Minnu Model Skins PhotoSourced from Renderosity

Thinking in terms of creator rights on their creations.

That case showed it is more then a "Video Game", that there are rights involved to original creators and that people will be called out when they steal creations and try to sell them in SL.

You might never hear about the final outcome,, the 2 parties could maybe agree a settlement or compensation figure and that will be that, it could leave MMS to carry on selling those creations.

Lets not be pedantic...they're still unique SL skin creations unlike no other in SL, its the orignal source thats questionable. It still involved a significant amount of work. If MP would have held her hands up high and stated she sourced image files from Renderosity, we wouldn't be having this witch hunt. I would love to know how many of our so called "brand" Fashion houses have pinched or copied RL fashion designs......i bet there's a whole bunch floating around!

I fear Minnu's image and reputation is so tarnished that it will be virtually impossible to bounce back from this. Being so high profile has effectively nailed her own coffin. I still think its a shame that a talented creator could end up being hounded out of the game.

I'm sure there are. Clothing can be covered by design patents (which are very limited), and textile patterns are covered under copyright law, but clothing designs aren't covered so making SL versions of RL clothing isn't a violation of copyright law, generally speaking. That's why low priced knock-offs of designer clothing is such a huge business in the real world.

Whether she did indeed "create" something is at the heart of the matter.

Someone who copies someone else's work as-is didn't *create*, they copied. If it's Danae's work then it's solely her talent that's evident in the skin and what the other did merely required knowledge on how to convert it from one medium to another.

There's also a very serious problem when someone who is adamant about raising awareness about the rights of content creators and fighting against "content theft" gets accused of "content theft" herself. That hurts more people's credibility than just her's and it doesn't matter if it fits the letter of the law or not, ethicals and morals are just as important in appearing credible.

In SL terms the claim would be that she bought textures intended to be used as part of a new creation and not redistributed/resold as-is. In most "texture theft" threads content/texture creators jump in to point out that just altering a handful of pixels does not mean you suddenly "own" it and can start reselling the texture as if you created all of it.

A great many people condemn the practice of reselling textures they have no rights to when it happens within SL, the fact that these potentially originated outside of SL should make no difference.

(I'm not saying you should condemn her, noone should, but supporting her without facts from her end is going out on a limb)

Um..she's really not that pretty. She has beady eyes and funky lips.

Yep. I haven't seen where the Renderosity artist has really said if that Poser skin was bought or not. That artist is claiming that the license is a RL equivalent to "modify/copy/no transfer". So those are the two real questions: if the SL skins would count as "transfer" under that license, and if that skin from Renderosity was indeed the source.

The SL skin maker is in a tough place, even if there is an innocent explanation that should be presented to the appropriate people. "No comment" really is the right thing to do in a situation like this, but the public is conditioned to read that language as "guilty".

I mentioned the case earlier, in which Renderosity commissioned a 3D artist to make a 3D figure for it to sell, and the artist making the figure for Renderosity was caught borrowing too much from a popular DAZ figure.

(And I give the caveat that I'm depending heavily on memory, and quite a bit of what I know is just bits and pieces that I read; by no means am I the definitive source on this.)

The artist that Renderosity commissioned had, up until that point, a pretty good reputation in the community of 3D graphics artists and designers.

As I recall, Renderosity initially never named the artist they hired to design the figure. Even after it was discovered that the figure infringed on DAZ's creation, I don't believe that Renderosity ever named the artist who created the infringed work. Her identity eventually leaked out, though.

As soon as the infringement was discovered, when Renderosity confronted the artist about it, the artist admitted to the infringement. She didn't deny it or try to justify it, she just came clean about it right away, and she eventually apologized when her identity came out.

Since Renderosity had commissioned this artist, they couldn't necessarily just hang her out to dry, and blame everything on her. While the artist had infringed, Renderosity hadn't sufficiently reviewed the product before she sold it. The infringement was so blatant, and the DAZ model so widely used, it should have been an easy call.

It's possible that the artist's prior reputation had an impact on DAZ's decision to settle the matter in a way less painful for Renderosity, rather than skewer Renderosity or the artist in question.

From the bits and pieces I heard of the story, it seemed to be a case in which she was under a lot of pressure with a big project, and in danger of not hitting deadlines, and she succumbed to the pressure and took an illegal shortcut to finishing the project.

When the artist who made the infringing work was identified, she disappeared from the graphics creation scene for six months or so.

Later, she came back and tried to re-establish a career.

Many in the 3D graphics professional community felt that what she did was unforgivable, and that no one should deal with her or buy from her, and now she carried the risk of creating future infringing works.

Then there were many others who felt that she shouldn't be shunned, that she should be forgiven for one mistake, however huge, and given a second chance.

