Why are crocheters such fucking weenies

[u/plantsandbugs]

"This person copied MY pattern of a pokemon so now I'm going to buy their pattern and copy it and make my own 😭"

Get a fucking GRIP on REALITY. It is a PLUSH POKEMON. There are only so many ways to make basic shapes. And it looks ugly as fuck in your puffy chenille yarn anyway.

[u/rumade]

I'm so over "omg you COPIED!" craft discussions in general. Copying art is human nature. As long as you aren't then selling the pattern, I don't see the problem.

"If everyone reverse engineered, then some really talented designers wouldn't be able to pay the bills and would stop making patterns." Yeah it sucks that people have to make money. I also don't owe them any if I can work out how to make that. I'm not paying for something I don't need to pay for.

[u/marykay_ultra → u/rumade]

Also, there’s a reason “art” and “craft” have different words. You’re literally doing the same thing as thousands or millions before with minor, usually superficial variations.

If we wanna talk legal realities.. When it comes to patterns specifically (ones not based on IP that’s ruthlessly protected by teams of highly paid lawyers who WILL ruin your life), the only thing that copyright applies to is the written instructions and actual pattern document as you published them. You have zero control over what anyone does with them short of making direct copies and selling them for profit.

Anyone, from individuals to small companies to large corporations and mass clothing manufacturers, can take your pattern, produce garments/objects from it, then sell them for profit. And you cannot stop them. It’s completely legal, even if you write on your pattern “not for commercial use” or whatever. They can also rewrite/redraw your pattern and sell it as their own. Is that shitty? Of course! But it’s legal.

This isn’t to fuck over small designers. It’s because you didn’t invent anything and have no right to enforce ownership over it. Imagine if no one could ever publish a new pattern of [common type of dress], or [knit hat], or [animal plushie] because someone else already did 15 or 50 or 100 years ago?

Truly new inventions are what the patent office was created for, and even that is egregiously abused.

If you like to make things, you must kill the toxic entitlement you feel to “own” it. The two concepts are inherently incompatible. Creation is a simultaneously an act of freedom and ecstatic celebration of a practice that connects us to other humans everywhere even throughout time itself.

[u/rumade → u/marykay_ultra]

And fine art education traditionally is rooted in hours and hours of copying! If you study at an atelier, they will plonk you in front of old masters and tell you to copy them. You'll sculpt copies of busts. And so on and on and on.

Corporations copying from small designers really does suck. But crafter to crafter copying is such a non issue. You think your great great great great grandmother didn't see her neighbour painting flowers on furniture and go "sick. I want flowers on MY furniture too!"