Copyright Infringement and how it affects everybody.

• We are NOT affiliated in any way with sellers of CDs or DVDs featuring PDFs and web site links to hundreds or thousands of projects.
  
  November 18, 2008 - (revised Nov 23, 2008) There are some people online that are selling cd's and dvd's (or any other media) that contain free woodworking plans and links to woodworking plans. The content contained within the product(s) that these people are selling is copyright protected and they are most likely selling without permission from the respective copyright holders. Copyright holders range from individuals, company's, corporate entities, educational and government institutions.
  
  Some of the content on these products will direct you to plans on our web sites, and most of the plans are pay plans like those found in our online store. People who bought the cd's are expecting free plans so when they land at our web pages and see the plans cost money, they are mad. They express their anger onto us because they think we are the company who sold them the cd/dvd. They assume we are the seller because the web site links send them to our site. So we have to place this disclaimer on our Copyright Policy page to prevent "guilty by association" which many people automatically assume.
  
  We simply do not have the financial resources to go after the hundreds of people who are selling these cds/dvds and torrents online. So we feel the best way to confront this issue is to educate the public using a highly visible link to this web page.
  
  If you bought a cd or dvd that promotes "hundreds" or "thousands" of plans, then you most likely bought one of the products we are discussing here. You basically paid for information that is freely available online. This web site and our associated web site, www.FreeWoodworkingPlan.com lists much of the information and more, that is found on those cd's. The difference is we work with the web sites who offer the free information by promoting their information free of charge. We do not, and never will, charge for accessing this free information.
  
  There are very few companies (if any) that can offer a cd with hundreds of free woodworking plans. There is not one company we know of, and we now a lot of people and companies in the industry, that offers such a product containing such free information. Its simply not cost effective.
  
  In all the cases we have seen so far, people who are selling cd's or dvd's featuring all sorts of free information have this typical format: the product contains html pages or PDF's of free plans they found online, and a list of links where to find other plans (free or fee). We know one in particular that lists thousands of our web site links. So, if you get the product and see some of the links that point to www.WoodworkersWorkshop.com then you bought a product that is first, illegal, and second, bought from a person who is infringing on copyright. We have not authorized any individual or company to issue a product that contains our links.
  
  As we recommend to anybody who may have fallen victim to purchasing such product, we recommend you report this person to your Better Business Bureau, local authorities, your credit card company. And while on the phone with your credit card company, ask for your money back. If you bought it on eBay, file a report with eBay about the seller selling a product that infringes on copyright. If you bought it through PayPal.com's payment service, file a claim with PayPal. If you bought it through Google Checkout, file a claim with Google. All of these services offer links to reporting fraudulent activity through the use of their credit card processing systems. Its the only way to stop copyright infringement.
  
  One final note, tell all your friends and contacts to avoid such products online.

For individuals and companies that are suffering from copyright loss, I will list resources and methods to report violators below. Choose one or all methods that are appropriate to your situation.

• U.S. Copyright Office http://www.copyright.gov/
• eBay Reporting Intellectual Property Infringements - http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/vero-rights-owner.html
• PayPal Acceptable Use Policy - refer to "Prohibited Activites" section 2(f) and "Violations of Acceptable Use Policy" http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/use/index_frame-outside
• Google and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act http://www.google.com/dmca.html
• If you can prove that your copyright is being infringed upon and you see that the seller of the product is promoting Google Adsense service, please visit this page at Google Adsense Help: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=9894
• YouTube has a page for reporting violations of copyright http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55774

If you agree or disagree with our efforts to educate the public on copyright infringement and would like to add your unedited comments below, please feel free to contact Jim Barry.

