about taking that idea and using various kits I like to make cards to send to friends, etc - through the regular USPS. Not for any commercial venture - just to send a much cuter card than I otherwise could come up with.
BTW, I so appreciate this blog that answers any questions we might have. Thanks!
And here is my reply:
oh, it's TOTALLY ok to make a card -- great question!
I actually have an entry at jenstrange.com about this very thing!: Cards: an easy project -- and here is another that might be helpful: All about cards/Holiday Cards
interesting that you mentioned commercial/professional use -- if you WERE to do make cards to make money, you would need permission from the designer of the elements you use -- many are perfectly willing to talk about such things. You can find the policies of many designers at the Professional Use policy list, also at jenstrange.com .
thanks for the question!!! glad the blog is helpful!
Sometimes I take a while, but I DO try to answer all questions I get like this. When you leave a comment, I get an e-mail in my inbox. If it's mean, I just delete it and don't approve it for posting. If it's something not spammy and not trollish, I approve it for posting. If it's a sincere question, I try to answer as soon as I can (remember to leave an e-mail addy!)
I love it! Kim Hill of CGEssentials has created this great graphic. Click on the graphic to view it larger. She has given permission to distribute it as needed or for designers to include it in their kits.
This graphic is from Miki Ferkul, Microferk Designs.
She said:
"I just wanted to again reiterate my appreciation for the help you gave me when one of my kits was pirated. I made a Piracy Graphic, and thought I'd give you ladies the generic version (you can put in an email addy and addy to store or blog in appropriate spaces)- to put up on the site for free sharing amongst designers, if you so wish."
So designers, you CAN use this and personalize it for your use. Click on the image to open the larger version in a new window, then right click and "save as" to your desktop. Thanks, Miki!
and here's another one, from Dea Spina
Someone left a comment to this blog that said:
You haven't mention the Creative Commons licenses. Don't ignore them, please. Restrictive copyright is not the only way.
However, they didn't leave an e-mail addy, so I can't write to ask for clarification. It was on the "Intellectual Property Rights" post.
Now most of you know that I am a layperson (read: I don't know a lot about law stuff) . . . I just write about what I have learned thus far, and what people who DO know about stuff have told me. So I would love some clarification as to how Creative Commons licenses applies to digital scrapbooking. Thanks, y'all!
jen
This is about software piracy, but still interesting to read.
"A pair of coders nurturing a deep antipathy for software pirates set off a controversy last Thursday when they went public with a months-old experiment to trick file sharers into running a Trojan horse program that chastises users and reports back to a central server."
click here to read article in full at The Register.
