New Copyright Threat Warning

I'd say your guess is spot on. On the off chance you are mistaken, you just rang BB's dinner bell. I would have let this one die. In either case I'd guess there is a 0% chance of intelligent discussion with BB.

Sorry, but i do not like tattoos, so it is my a bit to far as a discusion is so long about nothing. But i read the hole story and the owner have buy it, so it is his property. No transfer and no copy is not really nice to your customer how pay much to much for most bad skin. Over tattoos i have no idea.

My personal 'kudos' to the person who can place a tattoo on a no-trans skin. That means I can have a tattoo without losing any clothing attachments.

IMHO - they are not re-selling the skin the tat is put on... they are providing a tattoo service for the skins brought to them. Those skins are returned to the owner as no trans so they are the permanent property of the owner.

If they were giving/selling the skins brought to them - then yes - that's a copyright violation. But They Are Not!!! Until they do - IMHO - you have no complaint.

LOL - you sound like a car dealer than has caught a coniption because someone pinstriped and flamed the car you just sold them. They bought the car. As long as they don't start producing copies and selling them... leave them alone. They are just trying to be happy with their appearance... same as you?

Thats is exactly how i feel about it.

Let me see if I have this right...

Customer buys skin from vendor A.

Customer buys tattoo from vendor B.

Due to the nature of AV texture baking, skin and tattoo can't both be worn at the same time

Service provider, for a fee, gives customer a skin-tattoo that is a combination of textures from vendor A and vendor B.

Customer can now wear both legally purchased products at the same time.

Assuming that the service provider is not reselling these textures after using the originals to create the composite, what's the big deal?

Vendor A sold a skin which original customer is now wearing (with a tattoo layered on top).

Vendor B sold a tattoo which original customer is now wearing (with a skin layered beneath).

Who is being hurt here, and why?

- Ace

I think the fact that you used the words "assuming" and "original" gives clues as to why this might be a big problem for some vendors. Skin and tattoo vendors don't have to assume anyone providing a service like that is legitimate without proof and accountability. The fact that the service provider needs a ripped COPY of other peoples IP to do what they do tells me quite the opposite. No matter how noble their intentions are, it shows they value an end result and a few L$ more than the vendor's copyrights.

As has been said numerous times before in this ancient thread, the solution to this problem is to add a feature to the platform that accommodates multiple scalable texture layers as separate assets from skin/tattoo and clothing assets. Linden Lab's official position on this for the past 4 years has been "We are looking into the feasibility of this". This solution may never happen, but that doesn't mean skin and tattoo vendors should give up rights to their IP.

The wrong solution is to legitimize a business model that allows anyone and their Grandmother with a copy of Photoshop (or equivalent) and Easytextureripper to set up business handling other peoples IP. That's a recipe for disaster.

Which is exactly what he was doing.

Quote for context...

Equally wrong is to assume that scarcity exists at all for things that exist exclusively in the digital realm. What has scarcity in Second Life? 1) Developer time, 2) Currency. Prims don't have scarcity, neither do textures. If your business model is depending on prims or textures to have scarcity, you're putting all your eggs into a single, easily defeated, basket.

If you charge hourly for your time in exchange for currency, you're protecting yourself against loss regardless of what they do with what they commissioned you to build in the first place. To blame others for lack of foresight resulting from business models depending on non-existant scarcity of prims or textures is like getting pissed off at people because they won't pay you for the air they breathe while on your property in real life. You can't reasonably expect everyone to be a sucker and pay for something with no scarcity.

Baloo, you make it sound like there should be no such thing as an off-the-shelf product in any digital environment. That's a pretty simplistic, and frankly ill-thought-out, attitude. It's not just a matter of supply & demand curves, or scarcity graphs, or whatever other extra-moral or extra-legal devices you might care to employ in order to self-justify theft. Morality and legality are what are in question here, not just eighth grade level economic theory.

While you're certainly right that scarcity CAN be overcome because copying is easy to do, what you're forgetting about is the fact that laws are still in place to protect copyright holders. Just because laws might be easy to break doesn't mean they don't carry any meaning. It's pretty easy to steal a loaf of bread from your local supermarket, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. It's also very easy to kill someone if you really want to, but I think you'd agree murder is wrong, whether you could get away with it or not.

Infringing on copyright is equally wrong. The fact that it's getting easier and easier to do doesn't change that.

If you carry your argument to its logical conclusion, where does it end? Should books no longer be sold, just because Xerox machines are easy to come by? Should movie theaters no longer sell tickets just because it's not hard for people to acquire bootleg films these days? Should all video games and software be made free, just because they can be cracked? Should you no longer lock the front door to your house, just because I could get in by breaking a window or something if I really wanted to?

Come on. I think you know better than this.

So if I took the client source, and built a version of the client with this feature added, things would be fine? Afterall, texture baking is a client-side operation as it is today.

