Cut’n’Copy Letter to the BBC

Dear BBC,

I am writing to you about the knitted Adipose baby pattern that you ordered to be taken off the Internet because you were worried about how its presence online may affect your commercial interests.

As a knitter and general fan of cultural commentary and civic participation, I have to officially disagree with your decision to have the pattern designer publically penalised in this way and to have her creativity censored because of overly-protective sentiments relating to your commercial interests.

While I understand your need to protect your copyright and all things relating to Dr Who, it is arguable that the individual sale of some items on ebay is unlikely to damage your commercial interests as much as the change in public opinion you may illicit if you are seen to discourage the ingenuity of your audience.

Instead of removing the means of production (ie the pattern) from the public domain (the Internet) in order to protect your interests, why not entertain the possibility of licensing and distributing the means of production as well as the product itself? As a fan of Dr Who who knits, I can confidently say that while I would be only too happy to invest in a pattern book full of Ood and Adipose patterns, I am unlikely to ever desire or purchase a ‘plushy.’

In producing a pattern-book in conjunction with the talented designer who devised the Adipose baby pattern, Mazzmatazz would presumably receive the deserved payment that she never got – or sought – when she published the pattern for free and put it up online for other knitters to utilise.

In my opinion you have *both* been exploited by the commercial use of Mazzmatazz’ patterns on ebay and instead of censoring her pattern and her website, I think it would make more sense for you to devise, together, ways of protecting both of your interests and the interests of your devoted, knitting fanbase.

I do not want to have to think of the BBC as a censorius institution, frightened of the creativity of its viewers – rather as a National, cultural institution that moves with the times and responds to the wishes and innovations of its audience.

For this reason I am petitioning you to find an amicable way for Mazzmatazz’ Adipose baby pattern to become available to the public again in a form that will prevent the future exploitation of either party’s commendable, creative efforts.

Please publish the pattern in a way that acknowledges the creativity of the pattern designer as well as the BBC’s ownership of the Dr Who ‘Brand.’ In your constitution it is stated that you want to stimulate creativity and cultural excellence. In my opinion, publishing a book of patterns in response to the evident talent of one of your fans does exactly this, whilst insisting on the removal of her pattern from the public domain does not.

Yours Sincerely,
Felicity Ford.

You can copy and paste sections of this letter to the BBC into their comments box. I am still searching for a proper postal address and an email address to which printed letters can be sent; if you have either, please leave them in the comments box.

“We need to recognise that there is a difference between selling knock-off hand-bags in the market, and fans who are making tributes and contributing to creativity in the future.”

– Becky Hogge, the executive director of the Open Rights Group

For those of you who know nothing of the current Dr Who/knitting fan fiasco, here’s a brief intro. Mazzmatazz (knitter extraordinaire and something of a Dr Who Uberfan,) posted her own-design knitting pattern for a knitted Adipose baby (from the Dr Who series) up on her website for other knitting Dr Who fans to use in recreating their own, cute, knitted Adipose figures. Her pattern – designed, written out and annotated by Mazzmatazz and released under a creative commons license for non-commercial use – was then adopted by someone who started profiting from the designs on ebay. The BBC promptly ordered Mazzmatazz to take the pattern down from her website and people everywhere are now debating what this kind of legal case represents in terms of creativity, fandom and copyright.

My favourite blog-post so far relating to the scandal is this one here, which argues eruditely around the various issues pertaining to Copyrights and Copywrongs. The Open Rights Group have also put togther an interesting article relating to the whole affair while the BBC have written their own summary of events. Relevantly, an interesting catalogue of ‘Art killed by the copyright that was supposed to protect it’ can additionally be viewed here.

I agree wholeheartedly with other commentators on the point that organisations like the BBC who have a public service remit ought to have a role in stimulating the creative economy by allowing creators, designers and thinkers to remix and revise its content, and I think that ordering the patterns to be taken down goes explicity against this cultural role. The exchange between mass media and fan response is a huge part of how we currently deduce meanings from the world around us. In the case of a Dr Who fan making a knitting pattern based on the show, there is kind of a viral-advertising or free, promotional aspect to what’s happening; something that arguably assists the commercial interests of the BBC, especially if they can be canny enough to invest in product lines that relate to the DIY craft culture instead of the usual standardised, outsourced, industrially produced action figurines that normally accompany this kind of thing. I’m talking about knitting pattern books that would protect the copyright of the pattern writer as well as the BBC Dr Who ‘Brand;’ wouldn’t developing pattern books in agreement with pattern designers like Mazzmatazz be a better response than simply censoring the designs?

Issues of subversion undoubtedly surround homemade or knitted homages to cultural icons. I have found online already a Dr Who Adipose Plushy Petition which petitions the BBC to issue a commercially available Dr Who Adipose Plushy for purchase in the UK. I myself would have no interest in buying such a thing unless I could know that it had been produced under the same ethical conditions my own, hand-knit version had been. Knitting things myself represents, at least to an extent, a desire to evade what I see as destructive industrial production processes. Why are so many of us handknitters in the first place? In my case the urge to make an Adipose Dr Who baby arises not because ‘jee, isn’t it a shame the BBC won’t create an Adipose plushy for us to buy? guess I’ll have to knit one!’ so much as ‘wow I love that. I wonder how I can knit one?’ The desire to knit something and the desire to have something seem to me to have been misinterpreted by the BBC as one and the same desire and if their concern is to protect their ‘commercial interests,’ then why was the person selling the Adipose babies on ebay not penalised, instead of Mazzmatazz, who by her own admission was not interested in making money out of the venture? I could understand much more clearly a decision, on the part of the BBC, to prevent the ebay seller who was dealing in knitted Adipose babies from continuing with their enterprises. But given some of the general trends amongst the hand-knitting community, I would venture that many knitters would comprise a different sector of the market than the people who might purchase an officially produced Adipose ‘plushy.’

As a knitting pattern, the Adipose knitted baby pattern may in the opinion of some lawyers, constitute ‘enough of a transformation from the original to justify a new copyright.’ In other words, in taking the time to sit down and work out from pictures only, a necessarily approximate rendition of the Adipose baby in the unlikely material of yarn, Mazzmatazz’ efforts may actually represent a design unique enough to merit its own copyright.

I think that a much better way for the BBC to handle this would have been for them to have investigated immediately the possibilities of working with Mazzmatazz and the knitting fans of Dr Who by drawing up plans for a Dr Who Pattern book. It surely makes a lot more sense to work with Mazzmatazz on the development of Dr Who patterns than to order the censure of them. There are numerous marketing benefits for the BBC in working to develop knitting patterns that relate to the show, including the fact that the person who creatively made the pattern would get the legal protection that would prevent the kind of exploitation of her efforts exemplified in the ebay sales.

I think we need to differentiate between creative knitters and people who are out to make a quick buck on the basis of other people’s work.

So I’ve drafted a letter to the BBC to this effect, which I’m providing here in case anyone is stuck for words and wants to put something to the BBC. Of course, feel free to chop up/change/edit what I’ve written here! Hopefully in no time at all Mazzmatazz will get a pattern-book deal with some creative person in the BBC. I know I’d buy one.

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