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Old 11-21-2008, 10:53 AM
Robin Carlton's Avatar
Robin Carlton Robin Carlton is offline
Owner & Candy Keeper
 
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Charlotte, NC
Posts: 27,188
Exclamation A Word About File Sharing

Hey guys,

As many of you know, file sharing is one of the biggest issues we battle as professional digital scrapbook designers. Due to the downloadable nature of our products, it is far too easy to take our hard work and redistribute it around the internet without giving our designer's financial well-being a second thought. Because of this, we rely on our customers and friends to take an active role in protecting our work and informing the community that file sharing is wrong.

For the record, the ONLY legitimate source of Sweet Shoppe products are purchases made here in the shoppe, purchases made from one of our designer's solo stores, promotional downloads distributed via our store and/or personal blogs and occasionally downloads via special promotions with 3rd party vendors.

If you participate in a yahoo or google group, a private messageboard or ANY other online venue and Sweet Shoppe products are offered to the members via 4Shared, RapidShare, Pando or ANY other download service - you are STEALING from our designers and are in violation of our terms of use and the law.

Additionally, if you purchase a kit and share it with your friends or contribute your purchase to a group buy of our new releases or other products, you too are STEALING from our designers and are taking and using product that isn't rightfully yours.

As SSD is a fairly large store, file sharing is an issue which we are faced with daily and it is one that we reserve the right to handle in the means we see fit on a personal, private and professional level. We ask that you trust us to evaluate each situation presented to us and to take the action we see fit. We have an incredibly strong and intelligent team of designers who take these activities seriously and will make the decisions needed to protect our work and community.

All of this said, we also believe in the good of the community at large and know that people make mistakes and can change. So we implore you to make the right decisions where file sharing is concerned, now and in the future, because we will not hesitate to take action against people we discover to be involved with this practice.

Take an active role in educating people about this issue - If you share files... STOP. If you know people who share files... tell them it's wrong and distance yourself from the activity, dont just turn a blind eye because they are "friends". DO the right thing and make a conscious decision to be a better person today than you were yesterday where file sharing is concerned.

If you have any questions about our policies, terms of use or if you have information on people or groups sharing our files, please contact us with as much information as you can including a link to the original posting of the shared file within the group or messageboard.

Thanks so much for your understanding and help with this very serious issue,

Robin
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