If your answer is yes, then I would argue that our service provider is doing exactly the same thing without integrating the process into an alternative viewer.

- Ace

I hesitate to get back into this heated and largely pointless debate, but while we're on the topic of"legality" I felt it only fair to point out that there remains, in copyright law, the concept of "fair use" battered and unloved though it may be by some abusive parents/copyright holders. Now, I realize that some of the business interests that rammed through the DMCA are dead set against this concept, and that one can interpret big chunks of the DMCA as their attempt to eradicate the concept from the public commons.

But the reality is that copyright law was initially conceived to encourage commerce, not to stunt it, nor to give eternal and absolute rights over copying to anyone who has the money and lawyers to vigorously defend their presumed rights over ALL forms of copying.

I'm not a lawyer, so I won't presume to guess how this will all work out in the end. But it does seem to me, on a practical level, that the sort of copying involved in the case in point falls within a reasonable person's notion of fair use, though it might not fall within the frame for those with a vested interest in maximizing revenues and maintaining an illusion of control over all forms of copying.

Still, this reminds me of the attempts by Ford Motor Company to prohibit sales of a car club calendar on the grounds that it contained images of their vehicles and was thus a violation of copyright. They might have succeeded under a strict and literal reading of the DMCA -- I haven't followed the case closely since first hearing of it -- but have you looked at their balance sheet lately?

Rigid and ridiculous enforcement of copyright seems to me to, in the end, have almost the reverse if its intended effect. In my view, it encourages scofflaws and reduces the sense of goodwill towards the creators (or their commercial representatives) who try to interpret their rights with more greed than common sense.

Frankly, my view on the DMCA is that it's just about as corrosive to the economy as the repeal of the Glass-Steagel Act has turned out to be, only its effects are so diffuse that there's no banking collapse to point to when looking for the damage. But there is a severely impaired music industry and many others who are now reaping the whirlwind of unintended consequences. 'Nuff said.

OpenLife and resident fatigue may be the main reasons, but I have to think that this sort of fighting over scraps is among the reasons that interest seems to be declining in SecondLife as a whole. But that may just be part of my own reason for a steadily fall-off of interest in the last year, and a friends list whose connected numbers continue a gradual fall off, and most of whom do not tend to buy much of anything in SL anymore, at least not anything that falls under the DMCA disgust magnet.

We've already discussed fair use at length in this thread. It's not applicable in cases like this, not in any way. See post number 24 for more information.

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You'd do well to actually read the applicable laws, rather than making such assumptions about what you think they say, or blindly trying to imagine who had what incentive to write them. The DMCA does not impede the Fair Use clause of pre-existing copyright law at all. It's really got nothing to do with it. DMCA is neither supportive nor unsupportive of Fair Use in any way. The two are completely separate things.


Encouraging commerce and protecting creators' rights are not mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, just the opposite, they're very much dependent on each other. I'll give one quick example.

I'm pretty sure you'd agree Disney has been pretty good for commerce in the US, and around the world. The company employs well over 60,000 people in Florida alone, plus countless hundreds of thousands more around the world when you consider all the merchandising, manufacturing, advertising, acting, art production, film & video production, etc., all based upon Disney's copyrighted material. And then there's all the tangentially related businesses that benefit as well, such as hotels and restaurants near Disney theme parks, caterers that service movie studios, materials suppliers for all those toys, DVD's, and other products, etc. I don't know an exact figure, but I'd be willing to bet that Disney's contribution to the world economy is measurable in the trillions of dollars.

I'm also pretty sure you'd agree, if you've ever read a newspaper in your life, that Disney has a reputation for being an often absurdly ruthless defender of its copyrights. I could tell you some stories that would make you never want to look Mickey Mouse in the eye again.

But what the stories never tend to talk about is WHY is Disney so vigorous in its defense? It's precisely because such a huge amount of industry depends on its IP remaining under its control. Imagine if "fair use" were a viable defense every time someone printed up their own Donald Duck poster and gave it to some random child instead of having that child's parents buy the real thing. How long do you think Disney would last? The answer is not very long. And all those hundreds of thousands of people we just talked about would be out of work. How much "commerce" would happen then? Obviously, not very much.

So yes, copyright exists to encourage commerce. And it does so by protecting creators' rights.


Again, I encourage you to read the law. Fair Use has nothing to do with this. It never has, and it never will.


DMCA has to do with digital media. Last I checked, wall calendars are still made of paper. If the case you're talking about actually happened, it would have been with respect to other parts of copyright law, not DMCA.

If the calendar in question were to contain photographs owned by Ford, then of course Ford would have every right to demand that they not be distributed. I suspect, though, that no one would be stupid enough to do that. Chances are the calendar maker probably took photos of cars him/herself. In that case, the issue is probably related to trademark, not copyright. Ford was probably upset about their logo(s) being displayed in a third party commercial print. That's perfectly understandable. Usually, the proper thing to do is to Photoshop out any trademarked material from the imagery before it goes into distribution.

