Does this piss you off?....Texture makers who say you can't use their textures....

I'm curious. There is a huge texture maker on SL that has recently said that their textures can only be used in SL. So, if I make an item and want to bring it over to another grid i can't bring their texture with me.

I for one do not believe that out of the thousands of textures that this company or others like them are made from scratch in Photoshop or the like.

For example, if they make a texture using the M&M's logo, who are they to say that I cannot use it in another grid. Isn't M&M's a copyrighted image and if they are using it then they have in essence (I'm not going to use the "S" word, but will use the word "borrowed" it themselves? I seriiously do not believe that they went to the M&M's people and asked to use their logo. So who are they to say I can't use it.

If I am wrong then please feel free to straighten me out.


Thanks.

If what you say is TRU then many of those "original textures" started as freebies from the web for example any space or castle texture is most likely from quake or unreal tournament sites. My advice is do not give your money or business to charlatans.

Personally I wont buy a texture unless I am free to use it across platforms. I respect the texture makers enough to use their stuff as directed. If I do not agree to the terms I wont buy.. simple.

msot can't really stop you from using it elsewhere. what it boils down to is courtesy and respect, and fair business practice. your own morals and ethics will dictate your path.

I guess it would depend on if they actually made the texture or if it was ripped from elsewhere

I know of a big name texture place that has gotten textures from the web.
How do I know it, I saw a specific texture that I was going to buy, but upon closer inspection decided it was not for me (they did a sloppy job of cleaning it up) so I went to the web and did a search for free textures of the style I wanted, and lo and behold I found the exact same texture that was in that store (and my guess is that it is not the same person hehe)

(for one thing, the place I found the texture was not a texture place, just a random pic on the web)

anywho to answer your question... yes it is within their right (IF they actually made the texture)

if you are not comfortable with their terms, look elsewhere

not like there is only 1 or 2 places to get textures

What I am saying is who are they to tell me that I can't use the textures if they took them from the internet to begin with.

They took them from somebody else.

And I will repeat.....There is no way that every single texture is custom made from Photoshop by these people.

What I am saying is who are they to tell me that I can't use the textures if they took them from the internet to begin with.

They took them from somebody else.

And I will repeat.....There is no way that every single texture is custom made from Photoshop by these people.

You are mixing issues here.

The first issue is whether the texture maker owns the rights to the image. If you think a texture is ripped off, then file a DMCA against the alleged thief, or notify the person you think has been ripped off. What you do NOT have leave to do is to use that texture in any way you like by claiming "Well, THEY ripped it off, so it's public domain and I can do what I like with it".

The second issue is one of rights limitations. Let's assume for the moment that the texture vendor has created an original image, or has secured the rights to re-sell a copyrighted image from someone else. The seller has every right to limit the buyer's use of the texture, IN ANY WAY THEY CHOOSE. That is the heart of the meaning of "copyright". It is not up to you to decide. If you buy the texture, you accept any use limitations that go along with it.

If you think you should have the right to use the texture across platforms, then contact the seller and say so. If enough people don't like their policy, they'll change it. It's a marketplace issue.

I got tired of dealing with other people's textures so I don't buy textures any more if I can't figure out how to do it myself or don't already own copies that allow me to do what I wish with them I don't use them.
I won't buy textures from places that I don't know upfront what the permissions are and
they make it clear upfront before I buy what their TOS... actually I don't buy any more I got
fed up with finding out after fact with certain items I couldn't adjust them to serve my own needs after I paid for them.
They can do whatever they want with their textures I don't need them.
I rarely use textures of others for anything other then for personal builds, never for
commercial purposes.
Fun part of making something is making the textures personally.

Yeah, let's not confuse this with cases of IP that came pre-violated: It's bad enough that some textures for sale are ripped from paid or free sources, but using a trademarked logo is another whole level of asking for trouble. And none of that is germane to the real question.