(And of course, lots of people debated on forums like the one at Renderosity whether this particular artist should be banished to hell or given a second chance. It would be interesting to know if Danae herself participated in any of that debate, and what her opinion was.)

So I know she eventually got back into graphics design. How successful she's been since, is something that I just don't know at all.

So assuming the accusation against the SL artist in question (forum guidelines prevent naming her, don't they) is correct, it doesn't necessarily have to mean the end of her SL designing career. But it probably depends on a lot of factors, including the strength of the allegations, and the honesty with which she addresses them.

I'm not supporting what she done. I just don't care much for these sort of witch hunts, especially coming from people with next to zero talent. (not saying you specifially)
I guess she made her bed and now she must lie in it. Just shows you the power of the Fashionistas and how they can change public perception via blogs, magazines and other medium. A link to that article was just sent via FashCon group which has 7000 members.!!
Its the influence that these bloggers have .....that worries me greatly! Very scary indeed!

That is very unfortunate when all the facts are still not out. Most pretty well made their mind up based on the images shown what they believe. My thought was that most of SL really doesn't read the forums or blogs. Most just happily go along without seeing the drama side of the outside mediums. Fashcon notices will go a long way to messing with the rep of the skin maker though. That is something that really could spread the word.

Still.. most of SL will never hear of it.

I feel the same way.

I think it speaks volumes that the whistle blower in this case didn't simply hook Danae up with Minnu, and let them sort it out, without making a huge public spectacle of it. It makes me question the motives of said whistle blower and certainly doesn't endear me to them greatly.

Well, word of mouth of is very powerful instrument in SL....even if 20% of that group were online when that notice came through, that's still a hell of lot people ready to spread the TV gospel! Someone tells someone and so it goes on.....the problem is that MP is a very high profile figure now.

If you read previous threads on that website & another, it quickly becomes apparent that Ms TV has a real a vendetta against MP. Last month she had a similar thread running that generated 300 comments regarding a new line of clothing from MP & partner. To me the author is just pure nasty and vindictive.....sorry! Well she finally succeeded in destroying a fellow creator. I just never realised how bitchy this sort of business could be like.

The irony is the author peddles her Eloh Elliott adapted skins to SL residents. (admittedly it is stated)

Converting a Poser skin to one that works with SL's UV mapping (which is completely different) is not an easy thing to do. It would take hard work and talent. It would be the equivelant of making a photosourced skin.

None of us have enough facts to judge what happened here. It could have been something as simple as misunderstanding the license agreement. I don't know what the agreement was with the Poser skin, but I can see if it allowed using the asset as part of a commercial work (which is common with this kind of asset) that someone might think that turning it into an SL skin would be okay. It wouldn't be, but it's easy enough to imagine someone making that mistake.

Since the original artist is aware of the situation this is something they need to work out between them. On one hand, I think it's great that the community is quick to condemn blatant infringement of an artist's copyright, but on the other, people shouldn't be brandishing pitchforks and torches and yelling "witch." Some people take far too much joy in tearing successful people down. None of us know exactly what happened, the intent, or motive.

Thats what i thought....that theres still a significant amount of work involved in converting from one form to another and requires talent. Talent that most people don't have!
Nice balanced post by the way!

Actually, we don't really need to speculate as to the content of the license. If you follow the links, Danae's license for use of the product is available in the product information provided at Renderosity:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?DownloadHelpFile=41330

I'm sympathetic to Danae's position. But whether the language was good enough to exclude the alleged infringing use or not, it could stand some more clarity to prevent future problems in this context.

Back in 2005 (when the license was written), most of the artists who sold at Renderosity hadn't heard of Second Life, much less have any idea that it had skinnable avatars the same way a figure like DAZ's Victoria could be skinned, along with a skin-creation industry for SL.

The license states that it can be used in commercial and non-commercial renders, so it's intended to be used only as part of rendered images, but it's not unthinkable that someone could think that an SL skin constitutes a render and that using it to make a commercial SL skin would be okay. Wrong, I think, but not unthinkable.

And yeah, Amity, totally agree that Renderosity artists would be well advised to make their licenses more explicit.

Yep, count me in on the kudos to Chip.

One thing you mention Chip, about the copyright read me or what have you. I have seen it posted in a few places. For the life of me I can't decide if it was clear to the skin maker if she would be able to use them in SL. People have said that they can only be used in Poser/Daz type applications but I don't read that in obvious terms. People say Danae knows her own copyright expectations so that is the end of it.

Well here.. let me go find the note and paste it here.

OK, back:



http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?DownloadHelpFile=41330

Also this from Renderosity's terms:



http://www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=13161


So reading those I say.. OK, it can be used in commercial applications. It was not redistributed in whole or in part as texture files. The original files can not be extracted (only low rez modified files can be through the bad means we know of) The sin I see here is that the skin seller claimed the textures were all her own doing. Pieced together by her. That I don't buy as I feel there has been enough evidence shown in the pictures they are the same as Danae's (biggest being the eyebrows that were part of her and her husband's rl pics).


