Cabled Wine Bottle Cover and Copyright

Life can be very strange at times.

I was recently asked if I could re-work a pattern for a hot water bottle cover, to make it into a wine bottle cover. After thinking about it, I decided it was easier to simply design a wine bottle cover from scratch. And as you will be able to see from the previous post, that is exactly what I did.

Now comes the strange part. My rights as the author of the pattern, and the designer of the item have been infringed. Under copyright law, I hold the right to decide what to do with my writing. Sadly, it seems that a little company, Little Valley Winery has decided that copyright law does not apply to them. My pattern has somehow (magically?) arrived on their website, without any permissions being sought, or granted. It looks like this company simply lifts wine-related material from all over the web, and posts it on their website. Today's post seems to be directly lifted from an article in the Brisbane Times.

The business model seems to be based around the 'Amazon Associates' model. This is where you direct traffic to a commercial site, and the site pays you a percentage of what ever the person buys. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. But I do find it rather distasteful when it is accompanied by illegal activity, ie copyright infringement.

One glorious thing is that the website says on its DMCA page, "Little Valley Winery respects the intellectual property of others." To the slightly jaded individual, it might seem the respect given is based on the idea the words and work of others can be used for financial gain, and stuff the rights of others.

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Update: On the 5th of April 2011, Little Valley Winery emailed to say that the image, article and link had now been removed, and there should be no more issues.

My continuing issue is they broke the law and have not bothered to acknowledge their wrong-doing, nor apologise. They are continuing to do exactly the same thing to other people.