If you'd care to provide a link to the story, I'd be curious to see what the complaint actually was.

In any case, you can hardly blame Ford's current lack of revenue on the fact that they were MAYBE overzealous in defending their IP on a calendar. (I say maybe because I don't know anything about the case.) The US auto industry as a whole is in trouble, largely because they haven't been making the right kinds of products. They hedged a lot of their bets on SUV's and other gas guzzlers right before oil prices went through the roof. Now they're (rightly) suffering for it. They need to start making products people actually want to buy. Wall calendars have nothing to do with that.



Protection of rights is rarely about greed. Often it's about avoiding dangerous precedent. If it can be argued that an IP holder willingly declined to protect his or her rights in any one instance, it can be further argued that he or she has surrendered those rights. From then on, the original IP holder's ability to profit from his or her own work can be forever compromised. That's a very dangerous road to go down.

The creator of The Simpsons once had to take legal action against a child who was creating his own Bart Simpson T-shirts, and distributing them to his friends. The last thing anyone ever wants to do is sue a little kid, and it was made very clear at the time that it was heartbreaking to file the suit, but it had to be done. If that kid were allowed to continue, then anyone and everyone forever after could also distribute unauthroized Simpsons T-shirts. Obviously, that couldn't be allowed.

Was it "greedy" to stop that kid from doing what he was doing? Absolultey not. Was it unpleasant? Sure. But it was absolutely necessary. It was a matter of basic survival. Greed wasn't part of the equation.



Surely you must realize you're exaggerating here. If you don't like the DMCA, fine. You've made that clear. But there's no way it's been as detrimental to the economy as the removal of banking regulations. Come on.

Again, I would encourage you to read what the law actually says before you comment any further on this. No offense, but your ignorance on the subject is making intelligent discussion a bit difficult.


I think your own lens is coloring your objectivity, just as you say. Lots of people still have plenty of interest in SL, and new ones arrive every day. And the in-world economy is doing just fine.

In the last few weeks alone, we've seen record concurrency numbers. More people are using SL now than ever have.

As for your friends list deteriorating, that's perfectly normal. I've been here practically since the beginning. You know how many people I've seen come and go? I can count the amount who have stuck around more than a year or two on one hand. And there's nothing wrong with that. For most people, SL is an escapist activity. People get bored with it and move on just like they get bored with anything else. That's just how the world works.

Added to that is the fact that the platform is still evolving, and not always for the better, from a usability standpoint. Plenty of people leave out of frustration when things don't seem to be going their way. Often the reasoning is not rational, but it does happen.

But none of that has anything to do with the topic at hand. You can't associate lack of interest in SL with enforcement of copyright. Copyright is a real world issue, equally applicable to every virtual world.

First, the service provider is violating DCMA. Now, while I'm a big advocate of copyrights and intellectual property in general, I think that DCMA goes overboard. That's beside the point, what's going on here is actionable based on the letter and spirit of DCMA. So, let's just forget legality; that question has been answered (over and over and over).

Second, I agree with you that, in principle, if there were no possibility of abuse by the customer, the service provider isn't doing anything immoral. Technically illegal, but the law is arguably draconian. HOWEVER, there is a possibility of abuse by the CUSTOMER, that the service provider can't possibly prevent. The customer can use this service to share this skin with other avatars.

Here's how. They get a skin that's transfer/no-copy. They get a tattoo or oil they like applied to the skin by the service provider. They transfer the original to an alt or friend (or sell it), and keep the tattooed copy. This is a clear violation of the intent of the original permissions. For this reason, the OP agreed to stop providing the service, and we applaud him for it.

If you were to modify the client to allow you to use any number of tattoo layers, or to bake tattos into skin FOR YOURSELF, nobody would complain. Well, nobody with any sense would. If your mod of the client allowed you to make inventory copies of a no-copy item or xfer a no-xfer item, it would violate the intent of SL permissions, and would be highly objectionable.

Now that's a great idea. I think it's the first productive thing to come from this thread in months.

It would have to be self-contained within the client, of course, so that no copying would be done except for the final outfit bake. As long as that's how it works, there's absolutely no reason why the user couldn't composite as many layers as he or she wants. Properly implemented, it wouldn't even cause any lag, other than whatever it takes to download all the textures before the bake. Once the outfit is baked, it would just be a standard set of three 512x512's, just like any other.

I really hope the programmers in the crowd will latch onto this, and make it happen. If it works, I'd be willing to call in every favor I've got at LL to try to get it added to the official viewer. I'm sure a lot of others would as well.

DCMA would only apply here if the images of the Ford vehicles had been taken from Ford's pictures of them -- if the images had been digitally ripped from Ford.

The applicable part of DCMA that applies here is that any use of any technology specifically to thwart a copy protection mechanims on digital copyrighted material is illegal. Period; it's really about that simple. SL has a permissions system. If you rip images in conflict with SL permissions, you're violating DCMA. In the case of SL permissions, it's really a pretty reasonable clause.

