Hey guys. Sorry for making another post, but I feel like this is important. A while ago, a user of the lounge chat (I think it was @craftycellist, but I’m not quite sure. Like I said, it was a while ago.) brought the lounge chat a website called Scribd, with a BUNCH of likely stolen crochet patterns. We ran this whole operation, finding patterns and contacting the original pattern creators, a lot of whom were on Ribblr. It was pretty successful, and we got a few patterns taken down. The website was brought back up when Mercy found one of HER patterns on there. I decided it was time to take this out of the lounge chat, and bring this to everyone’s attention. It would be absolutely amazing if we could start a movement, finding stolen patterns and contacting their creators. Of course, we wouldn’t want to spam a pattern creator’s PMs, so one contactor per pattern, please. What do you think?
Yes! Peoples patterns shouldn’t be stolen, regardless if they’re free or paid! I’m too lazy for this but I wish you luck!
maybe note it down, and if the person does it again, maybe block the user from future chats? that app is for world documents, so multiple replicas might’ve been on there or the person / people who added those forgot to credit? that is not okay though.
I don’t quite understand. The people here won’t make profits off of the pattern there, since someone else took screenshots of their pattern and put it up for free on Scribd, so I don’t quite get what you mean?
omg especially red mills crochet, can someone contact her bc i don’t have socials?
I just looked at it. It says “uploaded” which makes me think that people on the website are stealing the patterns themselves. I do think we should get these people/bots banned. Or at least get all of these stolen patterns off.
Despite most of them being free, it should not be allowed. It’s unacceptable that these patterns are being uploaded without permission from the creator.
They are!!! There are paid patterns on there that the original creator had no idea were there! That was made clear when we contacted them. We can report them, though.
Yes. I’ll definitely help as long as you don’t turn me into lemon zest for pizza..
I agree! Unfortunately this will be rlly hard to locate unless the person who got their pattern stolen can locate their own patterns. I know the woobles have all their patterns on their but I don’t think we can get that down. Best of luck tho!
I want to help but I don’t know what the parameters regarding stolen are. For example I wrote my own pattern when I started crocheting for a hat and I found out a few weeks later that someone else had a very similar pattern on a different website than ribblr (theirs was posted first). I didn’t copy, I didn’t edit a copy, but I feel bad for keeping my pattern up when theirs is so similar and they had theirs first. Also with, for example, all these bee patterns, how different can they get? They all have a similar result so how do you know if your pattern is the same as someone’s? I understand the issue, I just don’t know how to help without messing up or something. I just wish this issue didn’t exist. It’s not that hard to just give credit to someone.
A lot of the time, they’re just screenshots/pdf of someone else’s pattern. Not even rewritten. And it’s genuinely stealing, especially since there are a lot of paid patterns on there.
@StellaStitches are you aware that a bunch of yours are on that website? I took a look and found some that were under some name that started with an A, Amanda I think, and I was like ‘huh’
I volunteer to be a detective on the case of stolen patterns.
Yay!!!
I haven’t written a pattern however, on here could pattern creators start using a watermark with their name across it? It would at least prevent the picture being used right?
I don’t think that’s possible on Ribblr… it would be cool tho!
I did! But I never got a response
I agree this is becoming an issue. If you remember I sent a bunch of creators messages but haven’t gotten a response yet
Would definitely help, was in the lounge chat when the website was initially was brought up, and just checked the website in the last 3 months about 11,600 “crochet” were added with about 1,000 just in the last week.
I do remember you being there… and gosh, that’s not okay.