There is, I think, a valid question about whether a texture seller can actually restrict across platforms the appearance of their properly licensed textures on built objects (as opposed to the textures themselves for use in building, which they clearly can restrict). The reason this gets a little gray is the fact that those textures can appear in photos without the copyright holder being able to claim any rights over the photo. The photo can't be *of* the protected image, but can contain it. In RL, for example, the Andy Warhol Foundation owns copyright for the Warhol paintings, and one can't reproduce photographs of the paintings themselves without permission, but they can't demand permissions be obtained for every photo of MoMA with a Warhol in the background.

So, let's say I propose to move an object between grids, for example. If that object is essentially nothing but the texture (a "painting" in a frame, say), there would seem no way that could be legal. If, on the other hand, the image merely appears on the frame of the painting, I think it would be very chancy that a court would hold that to be a violation of DMCA--as much as the texture artists might wish it to be so.

In practice, however, that's not going to come up because an intact copy of the image itself (the texture asset, perhaps) has to be copied between grids in order for it to appear on an object painted with the texture. And I think that would be judged a clear violation, unless the license explicitly permitted it.

All that said, I'm coming to agree with FD: unless the texture is fully public domain, the "gotcha" clauses in the EULAs are just too numerous now to make purchased textures worth buying. Unlike FD, I absolutely dread every moment I spend in a 2D graphics program, so this greatly limits my palette. But if it's not legal for me to even download a texture to clean up the kruft left behind by the artist, or to overlay other textures (baked lighting, for example), then the texture is going to end up worth less than nothing to me: not only won't I be able to use it for what I want, I'll have to back-out places where I have used it.

The current commercial EULAs would make the texture stores not viable if people actually adhered to them: they destroy the product they're trying to protect.

Find one or 2 texture artists in SL and deal only with them. They will respect your choosing them as your primary texture supplier/artist and hopefully treat you with better understanding. I also buy Renderosity and Turbo Squid. Just read the EULA before purchasing.

My 2 cents...

my policy is simple.. if you buy a texture from me I don't care what you do with it for your own use. I encourage people to make great things with them and download them and cook them into whatever they want.

The only thing that I have EULA restrictions on, is the sharing or transfer/resale.


With regards to the idea of borrowing textures from the web, you will never stop that so why even make a fuzz about it. Many people live in remote areas and have no access to quality architecture to go on a photo mission to make their own great textures. Not everyone has " Mr 13 Mega Pixel texture agent" roaming the scenic valleys of Europe to get those perfect Castle Textures (like some Hack "Castle" Builder on here tried to convince me he has to get his castle textures)..

If someone is willing to take a pisspoor photo that is on the web and spend hours on it to clean it up and turn it into a workable asset within SL.. then let them sell it. its not like they are making a fortune on it and I doubt that the tourist who took the original pic would care but probably laugh at this whole thing anyway. Chances are they have to pack it up in 10 packs or 900 packs just for people to think its worth anything anyway. Nobody ever uses all the textures in a pack because packs usually contain a bunch of stuff that is not good enough to sell by itself.

In RL if I didn't want people to use my ideas and learn from my techniques - I wouldn't put my ideas on the intornetz as I always do.

If I am looking for a perfect texture for something that I am working on and find it for sale.. I don't care where it came from as long as it gets the job done. Who cares if someone used a picture of a stupid M&M which taste like candle wax coated lumps from a week old Cat Litter -

\m/

edit fixorized my worser english grammor

I think a possible complaint though is that most textures are sold with fairly extensive IP licenses already, which basically come down to the fact that it's the digital image rather than the SL asset that's licensed on the grounds that "SL's permissions system can't enforce the right restrictions" (perfectly true).

The problem is, if I have a license to the digital image, it shouldn't matter whether it's on SL or not.

The texture seller in question is actually setting up a store on at least one other grid, and informing their customers in SL that if they wish to use the same textures on that grid, they must buy them again over there, even if they have already bought them in SL.

That is definitely something I am not in agreement with, even though I have no plans to migrate to another grid. If the exact same textures will be available from the exact same vendor in both worlds, then why must they be purchased twice: once in each world?

I'm afraid it sounds like double-your-money to me. (And I wouldn't be surprised to find myself banned from their SL store for 'dissent' after stating my opinion, sad to say.)

my thoughts are you pay pennies for a texture in sl so it's quite reasonable for the texture to be restricted to sl.

