Joshua Nightshade

And that wasn't last year was it?

Edit: And you made me waste #15,000 on that shit.

Hypatia Callisto

I tried to tell you...

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Chip Midnight

I totally understand where you're coming from Io. I just think that high quality photosourced work is still quality work. Personally I've never tried to pass off my clothing (that isn't my own design start to finish - some of it is) as anything other than what it is. I also don't make much money from it anymore. All my profits come from my skins (and my source material for that is all licensed and paid for), but if I was still making money from it I don't know if that would really change the ethical math. It's a bit strange having started in all of this just for fun, before there was any real money to be had, and seeing it turn into big business - watching SL designers become a kind of celebrity.

Cristiano

Chip,

I think Io's point in this particular case is less about the ethics of photosourcing, and just the fact that it was such a poor photosourcing of something that a designer with even marginal talent could create from scratch (or would have at least used a higher res photo). The fact that it was just a low res crappy photosourced belt slapped onto an expensive outfit that was already a knockoff was what raised some questions.

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"At least he died doing what he loved most - blogging on the Huffington Post" - 30 Rock

* slu stuff *

Siyu Suen

I've seen the belt she's talking about. It really isn't worthy of the term high quality. It was low rez, blurry, blocky and not retouched or mindful of seams.

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"Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever" -Baron Munchausen

I'm attempting to bring about the end of the world to usher in a new era of mask wielding overlords. This is how!

Chip Midnight

Well in that case, bad quality photosourced work is still bad quality work

Genevieve Lutetia

Isn't Cachet mainly Thora Charon's line?

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http://genevievelutetia.wordpress.com/

Io Zeno

She is co-creator.

lol, from the whole kerfluffle on SCD:

14:03] Minnu Palen: i have planty ideas on my own and i dont want someone say i need others to copy but its my bad that i alowed that

[13:59] Minnu Palen: its deff not him i can garantee u that but couple of outfits.. if u see that as a problem i understand ypur point but then half of grid has a problem by doing same thing..even P.C,

[13:57] Minnu Palen: i dont see nothing wrong with it

K. I'll tell you what is wrong with it.

$550L

lol, Ingrid, I think she was talking about you know who there, ahem.

Look, I could care less who copies off the runway but for godsakes don't charge $550L for a bad copy/paste job.

CoyoteMomiji

ALL ORIGINAL, NO PHOTOSOURCING INVOLVED.













also, latex.

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Slick closed until further notice.

Recidivist Sideways: YOU'LL TAKE MY ROUGH, BUTTERY FRIENDSHIP, AND YOU'LL LIKE IT

Io Zeno

I know it sounds like I'm just here to bash on Minnu and I don't mean to, it's just the way the conversation is going.

Io Zeno

And great detail, too.

CoyoteMomiji

Wasn't talking about you.

Edit:

Joshua Nightshade

Be more specific then, I didn't realize how many friends you're making.

CoyoteMomiji

Pbbbbbt, I've only been threatened with court /once/.















Death by slow torture, a few more times than that.

Joshua Nightshade

Try harder then!

Hypatia Callisto

grin, they look great

I think it's important to establish the diff between photo*sourced* and photo*realistic*.

Photorealism can be achieved with a bare minimum of photosourcing - just for things like fabric textures and the like. (and even those can be done by hand or through material settings), when armed with a good 3d software that can bake textures with materials to uvmaps (max, modo, maya, lightwave). I am actually *sculpting* fine details into items these days and then baking these textures out, without any need for photos or a bare minimum of them.

Briar Bing

I am never wrong. Especially when I am sticking up for my friends.

Vivianne Draper

I completely agree with you that its not right. I'll go further and say, (as I've said many times before) that I wish everyone would shut the fuck up about this and not make their problems into ours. I am sick and tired of all this theft business.

I was one of the people on Tenshi's blog during a previous shitstorm to point out that everyone steals from everyone and that if you were going to go on a tear about theft you better make sure your own house was clean. I made a huge deal on SS about Tenshi's bird skirt -- which bled to here I believe. I can count on one hand the designers in SL that make their own textures and do not source at all and do not copy from RL at all. The dirtiest little secret is that they copy from each other but they don't call it copy -- they call it 'inspired.' And if you are popular enough, and you steal or are inspired by someone not popular then you never get called on it.

