Thursday, April 3, 2008

More Plagiarism Update

UPDATE:

This Anastacia still claims the design as her own, although now she decided to change the wording.  It shouldn't bother me, but it does, because she never acknowledged stealing the pattern.  Now she has posted it on her new site, http://anastaciaknits.net/?p=288.  Well, I just hope that I am her only victim and that she has truly come up with her own designs and not just seen something she liked, changed the wording enough to claim, "I came up with the design from my own head!" and then publish it as her own.  So dishonest.  She even called it almost like my own pattern, the Half Granny Square, only she called "her" design "Half Granny Square Shawl."


HERE'S MY ORIGINAL POST.

Well, I thought this was over, but now I understand what other designers go through when people steal their patterns. I went to the site and lady who copy and pasted my instructions now wrote this:

"Edited 3/2008**



someone recently made a not so nice comment on this post, claiming that this was HER "original" pattern, and not mine - and that she could PROVE it was hers because she published in in 2002! gasp!! I just wanted to say, I never claimed that this was MY original pattern. Considering that the granny square has been around for over 175 years, and has been published several hundred times in various forms over the last 75 years, I don't think anyone can claim that they designed a granny square, or a half granny square. I debated about leaving it up, as I'm all about the copyright laws, trust me -- however, I'm offering this for those who have never seen a half granny square, or thought to use the idea as a shawl. Since I'm not making any money off of it, and granny squares are definitely public demain, I'm fully within my legal rights to keep it up.'

I explained to her that the concept was not mine, but that the WRITTEN PUBLISHED instructions ARE mine. I wrote them out, in MY words. And her doing a copy and paste to her site is still illegal because she didn't have my permission. All she had to do was to post a link to my pattern, or write HER version of her own design.

This is the site:
http://anastaciaknits.blogspot.com/2007/06/alpaca-shawl.html

I've already reported her to google.com and hope that they will do something about it. I mean, chocolate chip cookies have been around for ages, but if I do a copy and paste from the Kraftfoods.com site and claim the recipe INSTRUCTIONS, not the concept, but the instructions, as my own, then it's copyright theft. There's no other word for it.

I'm going to report it again to google.com and let the Lord take care of it. If she persists in keeping it up, then there is really nothing I can do about it, short of getting a lawyer and suing her, which I won't. My intention has always been to share my designs, but I never thought someone would do something like this. I believe in "playing fair".

UPDATE:

Hello there, Viviana, and thanks for replying. My problem is that if I write out instructions that I came up with, then THOSE instructions belong to me. I published them, legally. If she copy and pasted what I came up with, it's wrong. And, that's what the lady did, she copy and pasted my written instructions. Copyscape compared the two. My instructions, written for beginners, has certain parts I wrote in caps, and her web page has exactly the same. I can understand someone coming up with the same concept and having similar instructions, I've no problem with that. It's when someone does a copy/paste job that I'm objecting to.

Check out my original post

and you'll see what I mean. Anybody can make a granny square. I don't claim to have invented them. That would be ridiculous. But, this here is not the case. Again, thanks for reading and commenting about this.

2 comments:

viviana said...

I feel your pain. And I believe in honoring copyrite laws. BUT I have always wondered how we can be sure if it was our original idea when 50 people across this great land, not to mention the world, could have had the same idea at almost the same time. It is possible!!! And just what type of modifications would have to be made for a similar item to actually be different?
Good luck with Google? Sorry you have the problem. Vivian

River Glorious said...

Thanks for commenting, Viviana. I appreciate your imput and updated this post with my response. :)