The Mandelbear's Musings

The End User: Sewing up new customers - International Herald Tribune

"My generation's problem is not a lack fashionable clothing, but the excess of mass consumption products," said Nora Abousteit, the hobby sewer of the two women. "We aim for conscious consumers who want to make their own unique clothing items."

To better understand those consumers, BurdaStyle has teamed up to share offices with Etsy.com, a Web site that helps people sell their handmade items.

For Abousteit - who earned money in high school selling hand-sewn hair bands - technology and handicrafts are following parallel trends within a sharing-based economy.

"Ours is an open-source approach to the sewing patterns," Abousteit said. "We removed copyright restrictions and actually encourage people to make money selling their improved versions over our own Web site."

The only requirement for people to use modified Burda patterns is to acknowledge the company as the source.

Removing copyright restrictions from the patterns that made Burda Moden money and fame was a move that required approval from Hubert Burda.

"Instead of opposing the removal of copyright," Burda "drew a parallel between sewing patterns and the music industry," she said. "He said we should not make the same mistakes as record companies did with copy restrictions."

(From Techdirt who also point to their coverage of a New York Times article that points out that the fashion industry gets along perfectly well without patent or copyright protection.

Good article on intellectual "property" in The Guardian

The difference between ideas and things is obvious as soon as someone hits you over the head with an idea - so obvious that until recently it was entirely clear to the law. Things could have owners and ideas could not. Yet this simple distinction is being changed all around us. Ideas are increasingly treated as property - as things that have owners who may decide who gets to use them and on what terms.