Ten

I would like to show everyone an email I received earlier this week from a Renderosity.com vendor named Danae about her "Manhattan" line.

Hello,

My name is Danae Kotsi and I am a professional digital creator vendoring at Renderosity.com for many years. I create photorealistic skin textures for applications such as Poser and DAZStudio and I have been a Top Selling artist in the 3D community for many years.

It has recently been pointed out to me from a member of the SL community that a certain member - seller of your community is using my original, licensed products as their own. The product I am referring to is the “minnu model skins, generation 4“. The said SL seller has manipulated these textures against the TOS and License provided in my products and without any permission thus violating all copyright laws.

I have included an image of my product’s renders against the ones sold by the SL seller. My work is on the far corners while the copied is in the 2 middle images. As anyone can see the similarities are beyond the scope of mere chance but clearly illustrate that my work has been plagiarized. You can view my full product description here : The Metropolitan Collection - Manhattan -

It is clear that my work has been used in the production of the Avatars and most of the differences come from the change in format an the lower resolution - polygons.

As a professional my main income comes from producing and selling works such as the one stolen from me. It takes lots of research, money and many months of hard work to produce just one item and having this stolen by someone and claiming it as their own is very infuriating and insulting.

I have been informed that the said seller - and I refrain using the word artist for apparent reasons - has been selling my altered and stolen work and passing it as her own for a long time. So, I have informed my lawyers and we are currently thinking about the next step which is sure to be requiring immediate withdrawal of the said product and full compensation.

I was referred to you by someone because they said you know and care about the community and also know the seller. I wanted people to know that what is being sold is NOT original work and that ultimately it’s your community and the honest buyers that have been cheated and stolen from and not just me.

Thank you for taking the time and reading this long mail. Please see the attached images.

Kind Regards,

Danae Kotsi aka danae

<<…>>

You can view more of the images at SCD: Renderosity.com: Losing content to SL users dozens of times a day! « Shopping Cart Disco

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Lucifer Baphomet

EWWWWWW

that skin has varicosed veins

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Khamon

Who is the alleged seller? We can't compare the products if we don't know what to review.

If this is true, is it possible a court order could force LL to delete all instances of the inworld products?

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prinţesă nină

obviously minnu, forrest.

Khamon

Is she a popular skin seller? That sounds so sexy. Knowing nothing about the market, or what legal action might ensue, I totally lost here, but keenly interested, and serious about LL deleting a product line, and rambling, a bit

Briana Dawson

Oh wow, so Minnu skins are stolen from Renderocity. This has been happening since at least 2004 where several early skinners got their skin starts, some commercial some just for their private collection.

I am rather surprised to see that they are going after Minnu in a medium that they have no financial interest in (yet). This is going have a ripple effect throughout the community as more and more Renderocity retailers become hip to SL and they start seeing their works: skins, clothes, eyes, textures, appearing in SL being resold as original works and not in accordance to the licensing agreement they were purchased under.

Minni has been raking in the cash hand over fist off this other womans work is the bottom line, even though she has no Second Life presence and now it is time to pay for the free ride.

A lot of designers/texture sellers are going to

Briana Dawson

Oh she is one of the most popular and very good from what people say. Whenever I go there to look at something the place is packed with skin buyers at least 8-12+ people at any given time that I am online.

So much striking it rich on someone else's labor.

Dancien Graves

So, assuming this is all true. Where can I find decent male skins as I have 4 by them and would rather not wear ripped off content.

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Ingrid

Look for hand-drawn ones. Nylon Pinkney and Toast Bard both sell hand drawn male skins. I'm sure there are others.

edit to add: Sezmra Svarog, Roslin Petion and Lovey Darling.

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bilbo99 emu

I've always been a little curious about the CS Passport Malibu freebie. Is it CSs genuine gift or someones rip-off?

Lucifer Baphomet

Munchflower

Dnate Mars

How do you know what ones are hand drawn?

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Cindy Claveau

Actually, a number of the more visible Renderosity artists have been aware of Second Life for a long time - some have even migrated their work to SL. I'm surprised that an artist as prolific and well known as Danae is just now hip to the possibility of theft in Second Life.

This whole thing kind of shocks me as I own a Minnu skin and considered their line to be one of the best in SL. But unless someone takes the time to do a detailed compare of things like lips, nails, belly buttons and so forth, it's going to be hard for any external artist to know where to look to find rip-offs. You'd have to be intimately familiar with the Renderosity work, first, and then spot something in one of thousands of SL products that rang a bell.