There are posts on this forum from makers who feel that any alteration of their precious images is an assault on their property. (I don't think I actually saw that on this thread, but on other related ones.) These guys are off base: SL already allows tattoos to appear over skins. It's a technical detail where that image is stored.

There are posts on this thread from makers who don't like the fact that their images are stored on the service provider's hard drive, subject to potential future abuse. That's a reasonable concern, but a provisional, theoretical one. If the service provider is ethical and deletes the images, their basis for concern evaporates. (They do have DCMA on their side, though, so they clearly win from the legal standpoint.)

There are posts on this thread, mine included, that as long as the intent of SL permissions can be retained, ending up with end results that don't violate them, there's no ethical problem here. Unfortunately, that just doesn't turn out to be feasible regardless how ethical the service provider tries to be: the customer can use the service in an unethical way. In particular, see Nyoko's posts. She makes "oils" that she sells in both no-copy and no-xfer form, to support her customers. With this service, an unethical customer can violate her intent, essentially stealing her products.

It's a complex issue, but the result is pretty simple: this service doesn't work out, and LL should fix the underlying problem by providing more tattoo layers (or something).

---

BTW, "Fair Use" comes up a lot. As it turns out, there are two aspects. In the laws, Fair Use is very specific about what it applies to, and that doesn't include personal copies for backup purposes etc. However, judiciary precedent has extended Fair Use to include these things. (That's according to my father, a patent attorney.) As a result, you have to be careful about reading the law and assuming it's the last word, because there's more to it than that.

LL has assigned the JIRA entry to add more tattoo layers (meaning, someone is supposed to be working on it). Hopefully that'll make this whole issue moot. Unfortunately, it's not a simple problem or solution, because in addition to more layers, people want "layer flexibility" as mentioned above (and IIRC, championed by you, Chosen.) I hope they include this in the fix, rather than simply adding more layers, and complicating life for sellers and buyers. (Layer flexibility allows the user to say which of several equivalent layers an item should use. Ideally, we'd have it for clothing layers as well as skin/tattoo layers. Unfortunately, the GUI issues are nontrivial.)

Thanks for the condescending reply. The fact that you see a preponderance of posts in this thread as somehow demonstrating that a point of law is inapplicable, well, that pretty much sums up why I've been avoiding this thread.

Only courts will ultimately determine whether or not fair use is an applicable concept in this context, and not even the courts will be the final judge on whether the DMCA is ultimately a boon or bust when it comes to sustaining or impeding commerce. What a crowd of people say who've read parts of the law, interpreted them to match their prejudices and have neither practiced law nor served as a judge means, in legal terms, exactly zip. Even what a lawyer or judge might say in this context is nothing more than speculation, until it comes to court.

I know a fair bit about Disney's business practices, and you presume far too much to put words in my mouth about whether or not I agree they are good for commerce or for creative ferment in the US or elsewhere. And my views on that are not really material to this discussion, for that matter.

The points you raise have nothing to do with the limited scope of the practice we're looking at here, unless Disney is in the practice of regulating whether someone is permitted to wear a Tinkerbelle top with a Mickey Mouse necklace, both of which they purchased, and neither of which were black market knockoffs. Or, to go more digital, in respect to Chip's earlier contention that mixing skins and tatoos is digital "art" and therefore not the same thing as doing something seemingly comparable in meatspace: let's ask whether someone is breaking the law by making a video mash-up of clips from Hannah Montana and Sleeping Beauty and Star Wars (the last not being Disney at all, yes, I'm not a total idiot) IF (and ONLY if) the copying necessary to do that is done for personal use only, and not done for financial gain in the sense of creating an object for mass merchandising. Did the kid who made his own Simpsons shirts actually go out and confiscate (and burn) all instances he'd released before getting the desist letter? Or, as you say, was the letter sent out as a pro forma defense of trademark, so the IP holder could claim in future instances that they were defending trademark, as most lawyers agree (surprise) is essential to ensuring their trademarks do no enter the public domain?



The latter was the case. The photos were exclusively amateur pics of car club members and their cars. While FMC might have some (tenuous) grounds for pursuing this on trademark grounds (or, like Xerox once did, felt bound to do so due to precedent that NOT vigorously going over every non-standard use of the trademark was a wedge in the door to losing it) my question was not whether it was possible for them to do so, but whether it was practical, or made sense in balancing the corporate need to maintain a good public image, vs. the need to jealously defend the trademark, which was a pretty good stretch in this case.

I'm just imagining now an army of Ford paralegals poring over newspaper and internet images and sending out nastygrams to every news organization that fails to crop all the Ford logos and images of Ford vehicles out of pics taken at fires, football games and bake sales.




Apparently it is to you. Not so much to me. But possibly this made the news because the car club took the desist letter seriously, but went to the press with it, which I'm guessing describes a small fraction of cases where desist letters have been sent.



