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

Luckily my textures weren't high quality or whatever enough to be accepted by TRU and I don't plan on join any other grids with people on it except SL at this point..but I spend numerous hours on the textures I do make legitimately, to me they are priceless textured "children" and I really so glad to not have textures in demand that would be affected I guess.
I don't really get though why someone wouldn't want to create their own except it is hard to get them often to look perfect...but I got no issue with my own Doodle textures personally and if anyone asked and really had to have them I wouldn't care what grid they used them on as long as they didn't trade it with anyone else without asking.
But once someone has my textures with current permission system that I know of regardless of grid I have no control over what people do with my textured children.
My textures are my babies.
Luckily there is few here who creating isn't about always about getting every penny they can, I know for me it definitely isn't about that, I couldn't put up with the stress.
I mean how many pennies is it worth for happiness if you got to worry about people ripping off future pennies all the time?
Trust me I could do with few more pennies but somethings I am not willing to pay the price for....I don't need more things to give me reasons to be unhappy and miserable
in my virtual life.
But I won't even go in TRU or few legit shops any more to buy textures, most are too laggy, too big, too many conditions for even personal builds if I want to do modifications, too stressful finding things, too stressful experience even dealing with issues when I got stuff that wasn't full permission was to stressful to get resolved for me.

I don't worry about that. That's why I use the BSD license.

I'm sorry if my previous message sounded confrontational; that wasn't my intention; just that I wish someone could come up with some way to sort all this out, so that OpenGrids can become more viable than they are.

Not so. The TOS take precedence over any rights the creator 'hopes' to have over his content. See this from TOS 3.2

You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.

That is clear. Creators may only use the permission systems that LL provide, and are not entitled to make up more. Only LL can vary the TOS. Notice how my license is 'transferable', that seems to make a nonsense of non-transfer.

However, the grey area is the phrase 'within the service'. Right now, LL and the Opensim community are conducting the OGP tests, which will allow residents to TP from LL to Opensim grids, once that is rolled out the creators will have no choice but to accept that that what they have is not content on the LL Grid, but on the entire Metaverse. Right now I can tp from any opensim grid to any other, and have all my inventory available to me. This is the way the VWs are going, and creators had better get into a different way of thinking if they are to survive.

THAP

Or perhaps it's exactly the other way 'round: unless there's some very significant advance in the protection of IP afforded by other virtual worlds, they'll remain forever freebie central. If content leaks from LL's grid to the others, and thereby to unlicensed duplication and transfer (the inevitable result), it will be the end of content creation for profit anywhere in the "metaverse" and the whole wasteland will be just a game with lame building tools.

That is clear. That is specifically the section I am referring to.

What this says is that the creator grants to Linden Labs a license to the content WITHIN THE SERVICE.

That doesn't take away any rights the creator retains OUTSIDE THE SERVICE.

In particular, they have the right to license that content to other grids.

Linden Labs doesn't.

That's not up to you, Linden Labs, or the people working on the OGP to decide.

It's probably going to be up to the courts to decide whether a service that competes with Second Life is the same service as Second Life.

The folks over at OSGrid, the simulator that (let's face it) /every/ other grid is based on (or forked from), are in the process of putting together something they call "Hypergrid". This will allow anyone on any hyper-grid enabled Grid to teleport from one grid to another, /bringing their assets with them/. This means that a build I make in OSGrid could be rezzed, complete and textured, in any other HyperGrid connected grid - say OpenLifeGrid. It ain't there yet, but it probably will be. That asset resides on the OSGrid Asset Server, and a copy is made to the OpenLifeGrid /simulator/ (but not Asset Server).

OK, so here's a hypothetical for you. Now let's turn it around and say that LL and Legend City eventually adopt Hypergrid - probably won't happen, but one can dream. If I teleport to Legend City, rez a build I made with your textures in Legend City, am I violating your license (not that I would be, as I have never (knowingly) purchased a TRU texture) ? The texture asset is still on LL's asset server, not on Legend City's - it's retrieved from LL's asset server whenever someone views the build in Legend City.

Same Question, but substitute OGS (Open Grid Services), the LL version, for Hypergrid. What do you say?

Just curious. As I said, it's not like you're going to be losing me as a customer, as I'm not.

(Edited to add) If LL does start supporting rezzing LL-resident assets on other grids, are you going to issue refunds or apologies for those people who have needlessly bought textures from you on those grids, under threat of DMCA or harassment?

Not my license, I'm not a texture creator, and I have no dog in this hunt.
Computer guys are always coming up with clever tricks like this.

Like, here's a hypothetical someone came up with once: if you take a kiddy-porn picture, and xor it with a one time pad, you get a random stream of data that doesn't mean anything any more, but if you take these two random streams and XOR them together, you get kiddy porn again. Are they illegal? Yes, because the law doesn't care about these kinds of machinations.