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

Jessyanne

I have 2 skins from there. I'm a bit disturbed that I apparently wasted my money. No way I'm wearing stolen content

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Atashi Yue

From the readme file on the Metropolitan skin:

sezmra

Yep!

Welcome to the world of ripping content from one community and integrating it into the next. This has been happening for ages, but 80% of the buyers of SL content honestly don't care or take the time to find out where their skin/hair/clothing comes from. It just isn't a concern to the majority of buyers.

To those of us who have our pulse on content-origins, it DOES matter. I have spent almost 4 years as a skin-designer, trying to uphold some kind of artistic ethics in regards to my skin making. I may not be hugely popular, but I do bust my ass to offer something original.

It's one thing to take photos and create a skin, like Chip and others do. It's unacceptable to use content that is NOT designed for base-content-creation and repackage it.

An example of the right way to do it would be a skin that I put together for someone in SL, it is based on: Slof's Dremora Files
Slof was contacted and permission was granted for this re-creation, using Slof's PSDs. Easy peasy, everyone's happy and no one gets fucked in the virtual arse.

Renderosity offers different types of content, some of them are merchant-resources that are designed to be integrated into products for resale. They cannot be redistributed as is.

This "Manhattan" character package is designed to be used in either commercial or non-commercial RENDERS(found in the README). However, if the owner is correct in the comparison of Minnu's skin, that utilizes these images, the owner has a valid complaint.

Either way, it's more SKIN dramz!

I hope Minnu can address this with civility.

Ingrid

The short answer is that they don't look photosourced. Which means that on hand drawn skins you usually don't have the same level of real detail like the odd facial line or veins (which i find disturbing looking anyways.)

Hand drawn skins have a smooth look to them I find.

Cute hand drawn skin by Roslin Petion

One of Nylon Pinkney's male skins, also hand drawn.

Asher Bertrand

To be fair, how would anyone who's not in the business be expected to know?

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Mourna Biziou

I've always liked the male skins at The Body Politik for lighter tones.

The Abyss has very nice darker skins, although they're getting somewhat omnipresent.

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sezmra

No one says they have to, Asher. This is just a realistic projection. You realize then just how easy it is to pull the wool over someone's eyes, when they are merely a customer.

It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is, in SL and RL. Sometimes doing your homework on something, be it a car you want to buy, or a skin-designer you want to buy from, is a good way to learn more about the way they do things, the quality of their work, and who their customer base is.

I'm just sayin'.

Dancien Graves

I'm pissed. I blew 16k on four skins. I'm now looking for new male skins as I don't support stolen content. Grrr

Khamon

You've already supported it Dacien. How many people are going to demand their money back from The Seller, or demand the The Seller compensate The Artist, or something. Throwing the purchased skins in the trash only validates the process.

Cindy Claveau

As consumers, we can't. It just isn't reasonable to expect it. However, once we find out that someone has done this we CAN be expected not to buy their product any more.

Now, to be fair, I'd appreciate hearing from Minnu on this. It looks like all or part of Danae's work was coopted, and if that's the case my regard for Minnu and my willingness to buy their skins in the future will depend a great deal on how they respond. Take the content down, reach an agreement with Danae, whatever's fair - but until/unless that happens I think it's my responsibility as a consumer not to reward what is most likely unethical behavior.

Question: Does Dannae have any idea how much money she can make in SL designing her kick-ass skins for the SL avatar? I don't know what she makes off Renderosity, but I'm betting an SL income could equal or exceed it.

Predreus

Well, with that in the read me, it seems as though they are giving permission for it to be used in anything that could be sold, as long as they do not sell the source files. If that is how it is intended to read, then it really shouldn't be labeled as stolen. Minnu may of not been the original creator of the skins, but she surely did not steal them.

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Jessyanne

We are all walking advertisements for these creators. We wear our favourite shoes, hair, clothing, skins and for some, shapes. We get our pics taken, we go to events, people meet and greet and admire. Someone comes up to you and finds a mutual adoration for a subtle shading for a jawline, a preferred makeup colour, a just perfect nosebridge, and they ask the inevitable, "Where did you get that?" And hence... we just supported our favourite creator.