Tabberone Banned From S + S Forums!

The "we" reference is not the editorial "we" but refers to Karen and Mike as we both do these web pages. When a web site page suddenly gets a large number of page views we like to go to the referring blog and see what is being said. Sense and Sensibility Patterns has a blog/forum where interested parties can talk about sewing and other related topics. Someone opened a thread titled, Copyright Laws, new information** with several links to the Tabberone web pages for the Trademark And Copyright Abusers' Hall Of Shame, The Craft Sites web page, and the Etsy web page. We noted that a couple of the posts were making claims that we found to be in error. So we joined the forum and we posted two responses. The first response was posted Monday, April 2. The second response was posted Tuesday morning, April 3. Just 30 minutes later, Tuesday morning, the thread had been closed and Tabberone was officially "banned" from the forums.

THREAD MOVED 4/3/2012 Thread CLOSED 4/3/2012 Thread closed pending moderator discussion.

We did not get an email informing us as to what heinous crime we had committed. And, since we could not sign in, we had no idea what else had been said. Alas, we will not be deterred. We have a copy of the closed thread titled, Copyright Laws, new information**. Not only have the omnipotent powers at Sense and Sensibility Patterns closed the thread and banned Tabberone, they deleted the two posts we made. Talk about censorship! Not even Etsy has gone that far. And the Esty Misinformation Mavens really, really hate Tabberone. To make matters worse, the entire thread has been deleted on or about April 12, 2012. More on that below.

What we present here is our annotated version of the closed thread titled, Copyright Laws, new information**, as it existed on the Sense and Sensibility Patterns web site as of the morning of Wednesday, April 4, 2012. The original thread appears on the left side, unedited, except for the elimination of the two posts that were posted by Tabberone. To the right side, in BLUE font, are our comments to the general sniping and what are distortions as to what we have said on our web site and false claims made by the posters. The thread appears to have been started Sunday, April 1, 2012 at NOON. We are guessing it is Pacific Time because even though the server is in Provo, Utah, Elizabeth Stewart Clark resides in Idaho and she seems to be an integral part of at least the Sense and Sensibiltiy Forums if not the site itself. We have not edited this thread in any manner. We have formatted it to make more readable. The only editing of this thread is the elimination of the two posts that were posted by Tabberone. Sense and Sensibility Patterns did that. Our second posting was around 0730am their time and the thread was closed some 30 minutes later.

Particularly galling are the posts by Frances Grimble, of Lavolta Press. Frances, no relation to the talking mule Frances, prints and sells books and patterns so her bias is very obvious. As is her total lack of understanding as to what we say on our web site. She constantly misstates what we say and what we understand. We think her "misunderstandings" of our knowledge and our position on infringement are deliberate. To us, that makes her a liar. We would characterize her as being "stuck on stupid". She makes a number of statements that we directly refute with quotes from copyright law and court cases. Her village of San Francisco has a completely qualified idiot in her. Frances Grimble talking about copyright issues is funny. Her books, which are simply repackaged and republished patterns, fashion information, and a pattern grading system, from old fashion magazines that are out of copyright. A number of the posts refer to our tone on the web site. Janel said:

Even if they are correct, I find them offensive. I'm struggling to get past the offensiveness.

Carol refers to the "spirit of the writing is less than kind" on the Tabberone web pages but tries to understand why while conceding that it is "terribly unfortunate this lady [Tabberone] is speaking with such vile" on the Tabberone web pages. But it appears that their objections to our "offensiveness" on the web site became grounds for personal attacks as opposed to debating the issues. And we are familiar with this tactic. Those who do not agree often go after our tone first, content second. Being nice has never gotten anyone anything. Do we call people names? Yes, we do. And in our opinion, they deserve it. Not all pattern designers and pattern manufacturers lie. Nor do all pattern designers and pattern manufacturers necessarily know they are lying. But those who do not really know that they are lying are guilty of having an agenda that does not allow them to reasonably look at the truth. They like what they believe and they do not want information or dialog to the contrary. That makes them liars and we call them liars. If people are offended they need to get real.