"profesional Skin Ripper For Hire !"

No, can this person make a whole identical account from copying a skin texture? But if they could should it be illegal to flames to your Ford if Ford won't add them for you?
They are in a position though to replicate that paint job on any car they like though from then on.
There may be unscrupleous people doing this, but this person is saying they are not and is providing a service others deny.

The one I've goofed with a couple times doesn't require active participation, per say, but it's unwieldy as sin... it just dumps everything that the graphics card receives to a folder. Everything. Even running it for a few seconds gets you thousands of images to sort through. And reduces a monster of a machine to 1 frame every 5-10 seconds. It's not something you could just run around using all the time to pluck every skin you see.

Maybe their are easier versions to use, I dunno.

Well, granted, yes. If you just wanted to screw with people, rather than make a profit, however... (And you know as well as I do that those people are out there)



I know the feeling. I still get problems to this day from letting a few simple freebies be released full permission, ("Why does your SUPER SHIELD XXX SEXGEN BED ORBITER HUD GOD MODE not work??? I want my money back!"... But I still tend to fall on the side of "fair use".



Actually, I had a very interesting discussion on this with a skin designer one time. The problem, according to her, is that most people get very anal about how they want their tattoos: "no no, six pixels down... no no, one pixel up... 5% lighter...", you get the idea.

I had the idea of creating a system, which I unfortunately lack the RL programming knowledge to put together, whereby a registered skin owner could submit a tattoo layer or layers to an automated web site which would composite the image with the original skin, and log in with a bot to upload and tweak the skin, and then send it off to the customer.

But alas, it's well beyond me to figure out how to do something like that...

funny, you just described how it works in the digital domain!! and this is kinda exactly the crux of the argument... if, in real life, someone could drive their car into a garage, and leave with -two- cars - one original, one with flames - wouldn't you suspect there's now easily a third car back of the garage?

never mind that even; -two- cars just left the front door. and that's enough for the analogy... and yes, if this was how 'real life' worked, this would be perfectly illegal too, i am sure.



'no new taxes...' 'i did not have sexual relations with that woman'... 'i am not a crook'... do ya go around trusting what people say all the time??

I suspect that it is beyond me as well, particularly as I don't even know the details well enough to decide whether it is beyond me (which probably means it is).

I suppose it could be done though.

Well if sellers provided the service people wanted, they wouldn't need to go to the black market, just like RL.
If the customer brought your skin and wants to put tatoos on it, I think it's their right.
Using polititians as representative of real people isn't that good

Well I suspect they can be even more anal about tattos in RL if you put it off centre or made it too dark or light

Who cares? Being in a position to do something is not the same as to do it.

If this guy is keeping and using these skins for any purpose other than as stated by the OP, then that would be ethically unacceptable.

Otherwise, it's debatable. Personally, I'm on one side of the debate, but there no doubt are good arguments for the other side too. (I'm still waiting to hear some ... )

Actually, I was wrong. It requires someone to show up in the skin, with no clothing on (since clothing & skin are baked together on the client).

He'd have to hang out at a nude beach.

And sift through all the images, of course.

This is a common misconception, but it's not true. It gets the textures before they get baked together in the client.

No, it's really not.

I mean, fair use may say they have the right to modify the skin as the see fit for personal use, but fair use does not extend to giving other people full mod versions of the skin for THEM to mess with, nor does fair use require the merchant to make any modifications they don't care to make.

to a skinmaker, a skinripper is no more trustworthy, period. :| no speeches of 'taking them at their word' will do. -that- is the point.

There is no money in applying tattoos to skins at the prices SL users expect to pay. Sellers need to spend time creating stuff which can be sold in bulk - if they are to meet their tier fees. If they couldn't pay their tier, they wouldn't be in business, they wouldn't be creating and there would be no black market because there would be no skins. Or rather, we'd all end up looking the same because people shopped on the black market - removing the incentive for designers to create.

Then lobby Linden Lab for the ability to do that. It's their technical limitation that's preventing it, not the creator's refusal to work for peanuts - applying vanity patches to items they have already spent hours, days or months creating. (Not untypical for skins.)

Ah makes sense. I guess she forgot the words "In regards to" lol

The thing is: imagine that I am a new resident, who has spent however much on a skin. Now, I want a tattoo on it, or some other modification. I see big signs up on the skin seller's sims saying "DON'T ASK ME FOR CUSTOM WORK OR TATTOOS", so, well, I don't.

Somebody says "hey, I can modify your skin to add what you want". I think "well, I own that skin, I think I have the right to have that changed. This person seems honest, s/he seems to have a business doing this, and they say themselves they have no interest in putting skin makers out of business, I can see that".

What are you going to say that I would care about? "That person might then sell the skin on" isn't going to matter to me unless there's actually some indication that that person does.

There is a legitimate need here.

Award winning sentence right here.

I`m sad to see a handful of posts here saying what she`s doing is ok as long as she doesn`t resell- That is unnerving to me. It`s not ok. Who gave her permission to redistrbute the skin/tattoo and what law is holding her words of "I won`t sell it to you full perm" accountable? This is digital art creations we are talking about here, friends. A creation in which once copied, the copier can redistribute freely or for a price: however many copies they want. Not only that, but they can store these files on public domains in which others may have access to them.