This is my recollection, so it might be faulty, by what I recall Ford objecting to, and claiming, was that the image of, shape of and any representation of their proprietary designs (meaning the cars themselves) were violations of various IP rights (possibly trademark) held by Ford. My recollection is that the car club did not have the same kind of legal budget that Ford had, and they did not contest what was probably an absurd and overreaching claim, so in legal terms this incident meant and settled nothing about the actual scope of the IP rights in question. Lawyers make mistakes too, though there doesn't seem to be much common sense relief from them when they happen to affect you or yours.

There have been many such suits, and (especially) desist orders sent over the years, not limited to Ford. In most cases the party without deep pockets choses to stop whatever they were doing that the bully party objected to, rather than spend their pitiful life savings engaging in a long legal battle, especially when the supposed offending object is something perishable like a calendar.

In sum, I'm not arguing the legal points here, my concern is the practical. As I said in earlier comments, I've all but stopped content creation in SL unless I do it for my own amusement and free distribution to a handful of friends. Even then I worry that some jerk may choose to amuse himself by harrassing me over some niggling point that he considers important.

I stopped because the amount of gameplaying and nuisance complaints seemed so large, and the permissions system seemed so unwieldy and annoying to work with (I was spending well over half my creating time messing with and resetting permissions, it just seemed a huge waste of time). I'm not claiming injury here... I'm just pointing to one of the things that has led to my gradual loss of interest in SL.

My main contention here is that the furor and emotional heat over IP rights is such that it's a danger to my own sanity and health to get more deeply involved. Debate away as you will, copying will still happen, and some people will be deeply offended by it.



So say you. I beg to differ, and it's unlikely further argument about the particulars of your interpretation of copyright law will change my mind that in fact, obsession with copyright and "commercial" (and I use that term loosely) endeavor has been ONE of the issues (but certainly not the only one) "fouling the pool," at least for some of us.

And thanks for your condescending reply which basically says that none of the posts here matter.

So, why waste our time with yours?

Of course none of the posts have any legal authority. It's a forum, where we discuss ideas, and people learn things unless they have their heads too far up their asses to see valid points made by others.

Present company excluded, of course.

I'm sorry if you feel hurt in any way, but there was nothing deliberately condescending in anything I said. I simply stated facts. Certain of your assumptions were in stark contradiction to the truth. If having that pointed out makes you feel condescended upon, I'm not sure there's anything I can do about that.

I'm sorry if that kind of response makes you feel uncomfortable, but I don't know how else to put it. Some of the things you said in your previous post simply weren't factually accurate, and it would have been irresponsible of me not to address that, especially since your post was in direct response to a quote of mine.

Look, there's nothing personal in this. My only concern is for the truth. I care not who said what. If someone writes something I happen to know is not true, I will correct it. If I make a mistake, myself, and write something that isn't true, I'll always thank whoever steps up to correct me. We're all here to learn from each other. (But if you do correct something I've said, you'd just be be damned sure you're right, and have factual evidence to back it up, because I rarely comment on any topic I'm not well educated on, unless it's to ask questions.)


"A preponderance of posts" has nothing to do with what the law does or doesn't say. Please don't try to change the meaning of my comments. Let's keep on topic, shall we?

The reason I mentioned that certain things had already been discussed at length in this thread was not to try say that just because a lot of people happened to say the same thing or not would somehow make anything true or not. That would be ludicrous. I was simply attempting to avoid wasting time by repeating what had already been said. There's nothing wrong with that.



Technically, there can be no arguing against that, of course. Courts exist to make these kinds of determinations. That doesn't mean we can't have a discussion about it, though, and it certainly doesn't mean that those of us who are not judges shouldn't read the law.

As one who makes my living through the creation of copyrighted and trademarked materials, I'm not inexperienced in this particular area of the law. I don't know that I'd call myself an expert, but I do have some expertise on the subject, if that makes sense. I deal with it all the time.

I can promise you the definition of Fair Use under the law is quite specific, and it's not at all related to what we've been discussing here. It exists to balance constitutional free speech protections with copyright protections. To that end, it makes certain limited allowances for very the specific purposes of criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. If you could somehow demonstrate that the practice of making unauthorized copies of skin and tattoo textures fits into one or more of those categories, then you might, and I stress MIGHT, be able to claim Fair Use. I'd be really curious to know how you'd frame that particular argument, though. It would be quite a stretch.

Existing precedent from Fair Use cases is abundant, and the relevant portion of the law reads plain as day, in very simple language. It doesn't take a judge to understand what it says.

That doesn't stop people from trying to play dumb, of course, by claiming Fair Use for all kinds of actions well beyond its scope. But that doesn't mean they're right. Usually, all they accomplish is to demonstrate their utter ignorance of the law (which as we all know, is never a viable defense), just as you seemed to in your previous post (no offense).

