Before screaming Texture Theft

Most anyone who has been in SL a while will realize all the following but seems like some new people in our world are hearing all the talk about texture theft and don't really know what true texture theft is . If you want the full story behind why making this post IM me .

Real texture theft is an issue in SL no doubt about it . Just try some common sense before screaming it .

1) if you found it on a google image search odds are you aren't the only one who has done a google image search . So seeing someone else with that same texture you uploaded isn't neccasarily theft , odds are they found it and uploaded it too .

2) If its a reworked texture (like simply made into an alpha) that you found in that google search maybe look at the 2 textures and if you can see major differences in manner and style of the finished texture odds are you both just reworked the same texture . If not see 1 anyways .

3) If they can show a creation date and tranactions involing that texture dating back 6 monthes and you uploaded it 2 weeks ago , it's a pretty good sign they didn't steal it from you .

4) If you ignore the above points try IMing them with a polite question about it instead of "you *&^&&** thief" so you don't wind up looking like a total idiot and creating some ill will from the start . And it might be a good idea to apoligize for your actions at some point after all your rants and raves .

Eladon Galsworthy

*** (edited comments)

I am not in any way shape form or fashion making less of the real issue of stealing custom textures that people took hours and hours creating . It's a hot topic atm because it is a real problem .

Please actually read what I said , I pointed out in the begining of my post that this isn't directed at custom textures or the real serious issue of thefts of those .

It IS directed at those newer people who don't fully understand the issue and think that because they found a image on the web and either uploaded it directly or made very minor changes to it that it isn't theft if someone else did the same . Especially if the person they are claiming stole their texture had it 6 months before even entering the game.

Hmmm?

Ok.

Yes.

Next time I wake in the middle of the night to find a stranger carrying a bag with my stuff in it, I won't presume he is a thief, afterall he could just be taking the silver to be polished.

I will politely ask him not to do that next time without asking first.

Glad we had this little chat.

That's the right attitude! Maybe now we can all get along in peace!

I disagree and I don't know if you are talking about clothing and skins. With skins, they MAY come from the same source. The big difference the way they're made into the mesh for SL. No Skin is the same no matter what the source was from. Regular textures, maybe, unless they are altered.

I wish LL would realize that when someone spends 80 hours on a skin and someone steals it is it a very big deal!!!!

Actually Weedy if you're attempting to analogize the crux of the issue the OP is referring to a more accurate one would be:

Next time I'm walking down the street and I see a stranger wearing an outfit almost identical to one that I own I should point at them and yell "Thief!" (followed by a string of profanity) as loudly as I can without considering that they may just shop at the same store as I do.

I believe the OP is referring to free textures that can be downloaded from websites (rather than textures stolen from within SL), and is making a valid point!

With all the IP theft thats occuring at the moment its not surprising that folks are a little jumpy, but if you're downloading images from websites and uploading them to SL that doesn't give you the right to yell "Thief!" everytime you come across someone else doing likewise who happens to have uploaded the same texture.

Downloading images from websites and uploading them to SL is often nothing else than IP theft...

That depends on the website you download them from and the terms of use that they stipulate. Regardless of what the terms of use are for the image in question, if two people download the same image from a website and upload it to SL neither of them have the right to call the other a thief for doing so!

I thought my post was pretty obviously not referring to custom skins and other textures but to ones easily found and uploaded off the web .

Eladon, for those few cases where someone sourced their stuff almost unaltered from the Internet, I would agree - they shouldn't be talking about texture theft in those cases, because they are not the owner of those textures themselves. Uploading unaltered or barely altered textures from someone's website does NOT make you the owner of the copyright on those textures for use in SL. In most cases, you are, yourself, violating someone else's copyright if you do that. But in 99% of the cases where you see an artist complaining about texture theft, this is NOT the case.

Creating a good skin or clothing texture is a LOT more complex than just downloading a raw texture chip from an Internet search and applying it to a clothing item in SL.

Creating a skin that looks beautiful and flawless from photographs of an artist's live model takes a lot of effort to get everything to blend just right, and no two artists will ever handle it the same way. Even if two artists both start from the same set of stock photographs of the same live model, the odds on them producing textures that are identical, down to the last freckle and birthmark, are astronomical.

Creating a good clothing design for anything, even something as simple as a polo shirt, takes careful attention to the scale and direction of the fabric pattern on the template, matching of seams, adding hand-painted detailing to make wrinkles and shading look right... You can't scan a Tartan sett out of a book on Highland clans and flood-fill that into a photoshop file and expect to be able to produce a plaid flannel shirt with pockets, buttons and cuffs that looks like it was sewn out of cloth.

On the other hand, some of my textures are pretty simple. Stuff like a seamless, tilable Highland plaid for use as a starting point in making other things, or to flood fill for simple things like curtains. The only time I would go after someone who seemed to be re-selling such simple textures of mine, even if it was one I computer generated myself, and not from a public source, would be if they were reselling them as raw textures, which is against the TRU licensing agreement. And even then, I would look quite closely at what they were selling first, to be certain that it was really rip-offs of my work.

Comments like yours are one reason why, in almost every case, I do not use any material from Internet-accessible sources for more than 10% of any texture that I sell. In most cases, I work from photographs that I have taken myself, or material that I scanned myself, or with material that I produced by hand in Photoshop myself. Where I do use something from the net or from a commercially available stock photo collection, it might be to get the texture of one stick of bamboo, or the basic flat pattern for a fabric texture - but my final texture will include combining that with hand-painted details, scaling, cropping, duplicating... Again, if someone came up with the same bamboo wall or Cheongsam dress, identical to the count of the bamboo pieces or the last seam and wrinkle in the dress, it's pretty clear that they stole my work.

While I have had a few reports that someone had ripped off my texture work and was reselling them, I have yet to catch red-handed a thief who was actually doing so. I do investigate any such claims that I hear of, either in person or by sending a friend to collect proof. If I catch a thief, and can prove it, I will issue a DMCA take down notice against them, and will abuse report the thief. But I won't bother if I am not certain it is my work they are stealing and reselling.