In this case though, I feel compelled to defend Tenshi because she had the guts to go after someone that was popular AND shes not doing anything that many have not done before her. And you can see she's taking the heat for it -- on her blog, here, on Ari's blog.. lots of places. Its not just Minnu being slammed. And in some odd way I think things may equal out there. But you'd really be surprised at the number of very popular designers in SL that steal and steal from smaller designers that cannot fight back or websites they think you'll never visit. So it may not be right, I (and many others) may be sick and tired of it, but she's done something no one dared do before and no one called anyone else on it before.

Its almost a different subject no? I mean instead of bashing Ten about this, isn't it maybe time to start a thread on the ethics of all this? Is it the community's problem? Should we go running to the defense of designers? How do you get help if you don't go public? Not everyone can afford a lawyer. Maybe Ten should have a perma link on her blog for designers wishing to file a DMCA -- she can probably get the process from Joshua.

So maybe some good will come out of you pointing all this out, Humps.

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Vivianne Draper

Don't charge $550L for an outfit period. Geesh.

Vivianne Draper

Right but the context of this is ragging on Persephone because she brought the theft to the attention of the community and asked for help. Did you rag on her for that? I bet you didn't. And I bet no one else did either. No one did here. Including Humps, who is the person spearheading the objection to Tenshi and Danae going public. So its ok for Persephone but not for Danae (via Tenshi?). Is it just Tenshi? If Danae had come here and posted, would it be ok then?

(and to be clear, I have no problem whatsoever with what Perse did or what Ten did -- I'm merely using Perse as a recent example)

Vivianne Draper

So as long as its a clear cut case its ok to bring it to the attention of the community? The kid didn't confess until after she brought it to the community's attention so that doesn't count.

I don't want to be rude or condescending but this next part kind of is so take it with a grain of salt ok? This is a good discussion and I'm really not trying to piss you off but...

Don't you think its a little um... presumptious and pretentious of you to go forth and set rules about when it is and is not ok to bring an alleged theft to the community's attention? Isn't that what you are doing here? You are saying that Perse was in the right becuase it was clear cut (although she'd only seen it on SLX before coming to the community) and Tenshi is not because it is somewhat ambiguous. Don't you think Danae is convinced that Minnu's skins are clearly a copy of hers? I mean how is this not clear cut? Is there a question that Minnu did not use Danae's skins? So is the ambiguity in the licensing restrictions? Minnu says she didn't even use Danae as a source -- but cannot produce her source either. Is that why its ambiguous?

What if, when Perse had approached that kid, she got silence instead -- much as Danae has received from Minnu? And what if, instead of a kid with copybot, it had been someone famous and well-liked? Whose fans then came here to start a shitstorm? What then? What if he had claimed, instead of confessing, that he had built the piano himself, the prims were different, and that he came up with the name Musical Alchemy on his own or saw it in RL (not all that hard to imagine that someone else wouldn't have come up with that name) but could not provide his source because his HD crashed and he lost the link? Then would it not have been ok for Perse to come to us?

It seems to me that Perse was kind of fortunate (in a very weird way) that she got ripped off by a 13 year old that no one knew and who, when confronted, confessed. But other than that, and her tone of confrontation, which admittedly is much nicer than that of Tenshi's, it seems to be the exact same thing.

Addendum: Persephone if yer reading this I know you must be cringing right about now. Please believe that I have no problem with what you did, the way you did it, or anything else. I think you are a pretty cool person and that you make neat stuff. I'm just using your case as an example. Please don't hate me.

Cindy Claveau

To summarize the six pages this thread spontaneously grew while I was asleep:

"You shut up!"
"No, you!"
"STFU!'
"NO U!"
"U!"

The most glaring omission was the lack of a good slap-fight. I mean to remedy that right here.



There. Now we have completed the cycle. Cosmic balance has been restored.

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Sometimes, "I hit it with my axe" is the best solution.

Humps

To be honest Viv I do agree with you...well mostly lol

I saw the contradiction in what I was saying as I posted it.....and there definately is a contradiction. As I said to Ten you can't have it both ways and that of course counts for me too. I don't think (but may be wrong) that I replied to the thread until it was mostly a done deal, but that really does not matter in this context.

I would say that we are all influenced by peoples past behaviour and history (rightly or wrongly) and the fact that Persephone would be the last person (based on past behaviour) to cry foul unless there was definate proof did influence my support. On the other hand Tens past patterns of behaviour are for making hysterical claims of theft and lapping up the ensuing drama. Sometimes probably with good foundation, other times with at best tenuous and subjective evidence to back her claims. I have to admit that did influence my interaction with Ten. I can hardly claim to have been fair and impartial in dealing with them differently but that is exactly why there should be a system that is not left to the vaguries of personality and opinion.