Again, that's not a condescension in any way, so please don't take it as such. If you feel I'm wrong in my facts, please cite the applicable legal basis for exactly how and why.


Of course. That's not what courts do.


If you mean in a binding sense, then sure, everything "means exactly zip" before it's gone to court. But that doesn't mean we all get to go out and break the law just because a court hasn't yet told us we're wrong to do so. Grownups do have a responsibility to act within the confines of the law, to do the right thing of their own accord, regardless of whether or not they might ever end up in court as a consequence of their actions. Lots of crimes are easy to get away with, but that doesn't make them any less wrong.


And your point is what, exactly? We're just having a discussion, Azadine. We're not adjudicating here.


I didn't put any words in your mouth. All I said was I'm pretty sure you'd agree with certain facts that seem fairly obvious and undeniable to me. If you choose to deny them anyway, well, that's your prerogative. But just so I'm clear, please tell me, are you trying to say you believe that employing hundreds of thousands of people, and doing billions upon billions of dollars in business is somehow not a contribution to commerce?


This is where we get to the crux of the argument. You seem to be completely missing the point of what we're really talking about. The issue isn't about just mixing and matching parts of an outfit. We all agree that there's nothing wrong with that, and we've brainstormed some pretty good ideas about what LL should be doing to grant more flexibility to end users in that regard. No one, absolutely no one, in this thread or in any similar one which I've ever read or participated in has argued that people shouldn't be able to compose their outfits any way they want, in principle.

The problem lies in the fact that unlike the Tinkerbelle top and the Mickey Mouse necklace, which exist in the physical world, the skins and tattoos we've been discussing first have to be copied in order to be composited together in the manner we've been talking about. It's the unauthorized copying that is the issue, not the compositing itself.

If there were a way for the same kind of compositing to happen without illegal copies having to be made, we'd all be for it. As I said, part of what we've been talking about here are theoretical tools to make that happen. But since those tools to not exist at this point in time, the work-around methodology in question is in violation of SL's TOS, and of copyright law. These are the facts, and they cannot rightly be disputed.

If you want to change that, great! So do the rest of us. Join the fight by helping petition LL to create the necessary tools, or if you've got programming chops, actively participate in the development. But in the mean time, kindly don't argue on the side of breaking the law just because it happens to be inconvenient. Just because one might want something doesn't mean one automatically gets to have it.


The financial gain part is not relevant, so let's dismiss that first. One of the most common myths about copyright is that one has to make money off of unauthorized copies in order to infringe. That's simply not true. Distribution of unauthorized copies is absolutely illegal, whether the distributor makes any money or not. Money can serve to compound things, certainly, but that's secondary. The primary breach of the law is the distribution of the copies.

In any case, technically, the answer is yes, such a mash-up would be a violation of copyright law. However, if the mash-up is never distributed, and never shown to anyone, then it's basically a tree falling in the woods. No matter how loud the crash might have been, if no one heard it, no one can really say it actually happened. So the point is pretty much moot.

Now, if the mash-up were to be distributed, then there would most likely be a problem. But here's where Fair Use potentially could come into play, in the mash-upper's (if that's a word) defense. Certain questions would need to be answered. What was the purpose of the mash-up? Was it a commentary on how the three films relate to one another? Was it a parody? Was it for education, to highlight various film-making techniques? Does it pose a threat to the commercial viability of the original works? If the answer to any of the first three questions is yes, and the answer to the fourth one is no, then mash-upper might (and again, I stress MIGHT) have a case for Fair Use.

Some good examples of exactly the kind of thing you're talking about would be the very clever Star Wars vs. Star Trek pieces that have been making the rounds on YouTube and elsewhere for the past couple of years, such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ijDlbvAxw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNxhrPaaCA4 . These are quite obviously a parodies, and it would be pretty hard to argue that they represent any sort of threat to the commercial viability of either the Star Wars or the Star Trek franchises. So it's very likely that Fair Use would protect their makers if the matter ever went to court.

Now it happens that the owners of both franchises are generally appreciative of fanart anyway (with some unfortunate notable exceptions), so it's unlikely the mash-uppers (word?) would indeed get sued. But again, if they ever did, they've got a pretty clear cut case for Fair Use, provided their attorneys are anywhere near worth their salt.



Probably not, but how is that relevant? I'm not aware of any copyright/trademark infringer ever having had to do anything like that. Are you?

I would imagine he would have had to destroy any remaining inventory still in his posession, of course, but there's just no way he could be expected to go out and retrieve property from others. That's not how these things work.


I'm not familiar with all the details of the case. I only learned about it from a reporter I know who had covered the story, and it was years after the fact. It happened to come up during a conversation we were having at a conference, regarding a similar matter concerning fanart. But to answer your question, I do believe it went a bit further than just the issuing of a cease and desist letter. A suit was actually filed, if I'm not mistaken. Whether it subsequently went all the way to court, I don't know.