Someone mentioned modifying a RL car. That`s not a correct analogy. Modifying a car in RL, having to rip a skin from the SL client (Keyphrase there) to modify it, are two very different scenarios! Once the car modifier has the car in his posession, everything he needs is tangible and infront of him and once he`s done his job, he neither has the car nor the ablility to redistribute countless cars. Nothing illegal has to be done for him to modify the car with racing stripes either. And you can bet that if in order for him to modify that car, he had to do something illegal, which also in turn gave him unlimited copies of the car he does not have permisson to be redistrbuting, he`d have a lawsuit knockng at his front door.

What this skin ripper is doing is wrong. Period. It`s wrong. However, was we see in this thread, many people do not see it as wrong. They think "Hey I bought it, I should be able to do what I want with it." If you`re a content creator and don`t want people to do this stuff, read on:

I would encourage content creators to begin to incorporate a purchase TOS in their stores (So people can read before purchasing) and product boxes which states that the buyer is only buying the ability to wear the product inside of second life, and extracting the files and/or redistrbuting them is outside of the purchase agreement. This way, people understand it`s wrong to be doing this type of thing with your product, and if you ever had to take someone to court over anything, I would think being able to say you had this purchase TOS in every one of your products and available in store so the consumer could see what he was agreeing to before purchasing, would only help your case.

If you make it obvious the purchaser does not have unlimited rights to the product (And they don`t (copyright ownership is a real thing here) and they read the TOS that`s basically stating "Hey! You can not modify this work outside of SL or redistribute it or store it outside of SL. If you agree to follow this, go ahead and buy it. If you do not want to comply, please shop elsewhere!" and they purchase and then rip the texture and redistribute it, mod it, store it outside of sl......... They are guilty. And you need to go after them with the law. People are making big money here with content creation, we`re talking 75-300K USD a year. I for one am not going to tolerate people removing my content from the second life grid and redistrbuting it thus infringing upon my copyright (Or the respected copyright owner who has given me permission to use their stock) and making *me* vulnerable to damage. Starting in a few weeks, I am going to make sure they know it`s not allowed BEFORE they even buy my products. I thought it was a no-brainer, but I guess not!

A very wise man once said, there is a world of difference between something being forbidden, and something being wrong. ToS's don't make a thing right or wrong, they make a thing forbidden or permitted.

Well you have the tools to make them unnecessary, your choice really

For a long time I put tattoos and makeups on my skins for people as long as they provided the full perm texture and I had the express permission of its creator. I ended up spending 20 hours a week doing that, at $500L a pop. It wasn't worth it. It took up so much time that I couldn't get new products out. I stopped. Many other creators have been through exactly the same sequence of events I imagine. I want my customers to get flexible use from my skins. I want them to be able to add tatts and makeups. I want them to be able to do it without violating the permissions set on the products I sell. Only LL can make that happen. Blaming this on skin makers is absurd.

I don`t disagree with that statement.

Obviously there are people who think the skin ripper is in the wrong, and there are people who think they are in the right.

This is why I suggest content creators to make their own TOS and put them in their shop.

As a creator, that person owns the copyright (unless of course they stole the texture for their product) and has the say in what can and can not be done with their items. If you don`t like it, don`t buy it.

Actually, as much as copyright holders would like this to be true, it isn't, not completely. First sale doctrine and rights of fair use, as much as Hollywood would like to get rid of them, still hold.

Terms of service (Or, in this case, end-user license agreements) don't always hold up in court if you try to impinge on these. Particularly if it's a click-wrap style EULA.

Sadly enough, I don't think it's these people (people offering tattooing service) that need to be worried about so much. It's the tons of other users that rip the skins to sell them and/or give them away to whoever. There are plenty of those people out there, they just don't seem to advertise. Take an alt around and chances are if you are chatty enough, you will find someone who can offer you all kinds of stuff free or cheap

And I agree with Chip, if LL would get off their butts and make some MUCH needed changes to clothing/skin making tools in world, we'd ALL be alot better off on this topic of tattooing ripped skin I think.

Hi, I`m referring to redistribution.

Copyright is copyright.

You can not take someone elses copyrighted material and mod and then redistribute it to someone else. This service is pure BS.

Of course I`m not saying you can make up any TOS you wish and expect it to hold up. But if I, as the copyright holder, want to enforce a perfectly legal TOS (Eg making it beyond clear that my items are copyrighted by me as the creator and they can not be extracting it outside of the client) I have every right to. It`s pretty much on the same line of TOS as stock photography sites use. You have a "license" to use their photos for what they say you can, but you can not go around giving the photos away and such. Same case scenario here.

Yes, agreed.

I just wanted to make sure you weren't trying to say that you could define rights with a ToS beyond where the existing law allows.



I'm not actually sure that that IS entirely permissible. Fair use doctrine is actually quite permissive when it comes to allowing backup outside of the "sold" format. So I think legally you probably couldn't speficy that they never extract the textures outside of SL, but you could specify that nobody else could do so. I think.

.

this ...

arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071030-pipping-off-virtual-world-sex-toys-leads-to-real-world-lawsuit.html


and this ...

informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/second_life_law.html


--- copy and paste with no spaces


.