COPYRIGHT The neat side of the 'net is that anybody can become a publisher. The down side is that we have people publishing who have never before heard of the concept of "copyright" and cannot quite grasp it. This leads to all sorts of strange notions floating around, some of them too bizarre to pass muster as an April Fool joke, yet sincerely believed and confidently passed on. For needleworkers, it complicates matters that only recently have needlework patterns had any financial value. In the days when copyright had to be claimed to be valid, many needlework designers didn't bother. Nowadays, work is protected from the moment that it is embodied -- that is, as soon as you write it down, type it into your computer, or in some other way make it available outside the confines of your skull, it's copyrighted and you own it. But until fairly recently, anyone who published anything without a copyright notice understood that he was putting it into public domain -- that is, transferring ownership of the copyright to the human race as a whole. (And that particular way to express it has been the basis for some interesting SF stories.) Put the above two paragraphs together, and you'll see that (a) if the pattern is very old and (b) if you can't find any copyright notice on it anywhere, you're safe enough giving copies of it to your friends, as long as you include as much citation as you've got. To actually publish it -- post it to a newsgroup or mailing list, put it on a web page, print it in a newsletter, sell facsimile copies -- you'll need to know a little more about it. I'll list a few misconceptions; I'm sure this list misses at least 90% of them: COPYRIGHT RUMORS If you re-type the pattern by hand, it's a new pattern. Copying by hand isn't copying. If you find a pattern for "Blue and White Doiley" in a magazine, you may work it in green and yellow and sell your pattern for "Green and Yellow Doiley" to the same magazine. If you change 10% of a pattern, it's a new pattern. So that won't wash -- if you change 15% of the pattern, it's a new pattern. 20%? [Sorry gang; the only naked percentage that offers any safety is 100%] If a copyrighted tatting pattern uses a ring of sixteen doubles, then nobody else can put sixteen doubles in a ring. If a work contains any open-domain elements, including straight lines and the letter "e", then the whole thing is open domain. Electronic publication isn't publication. Everything on the Net, Web, or usenet is open domain. Saying that I can't use Daffy Duck without Warner Brother's permission means that I can't read my Daffy Duck comic books. Only one person may read a book, ever. You can save a lot of money by buying one book for the group and making photocopies to pass around. If a teacher can use quotes in his handouts, then I can make up a book of quotes and sell it to students without asking any of the authors for permission. I have to make up a pattern exactly the way it's written; altering a dress to fit my figure is a violation of copyright. If you're teaching a class, a handout telling how to use a particular pattern violates the copyright on that pattern. [Requiring your students to purchase a particular pattern is more likely to lead to suspicion that the owner of the pattern has paid you off than to tick off the pattern-owner.] [Unless you say it's a lousy pattern, to be avoided unless there is just nothing else to be had, in which case the following alterations can make it barely tolerable.] [And even then you're safe if you point out that the reason it's lousy for your purpose is that it was meant to be something else altogether.] The words "copyright" and "patent" are interchangeable. Ideas and techniques can be copyrighted. [They can be patented, but you have to prove that they are not obvious] Patterns can be patented. [They can be copyrighted] A patent-worthy idea is sure to make you rich. [As the folks on the writing lists are sick unto the gorge of saying, it's what you DO with an idea that counts.] There is some sort of point in mailing yourself a copy. [Come off it, gang! The only way you can prove the pattern is in there is to open the envelope -- and once it's open, you can't prove that the pattern has always been in there. If the pattern isn't worth a registration fee, postage is a waste of money too.] You can't copyright a design. [The grain of truth in this one is that it is very difficult to come up with a needlework design that hasn't been in use since long before we figured out that weaving is easier than twining. The following story illustrates this: ] "As a child, I made up a design for a border by using a small ruler, a pencil, and my thimble. . . . Not long after, my parents went to Africa and to my amazement brought back, as a present, a hand-embroidered cap with exactly the same design. The colors were different but the stitch and even the size were almost identical. I have since come across 'my design' a number of times. Each time, it brings a deep sense of solidarity with these unknown women in different parts of the world who were undoubtedly motivated to design by the same impulse of using the nearest thing to them, their thimble." -- Jacqueline Enthoven, _The Stitches of Creative Embroidery_, page 185. (1964, LC 64- 13643, no ISBN)