If what you say is true about the nature of the photos, I'd be hard pressed to believe that any rational person would think the potentially tremendous hit to public image would be worth any potential gains from such a suit, if that's all that were at stake. But if it were a defense of trademark issue, the company might not have had any choice. Like it or not, trademarks do have to be defended zealously.

Again, I don't pretend to know anything about the case, but my guess would be that's what was going on.


I realize you're being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but even in jest, let's try not to distort the facts. Fair Use would protect a news reporting.

A newspaper photo (or equivalent) is quite a bit different from something like the calendar you described. The main reason trademarks exist is to protect the public from mistaken identity. The idea is the public has a right to know with whom they are conducting trade. Let me explain how that concept would apply to both the news photo and the calendar.

First, the news photo. There is zero chance that any reasonable member of the public might think a newspaper photo showing the scene of a fire, at which a Ford vehicle happened to have been present, might be some sort of marketing device for Ford. Quite obviously, a reasonable person would conclude that the photo was of the fire, not of the vehicle, and that the vehicle just happened to be there. So the presence of the trademark in such a photo would be fair use.

Now, the calendar. There is arguably a pretty decent chance that a reasonable member of the public would see a calendar full of photos of Ford products as a marketing device for Ford. Therefore, the presence of Ford's trademarks in the calendar could very reasonably be judged to be an infringement of trademark, not protected under Fair Use.

Make sense?


I hope my explanation above has helped shed some light on this for you. You're not alone, if it makes you feel any better. Not many people have much understanding of trademark law, or even what trademarks really are for.


Probably.




If the claim really reached that far, then I'd have to agree with you. It was unreasonable. Whether a judge would see it that way, though, is open for debate.



You're right about that, unfortunately. Right or wrong, the little guy almost never has a chance in these kinds of situations.



I'm sorry to hear you gave up on content creation. I do have to wonder exactly how it was that the majority of your time was spent on resetting permissions, though. In the five years I've been in SL, I can recall three or four major permissions related incidents that caused big problems for everyone. Other than that, while there's certainly been no shortage of occasional headaches here and there, the system is pretty solid.

But even if it weren't, it wouldn't stop me. I'd always rather focus on "how can I" than "why can't I". If the permissions system were to break permanently tomorrow, the very first question I'd ask myself would be how can I adjust to this new reality to make my business work. I would not look for reasons why my goals couldn't be achieved, as you seem to have done.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't be upset about the problem, of course. But since you mentioned practicality, maybe you can understand this. Is it more practical to quit in the face of adversity, or to find a way to triumph in spite of it? I have to choose the latter. Maybe we'll never see eye to eye on this, but I find giving up to be an extremely impractical thing to do. Unless of course, the goal is not to succeed, in which case quitting would of course be the only practical course, always. Me, I choose to succeed.


If you can't help but feel "furor and emotional heat" in these kinds of discussions, then I'd agree with you, the healthiest thing for you to do probably is to stay out of them. But I think there's a lot to be gained by open discourse on topics like this, for those who are interested.



Oh, I don't disagree at all that for some people, obsession with ANYTHING, be it copyright or what have you, would be a turn-off. Where I think you're going wrong, though, is in assuming that the majority of people who enter into these discussions are in any way "obsessed".

I deal with copyright issues as a matter of course because it's part of my job, and I happen to enjoy talking about the things I do with those who will provide stimulating feedback, as many on this forum often do. That doesn't mean I'm obsessed with it, though. It's just one topic among thousands that we could be discussing right now. It just happens to be one that I know a little something about, and which I think is important, is all.

Also, the fact that I've been able to make the majority of my living the past few years by doing work in SL doesn't make me "obsessed" with commercialism either. I'm actually one of the least money-focused people you'd ever meet. But I'm also -- to use that word again -- practical. We all have to make ends meet somehow, and we only live once. Why not find a way to earn money by doing something we enjoy?

I do realize 90% of the world hates their jobs, and many tend to resent those who don't, so I'm never surprised when people accuse me of sinister motives or call me names just because I have the gall to do something fun for a living. I can't say I'll ever understand it, but I am used to it. It doesn't bother me. I find it sad, more than anything else.

I myself have no desire to join the ranks of the miserable worker drones of the world. If I can't enjoy what I do with the majority of my time, life would hardly be worth living for me. I have to do a job I like doing. I don't have it in me to work I don't enjoy. I happen to like doing 3D artwork, I'm good at it, and SL happens to be a convenient platform in which to make a living from it. That's all. No "obsession" required.

It's not simplistic, it's the right thing to do. Your rebuke wrongly assumes that 1) it's moral to attempt technological enforcement of copyright (it's not, see http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ and http://www.eff.org/), and 2) it's possible to lock out infringement with technological means without yourself infringing on your customer's fair use rights.