If you want to pay for unrestricted use then pay a serious price for it. you'll notice that texture rights you buy on the web a waaay more expensive than buying inworld.

I know everyone wants something for nothing but seriously guys, this kind of greed looks unattractive.

I love figure out how to do textures but even I have those days where making them is a pain in pixel tush.
There is too many texture places that rip off textures from web or from others and call it their own for me to bother any more going and various other issues like TOS, permission issues for me to spend hours hunting down right texture in texture shop that I could spend figure out how to make what I want or using camera to take my own photos.
I figure for the time I take trying to figure out how to create what I want even when it's not working, the time frustrated because I can't figure out something would be probably more cranky spending what little L$ or cash I have on someone else's textures and finding 1) They snatched them. 2) Permissions aren't right 3) Their TOS makes what I need to use them for impossible and I just threw whatever I spent away buying them.
There is other things to do, and other things I can make myself miserable about if I really need too like destruction of planet, children starving,etc that are whole lot more important.
I won't bother selling textures in SL for L$ for same reason just not worth the headache.

"This is gonna replace CDs soon; guess I'll have to buy the White Album again" -- Men In Black.

lets see the people who whine the most about IP rights spend 25 american bucks on a high res source photo and spend 8 hours in Photo Chop to turn it into something that can be used for a texture and maybe their attitude would change and they would pay the 16-50 cents and shut up haha

I have a question-

my company is running alpha testing of its own private grid and has been transferring whole sims over from SL...

I have noticed that all the work that has been transferred using Second Inventory now shows the name of the person who did the transfer as the creator, regardless of whoever built it in the first place. (down to the last prim)

since the company owns all the work outright, it is not really an issue, although it is weird to see everything I've done credited to someone else and my name totally eradicated from these objects.

the question- is this true of textures that are transferred, as well? (I have a mac and can't use second inventory).

I realize there are simple ways to get one's name in as the content creator of a texture- but one has to take specific steps and pay a few Ls to do it... if transferred items are automatically credited to the person who transfers them- it makes selling those items as one's own even easier.

Looks to me like the opensource grids are a bit of an IP nightmare.

Advising customers to buy a product twice is surely questionable, but preferable to the next logical step, which is to lock down perms on everything so it can't be transferred at all, and will therefore be more difficult to use on all platforms.

but, eh... I could be wrong.

Even if you bought the image you can only use it for yourself. You can't use it and resell unless you pay outrageous royalty fees.



What this all comes down to for me is that I don't like being told that I can't use a texture, if the texture/image itself was not gotten in an appropriate manner, meaning pretty much that it was custom created from scratch.

There are so, so many places to buy or obtain textures for use in Second Life. If you don't like the license that comes with a particular texture, it really can't be that hard to find an alternative to that texture somewhere else that comes with a license with which you can live.

So tell me... How am I, as a texture seller, supposed to be able to know that "Skell Dagger" in SL, who I may have a record of having legally purchased 20 or so of my textures in SL, is also "Mary Hoochikins" on the Legend City sims (or on any other grid)? I can't. So how can I tell your alt there is a paid customer, and not a thief? Only one way. Require the alt to buy the textures, just like we require any SL alt to buy new copies of any textures that some other account may have purchased. Even if you have exactly the same name over there, I can't prove that the person in Legend City (or any other non-SL grid) is actually the same person in SL. It could just as easily be some stranger who simply got there first, and registered that name. For Pete's sake, we're talking PENNIES per texture here. Is that really such a burden? Any system that could prove you actually have the right to use those textures anywhere else, as any other account, would cost more to implement, for all concerned, than just buying the textures all over again would cost.

Personally, if the grid in question was one that protects permissions and IP rights, and if I did have some way to ensure that a person who bought my textures in SL was also a particular account on that "trusted grid", then I wouldn't care if they use the textures that they bought over there, as well. But I do not know of any way to prove that linkage is valid. And I really don't want to keep a database linking people's ID's in multiple grids with copies of their real-world ID documents. It's bad enough just trying to keep a record of which accounts in SL have purchased which of my texture bundles legally.

