Knitters versus the BBC
Or maybe that should be the BBC versus knitters.
If you hang around the same knitting groups I do, you'll have come across this Angel Knits thread, and this Ravelry one.
And now even the BBC itself is posting about it.
The BBC article does seem really quite fair from my understanding of the story: it refers to the "unscrupulous" other people who were using Mazzam's patterns. (I think their legal team have checked it very throughly.)
The essence of the story is that Mazzam created a pattern for knitted Adipose babies from the first episode of the current season of Dr Who and posted it on her website. Then someone started selling copies of the pattern on ebay, and I think Mazzam complained to ebay and the patterns were removed. After that the BBC got in touch with Mazzam etc etc. My guess is the ebay seller shopped her to the BBC, but who knows?
FWIW, the nice thing about Dr Who is that I always see the latest episode within 24 hours of its' first showing. I never need to worry about spoilers on the net, unlike almost every other sci-fi program I watch.
2 comments:
We saw this and thought it utterly ridiculous. Perhaps the bbc should have written to the ebay seller, for starters she was selling things made from a pattern she had not right to use commercially, but to target the person who put the pattern on the net is so silly. Unless the bbc put free patterns on their website I cannot see the harm it has done. My son loves Dr Who, but all this commercialism and talk of money leaves a nasty taste in the mouth...
The good news is that all the hoo-ha seems to have led to some kind of pattern writing commission for Mazzam. She's been asking for suggestions of patterns she could write and for test-knitters.
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