Afternoom folks; Got a bit of a question. Let me preface it with this little story. The wife is a bit of a crafter and sewer as well as a quilter and emroiderer. She has sewing machines that can just about run themselves (electronic) and some of these machines have emroidery capabilities. She buys a lot of embroidery software from folks on e-bay. Many of these folks sell original designs which they have digitized. Some offer original software from the embroidery software companies. Now to the question: I got a letter today from "Embroidery Software Protection Coalition" (www.embroideryprotection.org ) stating that my wife had bought so called pirated software (Bernina) from an e-bay seller. They are threatening legal action due to copyright violations. They state that she can make all this go away if she calls an 800 number and agrees to pay a damages fee. What do you folks think? She did not know that the software was pirated and thought the author of the sotware was the seller. Scam?
Sounds like a scam to me, did she know it was Pirated sofetware prior to buying it? if not then to me she bought it in good faith. What I would do though is check it out with a lawyer, I bet 0800 numbers are premium rate
Dunno about them but there is an article on them on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidery_Software_Protection_Coalition There is also quite a bit of info if you put "Embroidery Software Protection Coalition" into Google. Dunno what to tell you except I would take any threats of legal action seriously. Litigation can be monumentally expensive.
You may want to contact a lawyer and perhaps write back to them the good old fashioned snail way. Offer to send them the software and see what they say. Smells of a scam to me. They should be going after the SELLER not the BUYER.
"What if I am innocent and did not know the designs or software were counterfeit when I purchased the designs? It is your responsibility to investigate any designs or software that you purchased over the Internet or from online auctions and used. You must take steps to insure that they are legitimate original embroidery designs or software, not pirated copies." That's a load of cr@p. I'd ignore these fools, they're fishing. Make them put a lot more effort into proving you did something wrong. Of course my advice is coming from someone who thinks that "out of court settlement" means the plaintiff disappears..
Thanks for the input guys. No the wife did not know that the software in question was pirated. What she bought was a memory card from a seller...lots of the older designs (Brother, Bernina) are on small memory cards. I think you could liken this situation to a person who goes to Amazon.com and buys a used book. It's not like I'm going to take the book, once recieved, and duplicate it and then offer the duplicated copies for sale. same applies here...it was for her own personal use.