It seems to be almost daily that there is some dramaz where someone gets accused of theft or plagiarism. A lot of it is hystrionics, professional jealousy and brand loyalties also must play their part. It is hardly impartial and transparant.

I'm just saying that whatever the case there should be a system that creators can employ to deal with theft that does not rely on people like me making assumptions based on if I approve or dissaprove of someones personality, past record, hairstyle or whatever else. It is human nature. We none of us (certainly not I) can be totally impartial and even if we have the best of intentions we can't help but let our personal feelings influence our decisions.

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Michael Bigwig

For the most part, hand drawn look cartoony, and photo-sourced skins look realistic.

Unless you are a very skilled artist, hand-painting your skins can lead to a disastrous rendition...unless you are a very talented painter, I advice you stay away from recreating skins by hand.

If both artists are skilled, the photo-sourced skins look way more realistic. I much prefer photo-realistic skins...but that's just me.

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~Michael Bigwig
___________________Lead Designer, Glowbox Designs

Sinnocent

Well, firstly. Hi everyone! I'm a relative newb to this forum but I have an opinion anyway.

I have to disagree with you on one point Humps. (There are others but just this one for now.) I don't think it's fair to paint all of us with one big roller in regards to bias. "We" or "All of Us" are not all the same and some of us are able to make a sound judgement based on the evidence.

I, for one, used to be a ho for MM Skins. Yet, it only took a few close looks at those pictures for me to realize that she's a fraud. I didn't already have a 'jaded' opinion of her and I still found the proof in the pudding.

Sure, some people probably have a lot of bias and/or jealousy when it comes to Minnu and I suspect that yes that would add fuel to the fire.

However most of the residents on the grid probably dont know Minnu from Adam personally and so I think that all the people commenting, either in her favor or not, would be a perfectly logical group of jurors. Well, that's not entirely true as I think that some of her employees and friends know what she did and are trying to do some major damage control via distracting from the bottom line.

Plus, one thing is very weird about 'most' of the people voting in Minnu's favor. I've read a lot of the comments about this subject and I've found that again "most" of the people that say Minnu is innocent until proven guilty have some sort of personal hatred for Tenshi. Coincidence? Maybe. Doubtful. I'm sorry but "Free Minnu because we hate Tenshi" wouldn't hold up as sound evidence in any court room. It might be able to be used in an insanity plea however, lol!

There is one thing that sickens me about all of this and that is how sorry I feel for Danae. IF Minnu purchased this skin set from Renderosity and didn't steal it via p2p then she paid what? A whopping $15.85? Several people have said that she pulls in what 6K US a month?

I'm no expert on sales at Renderosity but taking into consideration that Danae's skin set is lets say 16.00 she would have to sell that set to 375 people on Renderosity PER MONTH to be matching the revenue Minnu is making off of using this woman's work! Like I said I have no idea of what Danae's sales are like but I'd venture a guess and say there is probably a slim chance she sells that many of that one particular product per month. Although, I could be wrong about that her work is amazing.

With that being said, the fact that Minnu cant even be an honorable person and stand up and say YES, I did use the skin set, even if she didn't know it was against that particular set's TOS, speaks volumes to me. I went from not giving a flip either way about her, yet thinking she had nice skins, to abhoring her with every fiber of my being in just a few short days. I formed this opinion because of HER (Minnu's) actions, or lack there of. Not because of anything Tenshi said or didn't say. So even tho, yes, I know a lot of you may have valid reasons to hate her guts, I think it's unfair that you would lash out at Tenshi and blame her for the whole thing. She didn't take the skin set? Right? Right.

I've known Tenshi for quite some time, she used to come to my secret sales and giveaways I used to do at Sinsation when I was first starting out. I know that her flair for drama and drive to 'go get em' may have hurt some peoples feelings and enraged others but I for one can say she has been nothing but nice to me. And a few weeks ago when my puppy and I were in trouble she was the first one to stand up and help me out. This, to me, does not a horrible person make.

I mean geez, this is not a who hates Tenshi most contest, this is supposed to be about Minnu and Danae, that's the bottom line and no amount of "blah blah blah innocent till proven guilty, but HEY look what Tenshi did" is going to distract me from that bottom line.

Okay, I'm done for now.
Sinni