theft update
I have a partial victory! Although I have no control over how many hundreds or thousands of people have already downloaded my patterns without paying, I have contacted the websites where my stolen work had been uploaded, and, in both cases, the pattern has now been removed. Yay!
Of course, I have no idea how many other sites that I’m not aware of also have copies of my patterns on display – I have tried googling and only found the two that are no longer available, so fingers crossed this may be it for now.
Thank you to everyone who has commented – either on the blog or by e-mail – with sympathy and suggestions. I hope this doesn’t happen to anyone else. (Incidentally, the thief who targeted me obviously didn’t care about my copyright notices which are printed at the bottom of each page of all my patterns – they were still present in the ripped-off copies!)
I don’t have a photo to go with this post, so I thought I’d show off some of the fuzzies from the Fuzzy Friends flickr group:
ClinkscalesArts has made this lovely bear (from the Fuzzy Bear pattern):
Capps83 made this monkey for a lucky co-worker (from the Fuzzy Monkeys pattern):
Hildeguard based her Inspector Mole on the Mini Fuzzies Woodland Creatures pattern – love that magnifying glass!
I’d love to see what else you’ve been making from my patterns – please feel free to show off your creations by uploading them to my Flickr groups, Fuzzy Friends and AmiDogs!
Kari said
Oh, you know what I forgot to mention? You should think about watermarking your photos, as well as possibly making your PDF’s un-alterable. (Not sure, did they erase your name and copyrights of the pages?)
I’m glad you got a partial resolution, even though there’s no way to know how much they cost you in calculatable dollars. I hope the craft world can come up with ways of dealing with this sort of theft, I’d hate to think it’ll just keep going on and on.
myra said
Oh my gosh! I was so sorry to read this. I’m glad to hear that they at least removed the patterns. This kind of thing has been on my mind A LOT lately. I hope this never happens to you again.
Mindy said
I totally agree with Kari. There are some really good online tuts that can teach you how to do that.
I am so sorry sweetie!