Protecting free textures, protecting paid textures

I thought I'd post here about a situation that's come up elseforum, in this thread: /327/cc/162458/1.html (quick summary: the Wallpaper Wall, a system for sharing freebie textures, was shut down as a result of DMCA allegations made without evidence)

What I would like to know is: would the texture artists on this forum accept some way of clearly identifying a freebie texture compared to a paid-for one? At the moment, because paid-for textures are full perms, it's really hard to identify if a texture is a freebie or not, and the only way to be honest is to err on the side of caution and not distribute any textures at all (which limits access and ruins the point of freebies). Also, of course, some "freebie" textures are actually copyrighted outside SL, and thus aren't really freebies at all.

I really am not sure how this would be done, though. Fingerprint the textures somehow? Store a digest of the PSD (or GTX or similar) file somewhere? What would be acceptable to the artists here as a way of being able to prove that a) you drew the texture and b) you want it to be free? Bear in mind this is of interest to texture sellers too, because the absence of a texture from the freebie database would signal it was not a freebie, while at the moment even a paid-for texture only needs to be renamed to be near-indistinguishable.

Yes. This is troubling and confusing. The Wall Paper Wall was a wonderfully inventive and nicely scripted solution to a common problem--how to sort and categorize huge texture libraries...as well as a Nice Work of Art!


I built some prims with textures (that *I* uploaded), passed them back and forth to a neighbor, with all sorts of Permission/Sale/share combinations with MY texture both ON and IN the prim...
After 3 hours, we still couldn't figure out the logic of how permissions were used. Is it succinctly stated somewhere?

If not, then how about a sticky on:
1. What are the Permission rules that Texture artists USE in SL for the textures they create and want to sell?
2. Are they COPY/TRANSFER?
3. How can the copyright textures be identified?

All textures that are to be used for anything other than personal use (IE, stuff you make only for yourself, and never hope to sell, transfer, or give away), HAVE to be full perms. That is just how the SL engine works with regards to permissions on textures.

If you restrict the permissions on a texture in ANY way, the next user is stuck with that restriction on anything made with it. So it makes limited perms textures useless on anything that you ever hope to share in any way with anyone else. The only limited-perms textures you'll usually find in SL, other than a mistake on the part of the maker, are no-transfer textures sold by a builder, to allow an end-user to make matching pieces for a commercial build. For example, Sally Seattle, for her Tiki line of homes, makes and sells texture sets that exactly match the proprietary textures she uses in making her homes. So you could buy one of her homes and one of her no-transfer texture packs, and could make a matching deck and walkway and a new wall partition for your home, and have it all match. But those custom parts could NOT be transferred to anyone else, ever!

As a result, TRU sells all textures as full perms - (YES for copy, mod and transfer) - so builders can use them to make stuff, confident that they will not be destroying the resale value of their own work.

TRU Textures are sold under a Terms of Service agreement that makes it unlawful to give away or resell the textures as raw textures. Making something like a house or a car with them is great. Making a box full of textures and selling them in your yard sale is not, and we'll go after anyone caught reselling our artist's work. We pay cash rewards for people who report those violating our TOS, and we file DMCA claims against violators.

Incidentally, almost all TRU Textures should all have texture names that start with TRU, which makes them pretty easy to identify.

Texture atrists would LOVE to have a way to prove who created a texture, and to restrict the ability for someone to unlawfully resell raw textures. Unfortunately, no feasable way to do that has been identified yet. If you search the forums, you'll find long, detained discussions on what might be done to protect artists against texture theft. And in every case, there is no viable technical solution.

There is one simple way to KNOW if a texture is really a freebie. Look at the properties, and contact the creator of the texture. While that still won't fully protect you against someone uploading textures that are copyrighted, but available on the Internet, it is at least a step of 'due dilligence', in trying to stay clean.

Shouldn't a "Copyright" notice be placed in the ABOUT field of each texture's properties? wouldn't this mark it appropriately? As it stands now, preservation of rights seems to be subject to each individual's memory, the organization of his Inventory folder , and the 'filename' in the case of TRU and others.
Very clumsy.
I can see how the chain of rights is getting lost as textures get used.

There's a perfectly valid option to copyright textures. Simply uncheck the option "Resell/Give Away".

If this option is unchecked, it clearly states that the creator do not want the item to be resold or given away. And it works. It's not possible to pass it on. Also scripts fails when trying to give it away.

I understand there are problems with unchecking this option which "forces" texture creators to check it. But still, the option is there, it's valid and it works.

If there are issues making it "impossible" to use, they should be bug-reported to Linden Labs.

As I see it, there are no other way to protect copyrights on textures. Using TRU in the texture name is not legally binding. It does not protect the creators right technically. It's however a great workaround to signal that the creator wishes to prevent textures from being re-sold/given away. I strongly recommend everyone to respect it. I will.

Woopsy, copyrights are automatic. A work is copyrighted the moment it's created it. It doesn't have to be marked with a copyright. It doesn't even have to be filed with the copyright office. If you didn't personally create it then assume someone else holds the copyright. A texture with full permissions enabled in no way invalidates that fact and should not be seen as permission to violate the rights of the copyright holder.

Woopsy, it's not an "issue"! Most textures are sold for people to use in buildings they make. In that case, probably the builder would like to sell the building; to do that, they need copy+transfer permission on the building. Since they made the building, that's not a problem, but if they use any component in the building that they don't have full perms on, it "taints" the permissions of the entire building. So if I was to use a "no transfer" texture on a building I was making, the entire building would become no transfer - which makes sense, because if I was allowed to transfer it, I could do so, and then the buyer would get the texture too, which I wasn't supposed to transfer.

In other words, texture artists want to be more generous with permissions than the current system allows them to be. And since they're being generous and trusting people, that trust shouldn't be betrayed.

The exact same problem happens for anyone who's making animations, prims, or scripts that are designed to be used in other builds. The only difference is that scripts have a bit more protection because they can have security systems scripted into them, and all of those things have a bigger end-user market.

It's not an "issue" in the sense of a bug, and implementing it as a feature addition at this late stage could be dangerous (if we add a "transfer-but-only-as-part-of-something-else" flag then what should it be defaulted to on all the objects already existing in the database? If it was added, how would people interpret the transfer-ok permission on existing textures?)

I get your point. Perhaps it's more difficult than I thought but nothing is impossible. If the option is of no use, then it should be removed. I still claim it's a bug.

I understand that. What I'm trying to say is that the creator has checked a box which says "Resell/Give Away". That could be understood as if they have given up their copyright, couldn't it?

That checkbox sure gives the impression the texture is free to do whatever you please with. It's very confusing for everyone. This copyright matter will continue for ever as long as that checkbox remains.

I agree that it's confusing, and believe me texture artists would dearly love to have a wider set of options for distributing their work that could both better protect them and offer greater value to their customers. But no, you should never assume anything about a texture by the way its permissions are set. The only way to know for sure is to ask the person who created it.