No, copyright law is in place to encourage the creative process, not to allow someone to extort money out of people for services rendered to someone else. There's a reason why the constitution requires limited copyright, and one could easily argue anything beyond the original US copyright law violates the constitution (originally, copyrights were for 7 years and were NOT renewable, the way it should be. After all, if I work for four months as a systems administrator, I can't pull a salary from that for the next 7 years, so that's still far more than generous to the copyright holder).



To equate copyright violation with the theft of physical property or murder is absolutely preposterous, on the level of claiming that gay marriage is tantamount to pedophilia, incest and rape. And to assume the average joe gives a rat's ass about copyright is also preposterous. Which is why it's absolutely silly to assume that underselling your skills and expecting to recover on unit volume doesn't work in the creative space. It's why graphics designers and webmasters charge by the hour.




You wrongly assume that I think creators shouldn't be compensated. That's not correct. I expect creators to play by the same market rules as all other industries instead of thinking they're entitled to charge dozens, hundreds or even millions of times over on claims of an intangible product, when in reality they only services rendered once; it's simply un-American. We revolted from England, in part, due to runaway copyright law; it's why limited copyright is supposed to be a cornerstone of American society guaranteed by the constitution.

Copyright is a two way street. As originally envisioned, the 7 year non-renewable copyright gives creators ample opportunity to oversell their services while still allowing works to become part of the common culture, which is more than fair to creators. As it is today, copyright is being abused to infringe on the commons, both in terms of copyright holders thinking it's legal to infringe on fair use, and by renewals preventing works from entering the commons.

On the other hand, if any of the strong copyright advocates would bother looking over to Groklaw, they'd see that their position has 1) very little legal precedent in their favor and 2) no constitutional leg to stand on and 3) only has to look at RIAA and the MPAA to see what happens when you push the issue (nice boycott).

Are you saying all texture artists should adopt a business model where they only work on commission?

I can tell you from experience that that kind of business is a nice to have "side business", but it's extremely limiting in the number of customers it reaches because most won't be able to afford it, or understand why. People have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that they are not buying a physical object that they own. They are buying rights to use someone else's intellectual property. If they are paying for exclusive rights of use, meaning that the content creator has contracted with the customer not to distribute or resell what they have created for them, that comes at a much higher price!

Scarcity is not the issue. Do you think "that" is air that you are breathing, here?


Again, the issue is NOT about scarcity. People do NOT buy skins and tattoo textures for their avatars because they are rare. They buy them because they don't like the default, which looks like a cloned Sculpy (not to be confused with Sculpty) doll. If a bunch of ones and zeros (in this case, textures) are configured in such a way as to make a person feel better about, proud of, or more confident about how they represent themselves in a virtual world, THAT has value. Lack of scarcity actually adds more value here because there are enough texture combinations sold for everyone to feel unique. The reason we have all these skin/tattoo textures in the first place is because people value them.

Integrated or not, you still need to store missing assets some place other than the server to retain the missing information (a transparency layer) if you ever want to reverse the process (replace tattoos A,B, and C on a skin with tattoos C,D, and E) without going all the way back to step 1. Multiply that a few times exponentially and you can't compete with a client/server platform solution. It's not a practical solution for something that will eventually need to allow for more than just a few new texture layers. I'm not even sure I share Chosen's enthusiasm for Lear's proposal because of this. People complained about a 100 layer limit in Photoshop way back in version 3 or 4 (I forget which one) before that problem was overcome. This is no different, except for the fact that people probably wouldn't complain about a 100 layer texture limit regarding SL avatars for a very long time . Furthermore, a platform integrated scalable texture solution allows EVERYONE to mix and match individual 32 bit textures without relying on 3rd party applications or individuals to circumvent permissions settings and copyrights to do so. Everyone could have their cake and eat it too.

Yes. That's what the real world equivalent (graphic designers) do. It's what everyone else who works in the digital form does. Trying to argue that SL is different is like trying to argue webmasters should get paid for every hit the site gets, or software engineers getting paid by commission instead of hourly. In reality, those models don't work for what should be obvious reasons.



If they were ever under the impression that anything in SL is a physical object and not the result of man-hours spent, they had to have been mislead by someone.



Sure it is. There is no natural scarcity in the digital space, anything that applies scarcity to the intangible invariably will infringe on fair use rights (making backup copies, modifying for personal use, etc). Labor has scarcity because there's only so much one person can do in an hour. It's why you can breathe for free and you only pay for water if you're getting it from the city's infrastructure and not your own well.



Sure it is. With no natural scarcity in supply, it doesn't matter how much demand there is, the price the market will accept is still $0. With artificial scarcity, you can extort a little money out of the sucker fringe of the consumer spectrum. Proof of this: Oxygen bars and software publishers. I'm not saying you can't make money off what you build, just find a method that has scarcity. Either go to hourly commissions (the "contractor" model), or charge for support (the "Red Hat" model). Your ability to make money without infringing on your customer's right to do copy, modify or share what they paid real money for is limited entirely by your marketing creativity and optimism (or lack thereof).

There we go. That's how a true capitalist approaches the issue.