In your case, I have no idea what way a judge would come down, but if the judge applies a high level view of the operation, then you're toast.
Exactly the same thing: I don't know what a judge would say, but I've seen enough legal decisions that haven't come down on the side of teh techy details over the past few decades that I wouldn't bet my company on it.

Personally, I think your characterization of the content creators is completely unjustified.

However, if LL violates the terms of their license agreement with the texture creators, then that's when it's time to see what the courts say.

Stop trying to rationalize being an Open Source / OpenSim leech with BS like 'I for be 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'. It really doesn't matter what you believe, until YOU PROVE it for each and every texture, they have a license and you bought it knowing the license. If you DO prove it, DCMA it. Otherwise, suck it up and live with it.

Sounds to me like you're the typical Open Source/OpenGrid content thief trying to rationalize their theft. You got two (legal) choices:

!) Do not buy their textures and roll your own in photoshop.
2)Buy their content and live with the license as written

It is their work as creator (until you or someone else prove an image is indeed public domain or an infringement) and they set the usage license...not Open Source geeks, not OpenSim leeches...the creator.

Do I like such restrictive use licenses? No. However, I dislike Open Sim/Grid/whatever trying to suck SL dry of content for their own profit even less. So in this case, I am with the content creator.

And I consider that your characterization of open source developers is just as unfair and unjustified as Buckaroo Mu's characterization of content creators. Both sides need to set aside the name-calling here.

I am not familiar with RL laws and usually i try to avoid getting involved in them (i hardly support the legitimacy of most of it anyway)

When i sell something, anything the rule is simple: You have basically no rights on the content you got from me beside the right to use it as I (the creator) intended and a moderate right to fit and tweak it for your personal enjoyment.

I consider what i sell is the right to use a piece of software, it doesn't give you the right to copy/modify/alterate/resell it.

I would probably be proven wrong in court but well...

You would have to prove that it is stolen. Best just to not buy something if you don't like the terms.

As a general rule, if you do know that something is stolen, don't buy it.

Here's a twist. You want a texture for another grid, say Legend City, then make the texture yourself and pay the 6 Legends to upload it and use it as you please. You can't fault TRU or any other texture resource creater for protecting their personal investment in the production of their textures.

Heck you might just become the next "TRU" of Legend City yourself............then we'll see how you react to indiscriminant transferring of content created by you to other places to be distributed willy nilly.

Just my two cents............and I've only purchased one texture that I know of from Ceera. I make my own.........I do what I want with them. Just as Ceera does.

Ain't freedom great?

We seem to have reached a point of Fracture. My post was not aimed at you, and was not meant as a dig against texture artists.


I get the sense that you're using "clever tricks" as a euphemism for "ways of weaseling around the rules". As a computer guy for 30 years, I don't appreciate the generalization. If I am mistaken, I apologize - but from your next quote, I don't know if I am or not.


Wow, ok, that has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about. Is there an equivalent "Godwin" for kiddie-porn? 'Cause I'm getting sick of it being the straw man.


Personally, I think your characterization of my post as "characterization" is completely unjustified. I was asking a technical question. By keeping the assets on LL's Asset server, I am abiding by the license. However, if my build is visible from another grid, I seem to be violating the license at the same time, unless I have bought a second copy of the texture - no matter that it will never be touched, seen, or used - in the second grid (in this case, Legend City). I want to know what the texture artist's take on the scenario is.

I suppose one could equate it with hotlinking from a website. However, if I purchase a license to display a piece of art on my homepage, and hotlink to it /myself/ on another webpage owned by myself, but hosted on another server, is it infringing? More technically correct, if I have two servers showing the identical page - one serving exclusively IP4, one IP6 - or one US, one Europe.

This is interesting, and I have a technical question in response: Does HyperGrid prevent assets from being copied to the sims where they rez? If not--if the assets make an appearance on those sims--then it's violating a simple use license, same as buying one site license and running it at multiple sites.

It's at least theoretically possible that textures need not pass through the sim at all; if I understand how things work now, this would be a performance killer without a big re-architecting of asset services and networks, but theoretically, only the viewer actually cares about those textures. Same with sound and animation asset types, and of course non-prim clothing and skins (textures by another name).

In contrast, there's a huge problem with assets that must appear on a sim: if it's a non-LL sim, they are essentially unprotected. If a prim assembly or script "leaks" across grids, the recipient sim can go rogue at any time and nobody will know until the assets appear in every freebie store in the metaverse. That was the fatal flaw in the old "trusted grid" nonsense, which eventually prompted its advocates to back no-DRM-at-all IP "protection"--basically, every asset has its own EULA, completely unenforced by machine. (One would have to go to court over every sub-dollar infringement.)

No euphemism at all, I was quite explicit about that. And the kiddy porn example wasn't mine, either, it's what some clever dick really thought was a loophole in the law.

It was someone else suggesting apologies for harassment should be tendered?

