Design Sharing - It's Piracy

I just wanted to discus a very contentious issue with digitizers and that is design sharing. Design sharing or giving the designs you have paid for to friends, family, groups etc is illegal and is a form of piracy which is a federal offence.

It is all too often that someone will forward to thier friends the download links that they purchase and accidently hit reply instead of forward. From a digitizers perspective - this is just heart breaking. I can not talk for other digitizers but only myself.

I run Bunnycup Embroidery and digitize designs on my own. Bunnycup Embroidery is not a multi-national huge company but a privately owned business. In doing so, I pay very significant prices for artwork licensing and other business costs, these costs in total run into the hundred's of thousands of dollars a year. Not only that, but as it is a privately owned at home business, I personally sacrifice a great deal including family time, weekends, night times and any personal time to create this business.

By sharing designs, Bunnycup Embroidery is effectively robbed of a sale. This results in less income to cover the very significant business costs and makes my personal time in growing the business worthless. In the long run it will also result in price increases as sales are reduced.

Please bear this in mind when you offer to share designs and remember it is illegal. It breaks my heart when I find out (and I find out all too often) that people are illegally sharing our designs or even illegally reselling them. It also breaks my heart to have to post about situations like this. Design sharing is not fair, and offence, basically stealing and if serious enough be aware that we will take legal action.