Border Line

A little while ago, I was catching up on a crafty blog which was doing a series on how to create different household items that looked like they came from Pottery Barn but were actually home made.  The thing that attracted my eye most was that the blogger was reviewing the series and inviting comments on whether it was ethical to publish posts on what were essentially knock-offs.

Strolling through the Village Fair this weekend, asking permission to take photographs of people's stalls, taking their business cards and promising to link their site the blog, I was struck by how cautious people were, how frequently people said that they had had problems with people replicating their work or taking photos without asking first.  One person requested photos and even though I purchased some of their products and could have photographed them, I haven't out of respect for their wishes.

It got me thinking, where is the line between being inspired by someone else's idea and actually pinching it?

You may have seen the movie The Social Network, based, I assume loosely, on how Facebook was started.

The thing that struck me most was the legal battle that raged between the main character and the two public school jock brothers who claimed that he cut them out after they gave him the core idea.

I've been reading these words today...

Ecc 1:9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. 

As a crafty person myself, I find myself instinctively looking to see how things were made, to see whether I could do the same.  Even when I look at clothes in the shops.  For curiosity's sake, if you like.  I've been reupholstering a sofa found on the side of the road, deconstructing it and then putting it back together again, renewing it.  I love to see people's ideas for packaging.  Sometimes I even forget where I see them but they lodge in my brain, filed only to resurface a while later.  

I'm challenged.  I don't know what the answer is.  I see the difference between recreating something for myself at home or for a gift and intentionally reproducing and selling something.  That for me is clear.  What's  not clear however is when you have crafty blogs copyrighting things that anyone could think up for themselves.  Where is the difference between copying too closely an idea from a large corporation who may use small designers or an individual designer who blogs?

And then, if you don't allow anyone to photograph your work, how do you spread the word about your great product?  Will you stymie your own public relations?

As someone who enjoys creating something I feel as though if I thought of a product myself, I wouldn't like someone to copy it and sell it, but then I consider that all ideas, all creativity originates from the God who gives ideas freely to all people.  Do I have then have the right to insist on copyright for something that has been freely given to me in the first place?  

Surely if we can live in close communication with God and his creativity, we are empowered to live open-handedly, generously? 

I am stumped to know where copyright begins and ends.  Can you tell me where the Border Line is?