Proof of a design ripper.. also looking for some advice

Correct; part of having your creating trademarked involves requirement to actively 'defend' the property in question.

All schmechnicalities aside, both builders in question profit directly from intellectual work of someone else -- the person who designed the original RL shape, and did it with enough skill and flair to make people want fly a vehicle that _looks just like that_, if just in virtual world. It's both the looks and the name of the plane that make its strong selling points. If they don't, there should be no problem with putting the scripts that power the plane into completely different shape, that doesn't have any resemblance to the real thing... and it shouldn't affect the sales in any way, right?

To this specific point, my opinion isn't based on whether or not it's legal to recreate the F-16 in world. My opinion is that it takes creative talent to do so. Using your example below, it doesn't matter to me if it's an F-16 or an Me-109. Creativity is needed to bring those planes into SL even if it's not legal or protected by IP. And someone making a prim-for-prim by-the-numbers copy (which I believe is what happened and I realize you don't) is wrong.



If the person who copied the OPs plane, just bought one, looked at it, and made theirs from scratch, then I would say that's ok. I just don't think that's what happened.

Its more like he took the Me-109 and ran it through a Star Trek scanner and used a replicator to make exact copies (except for color). The person who spent the time making the original Me-109 toy would be (and imo should be) pissed.

And that's where we disagree. I hire overseas designers on occasion. I hope to get creative talent, but mostly I get technical proficiency. They can copy like crazy, but don't ask them to contribute to a design. Hence my comment. I don't consider this "creative talent"; only technical proficiency.




And I do believe that's what happened. It's not that difficult to do really. SL's modeling tools are sufficiently limited that if you recognize a prim in a model, you can create your own and move it right over the other and then stretch and scale and tweak until it's almost exactly the same. But it's still created from scratch.

Unfortunately, the documentation presented in this thread doesn't determine how the model was made. Maybe it was dup'd. Maybe it was scratch-built. Right now, I'm assuming it's a scratch-built version. If it was a hacked copy, then I'd agree there are issues, since then someone pirated an interpretation of a form which may be protected. Even so, they're still both infringing on a RW property, so I'd have them both removed myself. Let them create their own unique planes. This copying other designs and using the same name/trademark is lame.

That's your opinion, but I think anyone who has ever tried to recreate a real world object in SL would strongly disagree that it takes no creativity.



Oh come on now. That's not creating from scratch. If the end result of that trial-and-error process results in prims with the same attribute values (or nearly identical values), thats just another method of digital duplication.



I would call what you described above as hacking a copy and pirating an interpretation of a form. The person didn't put any creative thought into it whatsoever, just recreating identically (or almost identically) what someone else built.



I don't find it lame at all to build an F-16 in SL. If I wanted to fly an F-16 in SL, I would want it too look right: be the right shape and have all the correct markings and images.

I wouldn't want a knock-off that was obviously supposed to be an F-16 but changed just enough to please the IP croud. That, I would find lame.

And you have yours. Oh well.

However, as I've recreated some of the RW objects I've designed inside SL, I can tell you that you're mistaken on the rest. I found recreating my designs to be a technically interesting activity. Nothing more.



If I get sheet metal and hammer out the body of a Model T, that's "from scratch", even if I use the original to confirm shape/fit/etc. Prims start as generic shapes. From there the builder modifies them. Hence, the only meaningful difference between the sheet metal and the digital primitive is tangibility.



My standards are apparently different than yours.



To each his own. I'd prefer that someone design something new and original. You know...be creative.

I'm willing to guess that if 9 other people recreated those same objects, you'd have a total of 10 different versions of varying size, detail, quality, etc. Those variations would depend not only on technical skill but how creative the person was in putting the prims together.



I wouldn't call that the only difference. Real world sheetmetal is much harder to work with than SL prims.

If you can pound out a Model T body from sheetmetal using a hammer, that's something to be proud of. That would take alot of skill. No credit for the shape, just how you got to the shape.

If you can duplicate prims by lining them up and sizing them against other prims, that's not something to be too proud of. It doesn't take nearly as much skill.



I like new and original too. But it's also cool to have recreations of real stuff in SL because of being of fan of that type of thing.

Perhaps. But I was answering your assertion than "anyone who has ever tried to recreate a real world object in SL would strongly disagree that it takes no creativity". I have and I don't disagree with myself.

However, if we want to be pendantic, then "creativity" includes everything from how we eat our food to how a person sits on the toilet. My own threshold where design creativity ends and technical proficiency begins, is whether the individual is attempting to emulate something else; attempting to copy it with sufficient accuracy to make a connection to the original. There may be creativity in attempting to solve the emulation, but afaic there is no creativity in the design.



Matter of degree. Putting paint on a canvas is arguably easier than manipulating a computer mouse. Does that mean Rembrandt's ability had less worth than someone torturing prims in SL? I don't believe so. Jasper Johns? Hans Hofman? Take your pick.



And here you're beginning to suggest that creating in SL is *not* something of which a person should be proud. That it *doesn't* take a lot of skill. Careful.



whooops. Too late. You've passed judgement. Is now a good time to go back to the first disagreement where you want to make sitting on a toilet a creative endeavor?!

Your correct in that the U.S. Government is free of copyrighting, but your wrong in how your applying it to any and everything the goverment owns. The U.S. Citzens own the planes, but not the patents, copyrights etc. of said plane

U.S.C. § 105 provides that:

Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.

The intent of the section is to place in the public domain all work of the United States Government, which is defined in 17 U.S.C. § 101 as work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties. Contractors are not employees.

-

See its Lockheed Martin who owns the copyright and patents on the F-16 fighter plane, they where contracted, they designed it, they build them,, they sell them and also allow the U.S. Governement (among others) to also hold the copyright. I'm not going to get into detail about anything more because this really is not the spot for it. I'm almost positive Lockheed Martin is not to concerned about the pennies worth of linden being made off of a poorly rendered video game model of its billion dollar real world project.



With that being said, if that is a copy, like taking someone elses work and reverse engineering it to "tweak" it for whatever reasons, be it to make a better one,, or flat out steal the design in terms of SL creation techniques, then thats pretty low.

Did he merely "look" at it and reproduce it freehand? Or did he alter a copable modifyable object?


Or is it as simple as two people stumbling upon the same design and scale in making a well known airplane such as the F-16?


Either or in this game,,, the better designed and looking airplane will always preveil over the other.

That's what I was trying to talk about: "creativity in attempting to solve the emulation". You said it better than I was able to.

And you are right, there is no creativity in the design. Of the in-world F-16, there's no creativity in it's design except for whatever the creator may have changed about it.



I wasn't entirely clear. I said "Real world sheetmetal is much harder to work with than SL prims." I didn't just mean physically more difficult to shape although it certainly sounded that way.

I meant what I think you're eluding to: that it takes quite a bit of skill to transform a sheet or block of material into something useful or artistic.



I don't mean to suggest that at all. Of coarse it takes alot of talent to build nice things in SL.

Except when...



I'm not going to be impressed, at all, when someone copies another person's object by simply rezzing and lining up prims. While it can be a useful technique for learning how to build, it says nothing about how talented of a builder they are.

Or if someone takes a piece of tracing paper, lays it on top of a drawing, and traces it line-for-line with no changes. It may help them learn to draw, but if they hold that up and tell me how great of an artist they are, I'm going to be quite unimpressed.