Well, that's the question. Are you? I'm saying that the law may not come to a conclusion purely based on the technical minutae of the case. For example, there's been some decisions about deep linking that I, as a technical guy for over 30 years, find quite surprising... but judges decided that they were unauthorized use. And they're definitely more ambiguous than this case.

This month was a record breaking sales month (6) 280L$, I think I earned over a dollar, not sure if I can afford a BSD license or enforcement officer.
My only hope is those who paid 20L$ to 50L$ enjoy my creations, and I get to upload 28 more new things. Luckily because LL made their viewer opensource and wasn't worried about making more money so I can now spend less money as I spend numerous hours trying to perfect on my private offline island before uploading here.
I wonder if LL will have day that they regret this decision and will go to all the open source grids and demand they give them a cut for using their viewers in other grids like some Texture artist want to paid for their creations in other grids that they sold full permissions?
I mean truly if your textures are that good, that unique and you serious about your texture making business why even bother selling them for linden or virtual world dollars that could depending on who runs them have absolutely no cash value at any moment? Sell them for more money with full permissions in cash.

Man, I thought I was small-time.

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Man that got to be one special texture if it causes havoc and you need to special clause to
say this is as is, you're not liable for any destruction your texture may cause once it is bought and owned by someone else. LOL
I can just imagine the movie, "When Good Textures Attack..."

Och, aye, Langford's Fractal Basilisk is said to shut your brain down when you see it. Langford was a piker: my textures are so terrible they turn your sainted great grandmother's dead bones to jelly should you merely glance at them.

No, my products aren't textures, they're scripts...

Scripts aww well those things are hard if only I knew how to do them myself there is many a texture I could make come alive instead of move around like water.
I seriously doubt someone who is smart enough to figure out scripts could jellify bones but
I would like to see it. It would fun to watch and bit funny in creepy way possibly? LOL
Myself I only seem to be interested in focusing on one thing, I do build but I have more interest in clothing, fabrics and anything art related as far as textures. I practice for years and there still is host of things I can't do very well in 3d because I have more experience with 2d textures. Yet even some basic things I can't entirely get but I keep trying eventually I have improved but I still haven't entirely mastered certain textures to be realistic enough hand drawn for my own liking. My single-minded goal is I would like my fabrics to get so good when you see them you can feel how the fabrics felt if with you eyes as if you could touch in SL. Slowly certain times I do make a very convincing silk but I got a ways to go still myself.
I never heard of that Fractal artist but I have few friends really are into fractal designs.
I have to check out them out.

No, rezzing a house on some other grid that had been made with TRU textures isn't a violation of the TRU EULA, any more than it would be if you rezzed on the SL grid a prefab house, made by someone else with those textures, but you did not happen to own every texture that the prefab builder used to create the product. If you didn't build the house, you would, however, almost certainly violating the IP rights of the maker of the HOUSE if you rezzed it on other grids, as she/he didn't sell you an unlimited license to use their build on other grids. If you upload the TRU textures themselves to that grid, you are in violation of the TRU EULA, because they are not licensed for use outside the SL Grid.

No. Not any more likely than it would be for the music, TV and movie industries to forgive and refund all the people who previously stole illegal copies of their movies and music, if for some insane reason the laws later changed and copyright and IP rights were invalidated worldwide. The law was still in effect at the time of the crime.

In that case, the most likely result, if LL does start supporting rezzing LL-resident assets on other grids, and if they don't do something extremely solid to prevent rampant IP theft, will be that the majority of the content providers who are doing their work as a for-profit activity will cease further production, and leave. Because if everything becomes freebies, there is no incentive to remain, except as a hobby activity.

Or perhaps they will stay, and drastically increase their prices, knowing that they have to make their entire development investment back on a fraction of the sales that they would normally have gotten, since most products will be in the hands of the freebie stores almost as soon as they hit the market.

Or they may stop doing "over the counter sales", and work only on private commission. Want a new house? No more prefabs. Hire a custom builder to build it for you, and pay a premium price for their time and effort. Want a dress? Hire a clothing designer to make it, again at a far more expensive rate. Why more expensive? Because they can no longer count on repeat sales in the future to recoup their investment of time and effort.

If you had a job in the real world, and your boss suddenly revised company policy to say that instead of your predictable salary and benefits, you would be expected to work only for voluntary tips from your customers, would you stay on that job? There are jobs like that - strippers, some sales jobs... But the majority of employed individuals do not choose such careers, if they have any skills worth being paid for. They choose to work elsewhere, as will most content providers if the metaverse becomes a freebie central.

Once you can give others the freedom to make their own textures it will be!

I do not understand this comment. How has anyone NOT got the freedom to make their own textures?

You're entitled to feel that way. What you are not entitled to do is act on it. Except to refrain from buying the texture in the first place. After all, if you think it was ripped off, why help the alleged thief profit from his or her crime?