Texture Resellling ONCE again WHY NO PROTECTION?

Once again ( 3rd time in 1 week ) I have found 2 people at Yard sales selling other ppls textures...not mearly 'off the net stuff' but hand made stuff.. yo know the same as a hand made dress/hair etc.

This is were is REALLY gets sh**ty.

The person who these 2 ppl bought these textures from wasnt the texture creators....oh no. they bought them from a person whho was issued a Take Down Order last week!

So technically they havent been issued my TOS as they didnt buy them from me directly


The person who they bought them from TP to the location as I saw his name as 'creator' on the bundles and jumped to the conclusion they were his. But as he pointed out they had been purchased from him.

He *kindly* went into his acct history and told me the dates they were sold ( nvr offered to give me the money!?)

So as I said to him " can you see how it breeds? " and he replied " yeah like wild fire....can you give me some really newbie tips on how to create alpha channels ?" and passed me a texture he had been working on. ( ??? !!)

The sad thing is a customer had IMd me asked if she could use these textures shed bought from a yard sale as they had my name as creator as well as other stores.

I explained NO! and asked where she got them from...she helped me find out.

But then added " oh its so hard to know what you can and cannot sell in textures these days as even yours come with full perms and I am starting to give classes " ( she thought full perms meant she could sell them as textures and shes giving classes???? )

I expalained how it worked that she was given a TOS in her bundles when she must of bought my textures B4 and she understood eventually.

I arrived at the Yard sale to find this one persons plot and to my horror find directly behind it a 2nd plot selling my stuff!

BOTH bought from the same person who was issued a take down order last week!

Ok so LL offer the Take Down DMCA thingie. BUT at this rate I wont be able to keep up with the amounf of my work being sold around SL....finding them is only half the battle and to issue lettters to the US from the UK not to mentuioned the take down orders and arguments and stress to as many ppl as Im currently dealing with

WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR LL TO GIVE TEXTURE ARTISTS THE SAME PROTECTION AS EVERY OTHER CONTENT CREATOR IN SL HAS>??

I am so down...I IM all the other ppl who I find their stuff at these places...I TRY to fight this never ending battle even started a group PATT ( protection againts texture theft) where members share info on known thefts with a view t banning) I have massive displays in my stores of my TOS and in the welcome card and in the bundles
Some ppl say I go overboard and 'lecture' with these signs but they dont understand the amount of time and energy that goes into dealing with the ppl I find selling them and their ignorance o n the matter.

Im so pissed right now feel like just leaving SL

It does.




I wouldn't either.



The you don't have sole rights. The other creators can hand them out willy nilly and you have no right to complain.



Conspiracy to commit slander and libel is a crime too. Do it in a group and watch you all get ARs. Multiple people falsely reporting is harassment as well, do not encourage, public or otherwise, anyone to report the so calle dtheives. Doing so can result in your own suspension or ban.



Knowledge of the law, as it were, is not ignorance.



Enjoy rl.

Grey area. It depends on the EULA agreed to, really.

Basicly an asshatish thing to do either way, though.

Never said it wasn't What I would do is make all class textures no transfer to the students. Then they couldn't resell anything they used them on.

It becomes an 'education only' freebie if you do it that way, which can only be used to experiment in the students builds, and not make a profit. (I'd be willing to make a pack of textures dependent upon that)

Actually, textures and animations have similar restrictions. Both have to be sold with full rights to allow them to be used by other creators, because both have weird restrictions on how they can be used (in gestures and skins, and when included in prims). And there's been similar problems with animations being resold against the creators wishes in the recent past.

There's just so much more need for textures, since a typical vehicle or couch may require one or two animations but just about every object requires several textures, so the business is much bigger and more competitive and the problem is more obvious.

They really need one more permission. You could call it "create reference". This would allow you to apply a texture to an object without requiring the object be restricted to the rights you have on the texture. Textures sold for builders could be no-transfer/referrable. On an animation it would allow you to create a gesture from a no-copy or no-transfer animation, or refer to the animation by UUID from a script without having to have the animation included in the object.

Reference would be off by default.

