Newbie starter boxes are giving my stuff away

I just had a friend I refered come by and show me the skin they got from a Mentor. The Mentor handed them a starter box that was giving away a couple of my skins. I had wondered why my sales have been in the crapper for a while now and now I know. I never intended these items to be given away but it seems they have become open source in a semi official way in the game, even after I raised a ruckus when I found the dismal permission system had allowed my skins to be copied after an update long ago. Their answer to my complaint was it was now a feature of SL. Fine but dang it, I now have Mentors and others handing out my skins like they are free hot dogs at used car lot. To top it off, I don't even get credit as the creator due to the "feature".

Now, I am not opposed to handing out my skins to newbies since the genie is out of the bottle anyway and there is nothing I can do and LL sure as hell could care less about doing anything about it. What I would ask though, if you give my skins away to at least put a notecard in with them that gives me credit and a landmark to my store in Kane.

My store is:

Wildskins by Kathmandu Kane ( 74,22)


I have attached pictures of my skins so you can identify them

I think you are handling this in a wonderfuly gracious way, especially considering how much work you had to put in to create those skins. I hope whoever is giving them away honors your rquest to at least give you proper credit.

you know what..?
hehe i wondered who did those skins and im adding a notecard as we speak i hope u sales go up and i wish u all the best hun

Wel they'll be last years skins soon anyway and probably not worth the hassle as your later creactions surpass them

I assume that means that you filed a DMCA?

If official mentors are habitually handing out your skin, I would talk with one of the VTeam Lindens to work something out (I'd suggest Amber or Blue, both have office hours). Regardless of what the permissions on the asset are, your rights do remain and each time it's handed out it's a violation.

That was over 2 years ago and at this point I don't really care. There have been so many new and better avatar creators since that post that I am happy if I sell one of mine once a month now days. The fact of the matter is the mentors have no idea who they belonged to as there are probably hundreds of thousands of objects that have lost their ownership information over time due to many factors and they can't be held responsible. I didn't mind so much they were being given away, hell I intended to sell them very cheaply when I made them but didn't want to cut other avatar creator's throats by selling them too cheaply. My beef was the fact my name wasn't on them. Thank you for your concern but I am living in genteel semi-retirement from SL and this is not a high priority in the least. The skins were made in 2004 and at the time SL was a buggy mess. They found a huge flaw in the way permissions were handled back then and they had to break a lot of content at the time to fix it. Better to break it with 30,000 users opposed to 2 million users.

Kathmandu, I'm in the (slow) process of checking all my "starter kit" freebies. Thank you for this information...if I find your skins in my stuff, I will certainly add a notecard giving you credit for their creation.

We Mentors are in the habit of exchanging "good, free starter stuff" that we've collected, and (I blush to admit) until recently I never checked to make sure the stuff was legitimate. As a proponent of creators' IP rights, I'm now doing what I can.

Sadly i can't see any image links to check out who's skins i may have. I don't hand out many (maybe one per month) so i'm not terribly worried.
It just dawned on me that there should be a "checked and verified by so-n-so avatar" newbie kit advertised somewhere now that content has been so seriously compromised....like, someone in the regular business of helping newbies with these freebies should spend a few weeks researching every item before they pass it on, and advertise it as a strictly theft-free pack, so that the creators don't get swamped with questions. The demand for a guiltless, reliable kit is certainly there.
Personally, i've wished for a grid wide freebie system (called the 'free bee' lol) where instead of sorting through textures, hovertext, primjunk, and all the grief that typically goes with that, it's handled through a shopping site similar to slexchange or onrez, but there's no money to be made outside of banners/ads.

That's probably because the original post in this thread is 2.5 years old.

I'm given to understand that all of NCI's freebies are checked.

And Lucrezia Lamont's kit is certified OK...though there aren't many items in that, mostly notes.