• February 17, 2009, Lisa Hernandez writes:
  I just wanted to say that i agree with you that people should not sell a disk of "free" plans and than link to sites where you then have to pay for those plans. This fall under false advertisement. I will say that if they want to put together a list of plans that are actually free that can be of some value to people who are not so good at finding such things themselves. I have seen one person who did such a thing and made very clear that all plans could be found for free on-line and even credited the places and or people where the plans were found. This disk cost $2 plus shipping (which is about the cost of the disk itself). If you are going to compile a list of products you should be very clear on what is offered,and credit the creators of the work. If you are thinking about purchasing a compiled list do not be afraid to ask questions and for clarification on what you will receive. Any seller not willing to give you this information should be avoided. If you do not get what you should have gotten do not just feel stupid, report it immediately. Free things can only remain free so long as the company can afford to give them away.
• December 28, 2008, Les Kenny - Auckland, New Zealand writes:
  I have had contact with Jim for a number of years. I am pleased to see that he is making an effort to curb copyright theft and I support everything that Jim is doing. I have a website where I publish (for free) a lot of my own woodworking plans and it is not uncommon to find them being sold on Ebay or such places either separately (by unauthorized people) or bundled with other peoples plans. I also get reports on a weekly basis of other websites copying (stealing) my material. The fight to stop it is neverending but I think that it is important to try to do something and not just throw it in the 'to hard' basket. I agree with other comments, we all need to pitch in and "do the right thing".
  Sincerley
  Les Kenny
  www.buildeazy.com
• December 16, 2008, John Summerfield, Australia writes:
  About copyright. ...Copyright exists to preserve to the creator of a work the right to make copies of it. Therefore, I am not permitted to clone your website or to copy any article on in.
  In addition to the creation of a work, there may be other rights involved under the head Copyright. For example, in music. The composer may have rights, and so does the arranger, the performers, the choreographer and maybe people involved in recording it (so the sound engineers).
  However, a set of facts does not comprise a work, although their presentation might.
  A list of links, such as you have on your website, probably does not include the creative content required for copyright to arise. However, your presentation and your annotations of those links likely does, but if you merely collate others' descriptions, maybe not.
  Now, suppose I did incorporate the information on your website (along with information from other sources), and if you sued me in an Australian court, you would be expected to show that I'd caused you harm, and least for the purpose of establishing damages. Since you give the information away, it might be hard to establish damages.
  I could mount an argument that I'm providing a service on terms acceptable to me and to my clients. If I do something that ads value to the information I glean from the Internet, why should I not be compensated. Free is nice, but somebody has to pay my expenses.
  I use free software. The term "free software" does not necessarily mean it's free of charge, it refers to my freedom to do as I want with it, including redistribute it on terms acceptable to me and to my clients. I know you're familiar with software that is "just given away" because your website runs Apache web server and that _is_ just given away. You can download it yourself from www.apache.org or, combined with other software, from www.debian.org. www.opensuse.org and lots of other places, and you can even pay good money to Red Hat or Novell to have it included as part of your enterprise-grade Linux system. Those folk at www.centos.org even have the cheek to take the source code to Red Hat's Enterprise Linux, build, package and distribute it themselves.
  Do you think Red Hat is troubled by this? It's not, provided that it's made clear to users that they are not getting Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  What those folk at CentOS are doing is exactly what Red Hat is doing - scouring the Internet (or a small part of it) looking for good software for redistribution, adding value by packaging it and improving it (eg by fixing bugs), and in the case of Enterprise Linux, charging for supplying it (and supporting it).
  You can find out more about free software from www.fsf.org, and download some really good free software from www.mozilla.com and www.openoffice.org.
  The point you make about CDs being out of date before they're even burned is a good one, but so's the argument that, if I do that, I add value in the eyes of some users.
  What I think you should do is
  1. Include a clear copyright statement "Copyright 2008 Free Woodworking Plans."
  2. Describe the terms under which data might be copied. It might be, "All copying prohibited," but that seems to defeat the purpose. Maybe, "Copying for personal use by individuals is permitted. Copying for educational purposes by accredited educational institutions is permitted. All permitted copying must credit Free Woodworking Plans. All other copying without written permission is prohibited."
  I find your current claim of copyright is unclear - a prohibition on copying a free plan for a friend seems contrary to the intent of the site.
  Finally, whether you plan on going after offenders or not, don't make a fuss over it. Doing so won't stop them, and it just makes your site less attractive to your users.
  John Summerfield
  (email address removed at posters request)
  Jim Barry replied: - Hi,
  Regarding your comments on copyright, you seem well informed as well. The whole point of the page I put up at http://www.woodworkersworkshop.com/copyright-infringement.php was to offset the anger that is being directed to me from people who are buying these sort of Cd's and feel like they've been ripped off.
  I don't claim copyright to anybody's work other than my own. In regards to how someone uses my web site links on their cd/dvd products, if such a seller wants to take the time to click through the links on my site and use the actual links where the free plans are found, there's nothing I can do about that, nor, do I care. If no mention was made of my web sites on their products, I wouldn't even know the products exist. But if my web site links are on a product, they should not be used unless permission is first given by me. Just because something is found on the internet does not given a person the right to use it.
  If you are a seller of such product, I suppose the work you put into developing the product, collecting the information and providing the product for sale does cost, and maybe it does provide value to someone who may see it as a product of value. However, you will find that there are many people online, especially woodworking plan copyright holders, who take offense to someone gaining a profit from the promotion of their product without a residual in the profit making.
  I do have a copyright statement found at http://www.freewoodworkingplan.com/copyright.php
  -- Woodwork Safely,
  Jim Barry
• November 18, 2008, Don Firth - Toronto, Canada writes:
  A few years ago, I had a regular vistor to my site tell me he had found a similar DVD with a pile of my projects on it. He gave me the address/URL where he saw it. I went there and threatened, legal action etc. etc. The guy wrote back saying how sorry he was. And you see, "He had bought this collection from another guy and thought that guy owned it all and blah bah blah". He said he would remove my projects from his master disc. Yeah sure. . . . . An internet savvy friend told me if you're gonna take any legal action against this type of thing, you better be long on patience, time to waste, extreme effort & perseverance. Also you'll need a lot of cash and with the lack of international legal precidents (YIKES) it's a crapshoot at best. I felt it wasn't worth the effort and so I never did anything more about it.
  Don Firth - Toronto, Canada
  WEBSITE: http://www.grampasworkshop.net/
  EMAIL: donfirth@grampasworkshop.net
• November 18, 2008, Vicki H. in Maryland, USA writes:
  We all (woodworkers) need to pitch in and "do the right thing" by only using copyrighted plans we paid for or legitimate free plans offered on various web sites. There is no need to be greedy and try to get something for nothing as there is plenty of free help, assistance and plans to be had on the web legally. Sincerely, Vicki H. in Maryland, USA