TRU is opening a store in Legend City, because that particular grid has promised to protect the IP rights of content creators who sell there, and to deal harshly with those who try to use stolen content on their grid. All well and good. I hope we can believe them. I'm still "on the fence" about allowing TRU to sell my own textures there. Partly because I am not sure I can believe the LC Grid's admins, and partly because that grid still has no way to cash out any funds earned there. But I am represented there, as Ceera Murakami, to be able to defend my own IP rights on that grid.

Other grids? Haven't seen any others that can assure me that the instant that my work hits their asset servers, the grid owner, or in many cases the individual sim owner, since there aren't any centralized asset servers on many of those grids, won't immediately take full-perms copies of all my work, relabel it as themselves being the Creator, and start using them for free, or distributing them at will. And I don't have time to patrol hundreds of fringe grids for people who steal my work. It's far easier to simply hold to the fact that the existing EULA for TRU textures is a license to use the textures ONLY on the Second Life Grid. It's what most of the 40+ individual artists who create textures and sell them at TRU expected to be the case when they agreed to create and sell textures via TRU.

Try putting the shoe on the other foot. If YOU were a content creator, how eager would you be to allow people to transport your merchandise to uncontrolled grids where stealing copies was almost certain to happen? And where, once it has been stolen, with no controls on the permissions, those thieves could then re-import that content back into SL, and make your work into worthless freebies? It's not a risk that many people would take. Not if they value their own time and effort at all.

This isn't just a texture issue, either. The same issue exists with any other SL content. Imagine if someone could easily export their SexGen Bed, Mystitool, Dance Chimeras and pose balls to any other grid, with no limits on permissions. And then be able to readily change the Creator and permissions to whatever you want, and freely export that anywhere else. Including back into SL. What content creator would willingly allow that?

---

As for some other poster's allegations of Internet content at existing major texture sellers in SL, put up, or shut up. Show a proven case, where a specific texture is available Free on the Internet, or from a licensed source on the Internet and where that texture vendor does not have a license to resell that commercial vendor's textures in SL. If such cases are valid, the content will be removed from sale by any respectable texture artist. If you can't show such a case, your comments are nothing more than groundless libel and slander. It's a dead horse, and in most cases completely untrue. Incidentally, in many cases, there are actual licensing agreements between some of those Internet texture sellers and major texture stores in SL - licenses that ONLY allow for resale within SL, and not on other grids.

Personally, I sell over 1000 textures in SL. I made every blessed one of them, by my own efforts. I refuse any and all requests to make textures based on copyrighted characters or logos, and I NEVER sell anything that could just be snatched for free on the Inernet. And that sort of standard holds true for most, if not all, of the texture artists who sell via the major texture stores in SL. To make blanket statements that "all those big texture sellers sell ripped-off content" is a disservice to the hundreds of legitimate texture artists who sell their work in those same stores.

Perms should be locked down to protect the textures from unintended or unauthorized transfer, while making them useable to the owner for. This is the biggest single improvement that LL could make.. It would eliminate all the " you stole my texture and resold it" stuff that goes on behind the scenes... and many of these types of threads

and yes them double charging a customer for the same texture is stupid for them ..and good for me..lol

If that was stipulated in a EULA that the user had to agree to before using the texture then they may have a leg to stand on. If it wasn't stipulated it could get messy and a EULA will only be enforceable if it is in line with existing legal precedents.

The TRU EULA states clearly that it is a limited license, explicitly to use the textures on the Second Life Grid. It does not, in any way, shape or form, license the use of those textures on any OTHER grid. This has been true for years at TRU, and is not a recent change. That wording pre-dates the existance of any other grids.

Granting further permission to operate on other grids would require a change in the EULA, and many of the 40+ individual freelance artists who sell at TRU would not agree to that change. I know I wouldn't. See my arguments in my previous post about the lack of permissions and asset control on other grids for an explanation of why.

To state that the existing TRU EULA should automaticly include any new grids is like stating that the license for use on your collection of videotaoped movies permits you to make copies on DVD for all of your friends (your alts on other grids), because the license never mentioned an restriction against using DVD-Record technology that did not exist at the time of purchase.