Fandom, Knitting, and the BBC
Well. Been an educational morning. I've corrected the Firefox News article, and I wanted to expand here, with personal opinions. (ETA: And edit as I hear more of what was going on)
First of all, the BBC has not been expanding their witchhunt. The creator of Extermaknitty took that down voluntarily under no pressure from the BBC.
Second, the BBC has spoken publicly about this.
The story as I understand it (and now edited due to corrections in comments) for those coming in late, goes much like this: A fan called "Mazzmatazz" is one of the Who knitters, who maintains a website with a variety of Who-derived patterns. She is known for her speed; her Adupose pattern (or however one spells that) hit the web within 48 hours of Partners in Crime. The site has been around for a while, and the BBC is ignoring it, as it ignores all the other fan sites.
Then someone who is not Mazzmatazz starts selling stuff based on her patterns on eBay for personal profit.
Mazz turns to the BBC, and that's where it all went wrong. ETA: I've been corrected. She went to eBay; eBay went to BBC. To the best of my knowledge, the BBC shut down the auctions, but it also hit Mazz with a cease-and-desist order that, from the wording excerpted on the Web, is a pretty standard form. Mazz complains loud and long, considering the BBC's history of ignoring fan crafting sites. Mazz obeys the terms of the C&D telling fandom why the patterns are coming down. The story is picked up by the Open Rights Group, a lobbying organization for digital rights, and also ends up all over Ravelry (the massive online knitting community) and mentioned in several major blogs.
Other fan sites start voluntarily taking their patterns down, such as the famous Extermaknit dalek. Communities start archiving patterns under lock, the Wayback Machine gets a workout (it has both Extermaknit and the Adupose (I suppose I need to learn to spell this if I'm going to keep talking about it)), and a merry trade in photocopies that I haven't seen since before the pre-Internet days springs up.
Now: my opinion, which has undergone a drastic change after learning more facts (including after this post was first written). While the eBay auction should have been shut down, and while Mazz was providing a service that brought much innocent amusement to the fans, and while there is a long history of fannish patterns for all sorts of crafts free on the web, once the BBC had official notice the entire playing field changes.
The BBC is pretty up front about their policy, right there in the press release. It's not that we don't admire creativity from fans - most of the time, we take the view that if it's small-scale and not for profit, then we turn a blind eye. They were, and are, turning a blind eye to the fan stuff. But legally, like it or not, when they have *official notice* of something, they CANNOT continue their willful blindness, or legally that is seen as abrogating their hold on their trademark.
A long time ago, boogiebabe_smap was in a car accident. It was a wet night, she was stopped waiting for a turn, and the truck behind her hit her and pushed her into the car in front of her. In order to sue the guy who actually caused the accident, the man in front also had to sue her, the one who had actually damaged his car. He was very sorry for that, and apologized, and did not pursue that side of the lawsuit. But he still had to do it, because that was the law. The law did not make exceptions for "she was just as much a victim." Trademark law does not make exceptions for "all the fans do it."
Yes, the letter that Mazz has excerpted was cold, unfriendly, and distinctly unencouraging. C&Ds are like that on purpose... after all, they exist to make someone stop doing what they're doing. I'm an old school fan, and not just in Who - I know of the C&Ds that came down for fanzines, and they were inevitably due to someone jumping up and down in front of TPTB and daring them to do something about it. (And frankly, the cure was to go quiet, wait for the fuss to die down, and republish under another name, and let TPTB go back to ignoring them.)
But I also see that the BBC is willing to say, in public, that they want to talk with her about licensing her patterns. That also means something. Because if they really were trying to slam Mazz down, they'd hardly put *that* in the public record! Who knows - there was once an official BBC knitting pattern book, and I think that a new licensed book like that - Mazz's patterns, BBC's intellectual property - would at this point be the best outcome for the whole issue.
And in the meantime, the Open Rights Project may or may not make a case that clarifies everyone's rights. That would be nice.
First of all, the BBC has not been expanding their witchhunt. The creator of Extermaknitty took that down voluntarily under no pressure from the BBC.
Second, the BBC has spoken publicly about this.
The story as I understand it (and now edited due to corrections in comments) for those coming in late, goes much like this: A fan called "Mazzmatazz" is one of the Who knitters, who maintains a website with a variety of Who-derived patterns. She is known for her speed; her Adupose pattern (or however one spells that) hit the web within 48 hours of Partners in Crime. The site has been around for a while, and the BBC is ignoring it, as it ignores all the other fan sites.
Then someone who is not Mazzmatazz starts selling stuff based on her patterns on eBay for personal profit.
Mazz turns to the BBC, and that's where it all went wrong. ETA: I've been corrected. She went to eBay; eBay went to BBC. To the best of my knowledge, the BBC shut down the auctions, but it also hit Mazz with a cease-and-desist order that, from the wording excerpted on the Web, is a pretty standard form. Mazz complains loud and long, considering the BBC's history of ignoring fan crafting sites. Mazz obeys the terms of the C&D telling fandom why the patterns are coming down. The story is picked up by the Open Rights Group, a lobbying organization for digital rights, and also ends up all over Ravelry (the massive online knitting community) and mentioned in several major blogs.
Other fan sites start voluntarily taking their patterns down, such as the famous Extermaknit dalek. Communities start archiving patterns under lock, the Wayback Machine gets a workout (it has both Extermaknit and the Adupose (I suppose I need to learn to spell this if I'm going to keep talking about it)), and a merry trade in photocopies that I haven't seen since before the pre-Internet days springs up.
Now: my opinion, which has undergone a drastic change after learning more facts (including after this post was first written). While the eBay auction should have been shut down, and while Mazz was providing a service that brought much innocent amusement to the fans, and while there is a long history of fannish patterns for all sorts of crafts free on the web, once the BBC had official notice the entire playing field changes.
The BBC is pretty up front about their policy, right there in the press release. It's not that we don't admire creativity from fans - most of the time, we take the view that if it's small-scale and not for profit, then we turn a blind eye. They were, and are, turning a blind eye to the fan stuff. But legally, like it or not, when they have *official notice* of something, they CANNOT continue their willful blindness, or legally that is seen as abrogating their hold on their trademark.
A long time ago, boogiebabe_smap was in a car accident. It was a wet night, she was stopped waiting for a turn, and the truck behind her hit her and pushed her into the car in front of her. In order to sue the guy who actually caused the accident, the man in front also had to sue her, the one who had actually damaged his car. He was very sorry for that, and apologized, and did not pursue that side of the lawsuit. But he still had to do it, because that was the law. The law did not make exceptions for "she was just as much a victim." Trademark law does not make exceptions for "all the fans do it."
Yes, the letter that Mazz has excerpted was cold, unfriendly, and distinctly unencouraging. C&Ds are like that on purpose... after all, they exist to make someone stop doing what they're doing. I'm an old school fan, and not just in Who - I know of the C&Ds that came down for fanzines, and they were inevitably due to someone jumping up and down in front of TPTB and daring them to do something about it. (And frankly, the cure was to go quiet, wait for the fuss to die down, and republish under another name, and let TPTB go back to ignoring them.)
But I also see that the BBC is willing to say, in public, that they want to talk with her about licensing her patterns. That also means something. Because if they really were trying to slam Mazz down, they'd hardly put *that* in the public record! Who knows - there was once an official BBC knitting pattern book, and I think that a new licensed book like that - Mazz's patterns, BBC's intellectual property - would at this point be the best outcome for the whole issue.
And in the meantime, the Open Rights Project may or may not make a case that clarifies everyone's rights. That would be nice.