p2pnet.net News:- "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."

Yet another Big Four Organized Music screw-up? After all, they go after 12-year-old children and dead Vietnam pilots.

But not this time. And the person in question isn’t a deceased grannie accused by the Big Four’s RIAA of improperly distributing music online.

Instead, "The people, grandmothers and otherwise, who are receiving these letters are embroidery fans who own computer-aided equipment to stitch from digitized designs," continues Ed Foster on his Gripelog.

But the Big Four’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) does come into it, albeit at a tangent.

"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)," says Gripelog. "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’."

Not the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA)?

Foster has a lot more to say on this travesty, but towards the end comes the bit which caught our eye, and it reads:

"The ESPC says they are just following what the music industry has been doing to those who download copyrighted music," according to an ESPC victim.

And a subsequent Gripelog post goes into matters of eBay privacy, to wit:

"Of course, the eBay and PayPal privacy polices say they will provide your information to respond to subpoenas and other legal requests. (Actually, the eBay and PayPal privacy policies practically give them the right to sell your financial information on street corners, but let’s not get into that now.) But that still leave yet one more question: Shouldn’t eBay notify customers when information about their transactions is being subpoenaed? There is no legal requirement that eBay do so, their spokesperson told me, and eBay prefers not to insert itself in the middle of a legal process where it would not have all the answers to the questions customers would ask when given such notification.

"That doesn’t strike me as much of an answer, either. Sure, eBay has no desire to get involved in intellectual property disputes, and they obviously know from experience that ESPC is a litigious outfit. But these are eBay and PayPal customers who are receiving these legal threats instead, some of whom have done absolutely nothing wrong ……."

But none of this stuff on eBay is surprising. Way back, p2pnet carried an item in which we pointed out PayPal is owned by eBay, "which doesn’t seem to care a great deal where users’ privacy is concerned. eBay, associates and interested parties get to see ‘confidential’ PayPal customer records – name, address, phone number, bank account info, credit card info, and so on.

"And eBay is willing to give investigators everything it knows about visitors to its web site, states Joe Sullivan, its director of ‘law enforcement and compliance’. All they have to do is ask."

Meanwhile, the ESPC should worry about seeing the RIAA on its case, claiming stylistic violations.

"The ESPC targets those persons whom violate our members’ copyrights and will continue to fight the pirates," it declares on its site. "So while sailing the high seas of the internet, be careful of the Pirates… they are there lurking and waiting for you."

Roll over Cary Sherman ;p

Also See:
Gripelog – Embroidering On a Copyright Shakedown Theme, September 11, 2006
Gripelog – Embroidery Piracy and EBay/PayPal Privacy, September 12, 2006