Explaining PinDIY - The piracy site

[Saturn455]

Hello ribblrians! Today is a bit of a serious topic, PinDIY

This is a very big piracy site that steals many, many patterns. Usually only PDFs.

For the past month and a half, I have been DMing crocheters on Instagram who sell PDF patterns, hoping they can take action to get their pattern removed from the site.

However, I have noticed that rarely a pattern does get removed, because this is confusing sit for people to navigate.

I determined that this is because of two things

1. This site is confusing to use for many people, even to creating an account to earn “pins” is difficult
2. Not a lot of crocheters know about this site and/or have no idea that their patterns are being pirated

Below are 5 dropdowns: how PinDIY works, the history of me using PinDIY, how you can help/making an account to remove the stolen patterns, the one example I have found of a creator attempting to remove their pattern, and all the creators I have DMed so far.

The point of this post is to actually take down PinDIY and prevent them from stealing patterns by teaching others how to. I noticed that just me DMing creators on Insta isn’t helping, as many don’t respond to me or just don’t know how to get rid of the patterns.

How PinDIY works

Now I haven’t gotten this fully figured out, but I know most of it

It starts with an account, which anyone can make, and then the system of ‘pins’ and ‘credits’
Pins are the “currency” of the site and are what allows you to “purchase patterns”
Credits are “earned” when you get some amount of pins. I’m not exactly sure what credits do, or how they work, but on their parent site, Pinebk, you can sign up and get 200 credits to get 2000 pins. Of course, getting credits means getting pin on PinDIY first. It may be related to the ‘level’ of your account, as some posts are restricted to people with a high enough level.

You can get pin by doing pretty much anything on the site. Visiting another “space”, aka a different tab like the “Crochet section” “Knitting section”, etc

In “The Attempt” dropbox, for example, I got 1 pin for visiting another space.

There is the daily 10 pin which you get by visiting the site everyday

You can also get 10 pin by replying to other’s topics, saying “Thank you very much!” or “Thank you!!”, which is why you’ll find many of these replies underneath topics.

There is a wait of about 20 seconds in order for the site to actually give you pins.

But the way to get the most pin is to post a pattern and set the price, with the most common being 150 pin. There has been a trend of patterns costing 333 pin, but that might just be one specific person doing it.
An example post:

There is also a “Bounty” section, where people can put up a post requesting a pattern and giving the other person a minimum of 500 pin if they put up a post with the pattern and answer the bounty.

If someone posts a pattern that has been posted before, the post would be “recycled” or deleted by the section moderators.

My history with PinDIY

Now this began when I was looking for a specific pattern, CraftingInGlory’s big unicorn pattern. I was foolishly looking for a way to get it for free, as this was a while ago, when I didn’t understand the weight of pirating patterns. I finally found it on PinDIY, but was confused on what a ‘pin’ was and gave up. I never pirated/tried to pirate another pattern. Of course, later on, I realized how awful it was to pirate patterns and how it steals so much from pattern designers who don’t deserve it anyway.
A couple of months later, I was looking for more patterns from TinyClove, as I love their patterns of Pokémon and wanted to see what other free Pokémon patterns they made. But, I noticed a weird thing, there were two images of the pattern, one linking to TinyClove’s official site, and one linking to PinDIY again.
This was the point where I decided to do something:
Figure out how this site works, and take the patterns down.

I then realized that the only way to get it removed was to report the post and hope it gets taken down, which barely works as one report won’t get noticed by the PinDIY team.

How you can help

I’m not sure if you have to create an account to report patterns, but on the posts themselves, there is a button near the replies section where you can report the post for illegal content.

I’m sure if we spam reports on a lot of patterns, we should be able to get at least ONE taken down.

The Attempt

There was only one time when I saw a creator reaching out to their followers to get their pattern removed, and that was TheCrochetGinger making a story to get her followers to report the pattern. But, this got her IP banned from the site and was unable to check if it actually got removed. Spoiler, it did not. I did find a comment from the poster of the pattern responding to TheCrochetGinger, and they said “Hell nah vro”

This is their account, and it appears they created it solely to post the pattern.

All of the creators I have DMed

Sphinx crochet - didn’t respond

WildCrochetbyChristin - didn’t respond

HollysYarnCreations - didn’t respond

AvalonCrochets - responded, said thank you, posts still up

GheeBeans Crafty - responded, said thank you, posts still up

KrochetbyKris - didn’t respond

Lulablues - responded, knows about the issue, is working with legal team

Y2k Crochet - responded, posted a story, post still up

1UpCrochet - didn’t respond

Green Frog Crochet - responded, said they were going to report posts, 240+ posts still up

VinCrafty - responded, wasn’t sure how to remove them, posts still up

9Tenz - responded, posted a story, said thank you, post still up

• Their first pattern too

Jojilie - didn’t respond

MegMakesCrochet - didn’t respond

LoveLoopsgb - responded, said thank you, wasn’t sure what to do abt it

While I can’t link the site as it violates the TOS of Ribblr, just look up PinDIY and the site should pop up

If there are any posts you want help with taken down, put the name in the replies below

[TangerineQueen]

I reported that pattern!

[FrogOnAMushroom]

should we report all patterns we see on the site, or are there specific ones to target?

[Saturn455]

You can look up your favorite creators and see if they have stolen patterns
If you want, you can try and report all of them, but there are thousands of stolen patterns, so this is a general information post

[gizmo705ok]

Thank you for putting so much effort into this post. I’m sure it will be a great asset to many pattern designers.

[Elnonidenoni]

Its really great how you’re trying to help with this! I hope it works, I feel so angry when someone steals anothers pattern!!

[Saturn455]

We can also use this post to report patterns we want taken down