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Source: http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2006/9/11/82110/2869 June 29, 2008 - Content has not been altered except to reformat removing advertising.

Embroidering On a Copyright Shakedown Theme By Ed Foster, Section The Gripelog Posted on Mon Sep 11, 2006 at 08:21:10 AM PDT

A grandmother sits in her sewing room and reads a letter that threatens her with $100,000 lawsuits if she doesn't admit to copyright infringement and pay a $300 fine. Not only might she have no clue as to what she did wrong, she could in fact only be a victim of copyright piracy, not a perpetrator. Unfortunately, this is a scene that, with slight variations, has played out again and again across the country, and it's time we take notice before the copyright lawyers fleece us all. The people, grandmothers and otherwise, who are receiving these letters are embroidery fans who own computer-aided equipment to stitch from digitized designs. The letter states that it is a legal notice - and "not an advertisement, solicitation, or a scam" as one might assume -- from the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition (ESPC). The ESPC, after an investigation including records recently obtained from eBay or eBay resellers, has determined that the recipient has "purchased and utilized counterfeit and pirated embroidery designs online ... and that these pirated copies of embroidery designs are in your possession, all in violation of the Federal Copyright Act." The letter goes on to state that, under federal law, civil damages "may be $30,000.00 per design, not per CD. Additionally, the Court has discretion to increase the amount of statutory damages to $150,000.00 for each Copyright violated if the infringement was willful." After a few more threats, the ESPC allows that the organization is willing to resolve the matter if the recipient will agree to send the ESPC the pirated designs, promise not to buy illegal copies of embroidery designs in the future, and "pay a nominal monetary sum to the ESPC for your past wrongful conduct." Although the ESPC's letterhead says it is based in Pennsylvania, a Texas phone number is provided to call for an "informal discussion in lieu of judicial action." Anyone getting such a letter would naturally be somewhat suspicious, but - if you had ever purchased embroidery machine designs on eBay - you also might be rather alarmed. "At first I thought someone was maybe scamming me," says a woman who received the letter in late July. "I decided I could just clear it up by calling the number -- stupid me. They informed me that the CD they were talking about was one with a few flower designs that I'd purchased for $10 on eBay over a year ago. And they said I had to pay $300 'restitution' or they would file suit against me! As I haven't been doing much embroidery over the last year, I explained to them that I'd never used that disk except to check to see if my computer could read it when it first arrived. They persisted in saying I was guilty of copyright infringement even if I hadn't used the designs and they were going to send me a statement I was supposed to sign and send back along with a check for $300." One of the odd things about the ESPC letters is that they contain little or no information about which allegedly infringement CD was purchased, making it all the harder for the recipient to know what to make of it. "The first letter I received at the end of July did not indicate what I had purchased - it was only after I made the phone call that they verbally told me what it was a set of a few dozen bird designs I bought 15 months ago," says another woman. She had paid about $20 for the designs that she wound up not using because she didn't like them very much. "Apparently the ESPC is suing the person I bought them from on eBay. I don't know if she's guilty of copyright infringement or not, but how can they say I purchased illegal designs if they haven't even proven the person I bought them from did something wrong? Who makes the ESPC the judge and jury? And the seller's name is the only trademark or registration that appears on the design screens I see, so how could I be expected to know if they are pirated?" On its website <http://www.embroideryprotection.org/faqs.html>, the ESPC states repeatedly that the very act of purchasing an infringing product is itself an infringement punishable by law. That's certainly news to me, as I was under the impression that violating a copyright usually involved making or distributing a copy, not just buying something that turns out to counterfeit. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, but if the design CDs these two women had were bootleg copies, I would consider them victims, not criminals. "The ESPC says they are just following what the music industry has been doing to those who download copyrighted music," says the buyer of the bird designs. "But I wasn't sharing or distributing these designs to others. I simply paid for a CD on eBay - nothing popped up and said 'hey, you're making an illegal purchase.' I still don't know if it was. If a store sells what appears to be brandname purses that are actually knockoffs, would it be OK to go after the unknowing buyers and demand a $300.00 payment from them?" That does seem to be what the ESPC is saying. It's a pretty scary concept when you consider the growing frequency of all manner of intellectual property lawsuits and the fact that even the biggest companies sometimes lose those cases. Does that make all their customers criminals? In the meantime, though, hundreds or maybe thousands of recipients of the ESPC letters have to figure out whether they should pay up or not, and $300 is by no means a "nominal monetary sum" for some of them. "I'm 64 years old, retired due to loss of my job of 25 years after the company downsized, and am now collecting Social Security," the flower CD buyer says. "If you can do anything to help the plight of the aging grannies like me caught up in this mess, we would appreciate it. If not I guess I will give up embroidering completely and bake cookies. Although I suppose there might be a cookie mafia out there somewhere too." Well, I think the main thing I can do to aid the recipients of these letters is to shed as much light as I can on the situation. Tomorrow I'll post what I've been able to find out so far about the ESPC's campaign, including the question of just where the ESPC is getting its information about these buyers' eBay purchases.