Current Mood : Moody
Current Image Notes : When asked 'Pirate or Ninja' once, my answer came without thinking...
It's weird having your own Dumpster. I don't have to worry about having the trash can out on the curb by the right time anymore - and now that I have one, I have zero interest in diving into it ! We spent about an hour this afternoon, loading it with Shop trash for tomorrow's pick-up. It'll probably be about two months before we obliterate the pile completely, but we're already making a dent !
You may laugh at me, but when I did groceries yesterday, I bought those spiraly lightbulbs that are so expensive. I'm used to paying 88c for four, not $6. ! But if the claims on the box are halfway accurate, it's a good investment. Kitchen bulb blew today, and we replaced ‘em with the swirly kind, and it's great light. My cooking still ranks, but now I can see it very well !
Hauled Brody in for new design downloading. That's one thing - with Brody, I have to keep my desk clean, or clean it off at least once a week ! Ironically, I found a great freebie design download site last night - on the SiCK forums, of all places. I must've scored a dozen great car designs (and left a hundred more), eight dress forms, five sewing machines, three frames, and a bunch of small, neat designs for all of us and some projects I have in mind.
And this is what's kinda on my mind. Two of the designs I scored late last night were clearly owned by Disney. I knew it, and d/l'ed ‘em anyhow. I even bought a Betty Boop one for DFIL that was so cheap, it must've been pirated. If I breathed a word about it on the SiCK forums, I'd get a lecture if the denizens were feeling generous, ostracized if they were feeling their oats that morning. I know some of the nice folk there digitize for cash and maybe even a living, and I don't fault them for being in favor of copyright protection. But...
When a rights holder will only release designs on a crappy machine that has a reputation for poor performance that doesn't even last a year when similarly priced ones from the same company pound the drums like the Energizer Bunny for at least five times that long - and additional patterns only work on the crap machines and are $60. for twelve designs (six of which are things like seashells and roses) on a proprietary card, well, it's hard to say, Why, sure, I'll jump through all your hoops ! I love you sooo much, I want to stand guard over your properties, too, for free, and will gladly settle for overpriced junk and deal with frustration and ruined garments to obtain a hint of the Mouse.
And the one lecture I read on the forums gave me pause, but didn't stop me. No, I don't need Disney Princess / Cars / imagery designs. I don't need a $500. sewing machine either, if you wanna know the truth about it. All I need is in this house, but if Diz could charge for air, they probably would. I completely understand copyright usage, but there needs to be a more level playing ground if they don't want piracy. Too bad they don't seem to care.
I would gladly pay a fair rate for legally obtained designs if they would make them available ! $40. for ten designs - half specific, half generic - I would consider... if they worked on Brody, or any other machine I cared to use. But they don't wanna do that, so if I can get dozens of them from a Soviet site for $2. each, well, I just might. It's not like I'm depriving Diz of the cash - they don't make the product available for me to use, at any price. There's so much confusion over what they do have available, I've yet to see two sites agree if the cards work on non-D-series machines or not.
I'd much rather pay them for a quality product, but they choose to not market one. I can either do it myself, or pay someone else. Diz already makes darn few clothing items in my size, so they're not losing that income. It's not like I can put their characters to wicked purposes - when was the last time you saw thick embroidery on fishnets ? Or a negligee ? And designs aren't easy to change, it'd be simpler to create a new one than alter a commercial version. So that fret is somewhat blunted. Honestly, it's easier to get a tattoo of characters behaving badly, or a poster. Rule 34.
It's like they licensed the D-series machines just so they didn't have to do anything further. And I really doubt many companies would dare go into full-scale production with Diz designs if they were more readily available. There's still laws against paying for one license but giving out copies to the whole plant and strangers on the street.
I guess I'm just disappointed that more companies aren't granting licenses. There could be so many great ideas here but it's like everyone's scared. Maybe I just wanna justify paying a small sum for something I wanted that's pirated. And that's something I have to deal with every time I wear or use what I made.
I think I can handle it.