I just don't see where the interpretations are being made that they could not be used in SL skins. Someone can show me if they see it, because I for the life of me don't.

Witch hunts make for long blog comments and huge threads on forums though.


[EDIT] HA! In my search time Amity beat me to it.

I didn't read the Renderosity terms of sale. They actually give Danae a stronger case, particularly: "Buyer cannot make an image of a texture map mapped to a flat plane, such that the original texture map can be cut & pasted from the image."

That said, it's still something of a problem that there are two different sources of terms of use here- a file by Danae, and a Terms-of-Sale from Renderosity.

If I need to refer back to the license I have for a product I buy from a place like Renderosity, I refer back to see what kind of text-files are included with the .zip to tell me the license.

Having bought textures from Danae via Renderosity before, I'm searching through my archives to see what files come in the .zip. It will be interesting to see what licenses posted on the web site get included with the .zip.

(Of course, whatever I find means nothing to this case at point in this post. It will just be interesting to me. When I started Second Life, it occurred to me that a lot of the stuff I had bought for Poser might be useable to create content for Second Life, including making skins. I didn't get far, though. When I first looked at the UV map for the Second Life avatar, I gave up such a project as more effort that I would be willing to undertake.)

If I'm missing something, please do point it out , but in the end I really don't see much of a difference between a "skin" for Poser and a skin for SL, regardless of how different the resulting textures may be. The end result certainly looks the same to me (leaving aside the difference in model meshes), it's two different platform/renderers.

(Again, *if* it's based on the Poser textures)

I haven't seen anyone in this thread go on a witchhunt (the blog comments are an entirely different thing).

If you merely adapt someone else's work, you're just not being creative in my personal opinion, you're using someone else's creativity. That's not aimed at anyone in particular or meant to "tear someone down", that's just my opinion and it applies to everyone equally, including myself.

If I were to create a couch based on a picture of someone else's design, and put poses someone else created into it and apply textures to it that someone else created, I wouldn't be any more creative than when I'd put an Ikea piece of furniture together. I merely assembled something, nothing original or unique was created.

That doesn't really apply in my opinion since that wasn't done. The end user of the skin has no access to the skin texture so can't copy it. Well, they can, but not by the means described. Also, it wouldn't be the original texture map. It would be the substantially reworked texture.

No, nobody here so far. It is all on two blogs and a third party website. Things tend to be much more civil on this forum though. That is why I call it home.

So if someone creates a replica of a Frank Lloyd Wright house in SL, that's not creative? All of the skins I make are photosourced, so they're basically replicas of the people who posed for the photographs. Is that not creative?

I don't build in sl, but I think an rl analogy will work.

I make furniture for my house as a hobby. I get my inspiration from magazines, pictures or real pieces I see in furniture stores or peoples houses. I will then modify them in my head to fit the application that I have.

If you use something you see in sl as an inspiration for a design it still becomes your design as you only have 4 or 5 basic prim shapes you can rez... everything else, the modification of those shapes, the textures you use, the script you use become your design for the piece even though you were inspired by someone else.

The technical point is that the UV maps for DAZ's Victoria 3 (for which Danae's skin was intended) and the SL avatar are so dissimilar, that there isn't really any savings in the time and work it would take to start with Danae's skin as the photosource, than to just use a photo as a photosource.

If someone were inclined to make a quick buck by stealing someone else's work, there are far, far easier ways to do it than to squeeze a skin like Danae's into an SL skin. And if someone were inclined anyway to use a skin designed for DAZ's Victoria as the source of an SL skin, for just a few dollars more, one could purchase a completely legal photosource. Either way, it doesn't make a lot of sense for an SL skin maker to lift a skin like Danae's without permission.

The fact that it doesn't make sense make some people doubt that the SL merchant in question actually intentionally infringed.

Now to me, there are all kinds of things that I witness people doing every day that make absolutely no logical sense to me, and yet they still do them.

I don't think making a replica of something is being creative, no. Again, that's not to be harsh or insulting, it's my opinon. If you think it is, I don't understand it, but my opinion doesn't override yours or anyone else's .

If someone is inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the other hand and ends up creating something that is clearly inspired by but at the same time different and *unique*, then yes, that's creative (again, to me, I'm not trying to force that opinion onto anyone else).

I'd really rather skip addressing "skins I make" specifically because that would make it too personal and nothing is served by going down that route . From what I read about Danae's process specifically it would be creative because she combined different sources into something unique.

(And again, I'm not dismissing the amount of work or skill involved either way)