No transfer would help for SOME cases. But texture theft is also done by outside software. All my vendor stuff is no transfer. But in some cases people wish to buy full permissions to use in their own stuff. I choose to make everything myself though...

Yup that would do it for me. I could use the textures in the way they were intended by the creator, without screwing with the ability to sell those creations. Everyone's happy.

I second Argent's proposal.

Or you could just adopt the attitude that you are making a profit off legitimate sales and suffer the "illegitimate" sales in much the same way music companies are trying not to.

There is a well known texture seller who does a really nice job of selling her wares and does ask that people not resell them as textures. I'm sure I could find rougue copies of them for a few less L$ somewhere, but it just isn't worth it. Moreover, her wares are branded so that if you wind up with an illegitimate copy, it may to lead you to her shops for more.

In RL retail sales, a certain amount of loss is expected through shoplifting and internal theft. The retailers would prefer the world be otherwise, but the cost of total deterrence would be more expensive (and damaging to customer goodwill) than it is worth.

Argent's proposal, although well reasoned, isn't likely to cure the problem as there are ways to subvert that too.

While I sympathise with the posters sentiment, it does raise a more fundamental question about the right to call a texture taken from an internet image site their own and claim exclusivity in SL let alone sell it as their 'own'

This breaks into the area of downloading copyright artwork 'not intended for commercial use'. Selling the texture in the first place will break this rule.

I agree that when a creator makes a texture from a white canvas in photoshop they can feel justifiably hacked off when someone copies it by whatever method and worse still sells it on.

It's a very shaky argument when you claim some sort of exclusive ownership of a texture originally made by someone else, posted for free or to be purchased from the web.

As an example, I might find a texture from the same site as the poster, use it in one of my builds. Would the poster feel that I have 'pirated' that texture? I doubt it.

I don't sell or create texture packs so have no axe to grind, I do make textures from scratch for some of my builds and like most creators download and spend hours searching the web for royalty free textures that can be used in my work. I do often pay for texture packs on the web. There are usually of a much higher quality and i know that I can use with a clear concience.

Where I use downloaded textures in for a build, I don't have any problem giving the customer a copy in order that they can modify or extend the house.

As i said, I have sympathy for this poster and her business selling textures however, until they are wholly 'home created' and sold no transfer there should be little supprise that people will take advantage of the permissions set on that texture.

http://davegh.com/blade/davegh.htm

It's really a great resource, because I can resize them in Teh Gimp.

Of course, personally I would never resell them because of the restrictions listed on his website:

LIMITATIONS

-This material can't be accessible out of your project, or included in a program library, a collection of textures, website, or any other way of distribution.

- These textures cannot be used in comercial videogames in any way, or including in any project or place relationed with the profesional Videogame Industry, paid or not. That prohibition include for example CDs, official websites and magazines.

- These textures cannot be included in any platform for massivelly distribution , including ( but not limited to) CDs, DVDs, and another websites.

EXAMPLES OF PERMITED USES

- You can make your own commercial projects with this material if it is not a commercial videogame, and it is an integral part of your work.

- You can make your personal videogame scenary and share it with your friends, and even post it in your website if it is for free.

-This material can be used in videogames for testing purposes or in a demo version, vhenever it will be completelly eliminate in the final product.

I think it's extremely confusing, period. I was absolutely vilified once by someone for selling "her" texture...she accused a customer of mine of stealing it and then accused me of the same. It was a texture actually from a package I had purchased (in real life not in game) and not hers at all. She proceeded to give me quite a hostile lecture after that on how NO texture can be sold or modified even for linden dollars without the written consent, yadda yadda. She indicated that taking a texture that someone else had created and modifying it in PS was an even worse crime. I'm not versed in federal law for textures in games; I sell them as an inexpensive sideline in game. I know that I would never resell LilyBeth's gorgeous work and am a frequent customer of hers. (Or any other texture that I bought in game). I thought it was all right to package up and sell ones that you yourself uploaded into game. (Apparently it's not? I'm still confused.) Now, quite a few of them are ones that I basically edited from photographs and I consider that to be in no way "taken" from anyone else as a texture. (Maybe I'm wrong about that, too). But with all the talk about these legalities lately, I'm deciding it's probably just safer not to sell texture packs at all. You basically will either have them "stolen" or be accused of stealing, least that is sure what it seems like.

