Tries Too Hard

I think that is my American Indian nick name.

The full version being "Tries Too Hard, Cares Too Much"

I thought it would be a good idea for designers to come together and form a strong group to protect our rights....strength in numbers.

I thought it would be a good idea to have a central location where bead store owners could find reasonably priced designs that they could teach, so they would have no need to infringe copyrights.

But this is not something one or two people can accomplish and without there being some strong support for it, failure would be a given.

I got carried away.

After the awesome support I recieved after my pattern was used without permission I got the idea people really wanted to do something about the unethical things that are going on.

Maybe that is true, maybe there are enough people willing to do something about it...I know there are three or four besides me. But something like this takes a lot more people than that, it's been tried before and failed and I'd bet my bead collection that it was due to the lack of support.

So...what's the solution?

How do we stop our designs from being used other than intended?

Well...the ethical among us will buy a commercial pattern if they even think they're going to use it for more than personal use, the unethical will buy as cheaply as they can and do as they please....thinking that either, no one will know or they won't be able to afford the legal fees to do anything about it.

Sadly, they are right, the law has not caught up to the new wave of self employed designers...and it will probably take a landmark case before it does.

Personally, I'm looking at just hiking my prices and making all my designs into "make to sell" tutorials.  It wrecks me to do that, because I really want the people who are honest to be able to buy a personal use pattern at a reasonable price.  The only way I can see around this is to have some kind of club discount for people I know are not going to violate personal use editions.

I put so much work into my patterns, I know every designer does, and yet it seems we have to defend our right to make our living from our hard work. Some designers do offer the rights for free....those people obviously have other areas of income. I'm actually sick of hearing that. To be honest, they don't help those of us who don't have other areas of income....just as the hobby beader selling her work for cost makes it hard for the professional beader who needs to charge a decent hourly rate for the work she does.

If you have to ask the question "Why can't I use your pattern to teach or sell?" Then I suggest you sit down, design something original, take good photographs of it, then write and illustrate the pattern, market it and then see how you feel when someone starts making money from it without your permission....copies it and undersells you, uses it to teach so they can sell beads, makes it up and puts it in a store on the same site as you for less money and you don't see a penny or even get credit for the design.

And if you don't have the talent/ability/skills to do that then please gain an appreciation for those that do and realise copyright theft takes food off the table of the independent designer.

No one deserves to make a living off the work of another individual without that individual's permission....I don't care who you are or what your sob story is.  Trust me, I have just as good a sob story as you.

I can see my followers diminishing as they read this but c'est la vie. I am struggling to make a living and if it weren't for my living with my mom I'd actually be homeless.  I need to take care of me, now and for the future, I know I have the talent and skills to do so, a passion for what I do and the willingness to work extremely hard for it.

But I get so depressed and disheartened by all the lack of integrity and ethics I feel like quitting frequently.

If you are a designer and/or you want to support a group effort for the rights of the designer and to give an ethical option to bead store owners let me know.