[RiderOfGiraffes]

You say:

  > Ditch the lot, have the artists go back to designing ...

But then how do the designers make money? There is a huge gulf between really, really good designs, and the stuff that hacks produce, just as there is a huge gulf between well-designed web sites and the stuff my uncle's friend's son does (say). There is virtually no market for design to commission, so how does an excellent designer make money?

Currently designs are produced, then the work is stitched, photographed, and a kit made up. Sometimes the chart is sold alone (fronted by the photo of the finished work) and sometimes with the material and thread included. There is a market for these designs, thin though the margins be.

But now people buy a design, scan both the design and the photo, and make them freely available. People then download them with no compensation to the original designer.

I know this is how the world currently is. I know this is what happens. I know it's not going to change.

But I lament the loss of the craftsperson who can no longer make a living.

If there were no copying then I could go to a shop and purchase a high-quality design at a reasonable price, with the designer making money on volume. But there is copying, and many of the best designers are now turning to other means of making money, often completely unrelated, and less beloved of themselves and others. I can't afford to commission work, so now I have no high-quality designs at all.

Tell me how this is a good thing. Tell me how gifted and skilled designers can make money in the face of wholesale copying. Tell me how I can benefit at a reasonable cost from the hard-won skills of these talented people.

I don't think I can, and now that's my loss.

(In truth, this isn't my thing, but I know someone who is hurting badly because of the situation, and I speak for them as best I can.)

[akadruid]

The "intellectual property" of art is a blip. For thousands of years, people have made art. Currently, we are in the odd situation where the is value in the idea alone, and the artists are not selling art, but selling instructions. It seems we're heading back towards the artists selling actual art again.

Frankly, I'm kind of on the fence about this. It seems like a nice idea, that one can build a business on selling ideas on the internet, and kind of callous that people no longer sufficently value it.

But then I suppose no-one worries how a verbal storyteller is to make a living in this age of cheap newspapers, or war painters in the age of digital photography. Sewing instruction salesmen seem destined to go the same way.