I suspect there might be a legal loophole here, though. (IANAL!)

L$, in official legal terms, are "play money". They have to be because if they weren't issues like banking laws, consumer protection laws, tax on L$ income, etc. would be brought to full bear on SL and neither LL nor anyone else would be happy about that.

But since L$ are legally "play money"... selling stuff in exchange for them is, I suspect, not legally "commercial".

I suspect that if it was ever ruled in court that reselling textures in SL counted as commercial use, then SL would immediately be thrown into the legal limelight as a real business platform and the calls on LL to provide residents' RL addresses to send in unpaid tax demands would begin..

I am one of the texture artists at TRU. The textures that I create and sell at TRU are, virtually without exception, my own unique creations. Any materials that I use that are created by someone else are used within the guidelines allowed by the creator of the texture, and are then only used as a part of a larger result, with significant effort on my part to produce a seamless, well-scaled texture that can be used in SL. (For example, I may use a 3D rendering app and a room creation app that I paid for, to 3D render realistic window frame sets. The raw textures for the window frame and the 3D Mesh for the window may be by someone else, but the application license specificly allows the rendered results to be re-used commercially, and the resulting texture that I sell is my own artistic use of that tool.)

If SL had a method for restricting resale rights on a texture, while still allowing a content creator to make things using that texture, we wouldn't have this issue. For example, if a builder wanted to use my 'tropical building set' to make homes, they could purchase the set, use it to texture the homes they sell, and could not resell the set to someone else.

Right now, that is impossible. If I set the texture to anything short of full permissions, the homes that person creates with them become just as restricted. The textures become worthless, except for texturing things you plan to use for personal use only.

I like Argent's suggestion. Keep the ability to restrict resale of raw textures seperate from the permissions required to make things with those textures.

As for someone using my textures for teaching purposes, I would have no problem with what was proposed earlier. That the teacher buys a legitimate copy of the set, and then sets the perms on what she gives out for her training materials as "no mod / no transfer". That way, a student could make something for a lesson, but could not resell the textures or make things with it and sell them. But if a teacher DID want to do that, they should still ask the original artist's permission, first.

For now, I consider texture theft to be shoplifting. I have complete records of EVERY texture sale I have ever made. Who bought what set, on what date. If I catch someone reselling my textures, I'll issue a take down order. But at this point, I have to assume that I simply can't catch all the thieves. The few pennies per texture that they cost me in lost sales isn't worth the effort of tracking them down, in most cases.

Just a suggestion:

How about a Wall of Shame thread on a third party forum, such as SLUniverse or Second Citizen websites? There you can list places/names of people who sell stolen goods, and you won't get banned from SL for naming names.

I'd check it when I'm on my way to shop because I like to know the original creator of a texture can help me with aligning the textures, or, like Lillybeth has done for me, make me the same texture in a different color or shade or something.

I'm not so sure this would be the best idea. It could backfire if demand for stolen goods is strong enough. A blacklist could be a very effective advertizing tool for the thieves. Listing names would just point lazy people in the right direction for free or unreasonably cheap stuff. I only see a list like this being effective if RL anonymity is taken away.

In addition, some innocent person is going to end up on the list, and I think that would be a greater "crime" then the one that the list is seeking to end.

Good point! Lists like this only lead to McCarthyism

*yawn*
What would it take to protect your textures? A miracle. Yeah that's it, good old divine intervention, or at least some paradigm-shifting computer science research.
This is way out of LL's hands. No matter what the heck they do to their software, you can just run something else alongside SL that will pull exact copies of your textures from memory.
Even if there was some way that Windows could guarantee a secure path from your network card to your graphics card, so that nobody could intercept textures on the way, we could still intercept the signal before it got to the network card, or after it left your graphics card, log all traffic on those cables and pipe it through another computer that would run some pattern-matching program to automatically extract textures and save them into files.
Even if you welded everything together into a tamperproof PC, we could still point a camera at the screen. What are you gonna do about that, jam a cable straight from the internet into my brain? Fine, I'll MRI my own brain and log a copy of whatever I'm seeing. What are you going to ask for next, lead skulls to prevent us from scanning our brain with MRI?
You'd have to cut my hands off too, since I could perhaps draw a copy of it. And my tongue, since I could end up describing what I'm seeing! In fact you would have to remove every muscle from my body since I could be using them to communicate by twitching in morse code!!

