Quote:
Originally Posted by pam
I went back to read something again from the firemountaingems link. I thought I remembered it correctly, but wanted to get the exact wording. It is as follows: "Original patterns, tutorials, diagrams and writing are covered under copyright law, which gives bead workers the right to control the selling, displaying, distributing and even derivatives of their original work. However, the knowledge contained in those works isn't covered." That is what I have been trying to say since the beginning. I am not talking about those wonderful tutorial writers who give their permission, but that those who buy tutorials have no right to expect that just because someone makes a tutorial it is therefore okay to copy the work in the tutorial. The knowledge gained from the tutorial is yours and irrevocable.
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I read that to be talking about the patterns themselves or the tutorials themselves. As in- you cannot take a tutorial and copy it and sell it to someone else. You cannot take the wording from the tutorial and use it. You cannot take a pattern and run it through a copier and sell it.
The knowledge is not covered. If you are passing on the knowledge of how a specific bead is made and one can expect that it is okay to make and sell what results from the use of that knowledge, including a replica of the specific bead.
In order for a copyright holder to retain the rights afforded them under copyright law, they must act in a manner consistent with keeping that right whole.
If the copyright is held on a specific bead and the holder then sells a tutorial in which they teach, step by step how to replicate that specific bead, they have not acted in a manner consistent with the continuation of copyright coverage. They have altered it.
If you held a copyright to a specific bead and you stood on the corner and handed out free flyers which outlined, step by step, with photos, how to replicate that bead and then 2 months later you found those beads for sale and became upset about it and tried to sue under copyright protection, a judge or jury would find that by your own behavior
you didn't act in a manner consistent with keeping that "right" whole. YOU altered it.
And, if we want to get into unsolicited "Life 101" advice about what "could" happen to you, as an artist if you did so, we could say that people "might" view the artist as not behaving in a very bright manner. There "might" be people out there who would say that if you wanted to retain your rights, it's rather ridiculous to give them away.
Lisa