Discussion Questions

Review “Feminist interpretations of intellectual property” in Chapter 9. Please respond to the following:
•Explain why, according to Halbert, quilting and knitting are traditionally outside the realm of copyright protection.
There have been changes in the world of knitting. The long history of sharing patterns among knitters was done in easy to share formats with minimal concerns for copyright issues. But today a dominance of ownership has been privatized to maximize in profits. Both quality and knitting were primary ways of creating and have existed outside copyright law perhaps because the romantic author and the desire for profit were not central to the process of creation. The knitting patterns were sold to make money and not to further the culture of knitting.
•Discuss how and why this is changing.
The change in the traditional way of quilting and knitting versus the copyright protection is the dominance of ownership. Everything now is being privatized while maximizing on the profits. A personal signature, individualizing the patterns, allows a financial gain for anyone wanting to ‘copy’ a pattern.
•Explain why crafts like these do not fit inside the copyright paradigm.
These crafts were known for completion amongst women enjoying the company of each other. The crafts don’t fit into copyright paradigm because it attempts to solidify connections between people and not divide people by property boundaries.
•Discuss what values underlie authorship in the traditional literary context.
The values that underlie authorship in knitting are in the individuals that make changes to the designs, picks, and colors of the yarn and invest unique motivation into the knitting process. In quilting, the sewn patterns portrays a women’s history because it tells a story of the women who made them and mark changes in the status of women over time.