Ok I am going to try to explain this in a calm rational manner....I am the 'customer' as you call me (FYI I have never been a customer of you or anyone that sells textures, I have never purchased textures before) and in the above statement you seem to imply that I am a bumbling fool that was clueless, and showed some shock that I would be teaching classes in SL

I SUSPECT now and did in the IM w/ you Sat nite that there were some language barriers in our communication.

I was fairly confident that the textures being sold at the yard sale were against the wishes of the creators but I couldn't be SURE!!! So I bought two bundles and contacted you as you were the creator of some of the textures.

At that time I was putting tegether some classes I would be teaching and said to you...That it was hard to know which textures I could USE....USE for my classes not SELL!. I never have and probably never will, have any interest in selling textures, but be assured if I did, they would only be those created by me.


Talk about no good deed goes unpunished, I shoulda kept my mouth shut

I have to respectfully disagree with you on the point that this is TOTALLY out of LL hands. LL could always add a server side feature that restricts the upload features of the client for repeat offenders of DMCA takedowns.

I think you might be right Yumi however, there might be a case to answer once those 'play money' linden dollars are cashed into Real World Dollars. The end result of using and selling those textures

Nyx?

First, I would like to thank you for having the honesty and courtesy to contact LillyBeth and ask about the textures. That was the right thing to do.

Lilly is upset because this has happened a LOT to her in the past few weeks. And unlike most of us, TRU is pretty much Lilly's full-time RL job. For me, what I sell at TRU is a few extra bucks in my purse. For her... it's the way she pays her RL rent.

I would ask you this, Nyx. If this was RL, and if you went to a garage sale and purchased something, say, a stereo, and then you were confronted later by the owner of a stereo store who checked the serial number and informed you the stereo was stolen from his store, what would you think was the fair thing to do? Wouldn't you think it was right to return the stolen property to him, or at least offer to pay him the fair price to keep it?

Lilly identified the textures that you purchased as having been illegally resold at that yard sale. They are 'stolen goods'. That you bought them innocently does not change that fact.

If it were me in your shoes, I would offer to pay the rightful creator of the texture sets what they were worth. Or I would offer to delete them from my inventory.

As an officer of TRU, even though I am far from being any sort of full partner, I will make you this offer. If you will purchase legitimate copies of those texture sets from TRU, so the original artist gets their fair payment, I will, personally and out of my own funds, refund to you whatever you paid for them at that yard sale. As a thank-you for doing the right thing. If you merely delete the textures, I will also offer you that refund of what you paid at that yard sale. Even though I have no way to verify that you have done so.

Is that fair?

As for using them in your class, I would think that once you have purchased legitimate copies, there should be no reason not to allow you to distribute no mod/no transfer copies to the students in your class, for the purpose of doing the excercises in your lessons. If Lilly denies you that request for the textures from the yard sale, talk to me about purchasing and using some of the textures that I made, such as my tropical or Tudor building sets. I will grant you that permission, IF you buy a legitimate copy first.

Please note that at this point, I do not yet know which textures from TRU you bought. I do know some of my Tropical Texture Set textures were in one of the yard sales that LillyBeth shut down. So, they may be my work. Or they may not. I really don't care. What I do care about is trying to protect the intelectual proerty rights of the many artists who sell their work at TRU and elsewhere.

I realize it is impossible to prevent all texture theft. But honest people can at least do something to try to work honestly, can't they?

Ceera, Of course I can understand her anger and frustration. I just felt SOME of it was a tad misplaced eh. I had no intention of using the textures (I was pretty sure I was buying unauthorized textures so went sleuthing) until I had contacted the creators. So deleting them isn't even a problem AT all and I had decided to do so after my last post

Thank you, Nyx. And my offer still holds. If you IM me in-world and tell me what you paid for those textures, I'll refund it to you personally, as a thank-you for deleting them.