Again posting this here cause there is no forum for Poser freestuff. I am contracted to make content for Daz. Even though I don't broker anymore my employement is linked to the success of the content I can provide. So this is why this issue is so relavent Well I see Lady Luna is still a member here despite several infractions. And I keep finding Warez rehacks of things I have made for sale in Freestuff. Another one just now with over 2000 downloads. Taking something down after 2000 downloads is like opening the umbrella after the rain has stopped. I think it is nice that you guys want to give people 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th chances but who exactly accepts resposibility for Freestuff content. I know Freestuff is the largest draw for Renderosity but I think it is unfair to just refuse to accept any responsibility for it's content. I think if the site reaps the all benefits of the feature they could take a bit of responsibility for the damage it does to others It is nice that their is so much understanding and forgiveness but this is getting more expensive at others expense. There is tons of other people things rehacked here and there as far babck as freestuff goes back to. Tracking is made harder due to the fact you cannot bookbark a Freestuff page Anton

Sorry for the lousy typing.

I didn't download the hair, but I think I saw Lady Luna posting some dresses, referring to Serge Mark or similar.

Hi Anton, Sorry to hear that this kind of thing is happening. I know if it was me I'd be very pissed. I know it's not much consulation but doing what you are doing and pointing this out is the best way to get people's attention. Keeping people informed is the only way to let honest members know what items are being stolen. I'm tired of how many people I come across that think warez is ok. There's right and wrong, if you can't afford something maybe you should find a way to earn it!

Anton (and everybody else for that matter, but Anton in particular). The file in question, the magic hair, is hosted on my site. Well it was. The files are no longer accessable from my site. I wouldn't even know how to check to see if something were reworked in the way that you've described... I apologize profusely for my part in any of this.

sigh

Anton, I'm sorry that we didn't catch the hair. I do go through the Free Stuff every day, but I don't remember seeing that one. The link doesn't currently work and there's no picture, so I can't see the hair now. (I'm not saying that I doubt you; I'm admitting to missing it while it was available or I would have taken action.) As for Lady Luna, I just posted to the admins asking what is going on with that. Obviously I was wrong, but I'd thought that you'd come to an agreement with Lady Luna and her daughter on this fiasco (fiasco on her end, not yours) and that was why she was still allowed here. Thank you for bringing these up. For the hair mesh, all I can say is that we're human and occasionally miss something. For Lady Luna, please give the admins a bit of time to respond. I don't want to comment on it as I obviously don't have all the facts. Thanks, Cres

The problem is people just don't care. the Site just wants traffic through the store, the guilty party just wants some praise and attention for a job well done. Worst part is the artists who slip through the cracks. I think either some sort of review procedure for free stuff is in order. If they can't ensure its integrity they shouldn't be allowing thousands of people access to it. Or at least make restitution to those being damaged if they will not ban the offenders. Thanks Cin. I know you would never be intentionally involved in something like that.

I see this a lot... well, somewhat often at least- it's not just the Poser community; it's fairly rampant in game mod communities as well. As far as I can tell, it's sort of a status thing- "Hey, lookit me, I released something cool!"... which is why most anyone releases free stuff anyway, apart from genuinely trying to help the community. Still, it boggles the mind that people would release stuff that wasn't actually theirs to try to gain "status"... The only legitimate reason I can think of is the culpurate not understanding that just taking a texture and recoloring it does not actually count as "original work". Apart from that, the only thing that would cause someone to take the credit for someone elses work is a desperate need to feel valuable or some such...

Personally, I'm too damn proud to do anything like that. I guess the people who steal other's work and pass it off as their own have no pride what-so-ever. Rather pathetic if you ask me... sigh

Thanks Crescent She and this x.... whatever person should be banned. Most of us are all over 30. Noone is that dumb. They know what thy are doing. Not hard to know when something doesn't belong to you. If people stopped downloading and giving people stolen stuff they wouldn't have any doubts on whether or not they can reuse it. IMHO

Anton, I, as well, thought you'd come to an agreement with Lady Luna and her daughter. And I read everything I saw on the matter and didn't see it end in a 'banning'. Sergemark has given her stuff to work with...you are not accusing this current freestuff of hers as being yours are you? If it's not, then my feeling is that you should just let her be.

I have no idea why you guys think this Lady Luna issue is resolved.This most recent dress of hers doesn' use my geometry.... only the 13 dresses before that one did. She should have been banned before and definately now. I think you should enforce your rules and ban her and this other person. If you want to be forgiving then please use your money to do it. Lets see $1 per dress times 13 times 2000. That would be $26,000. Yes that would make me willing to let her be. Yeah just send me $1 for every download in freestuff and I would be happy indeed to let them be.

Anton, You're right as rain on this. I avoid anything Lady Luna does, and deleted most of the things I downloaded from her (still looking, lots of stuff to go through). That's the responsible thing we all can do. I think as people find these, they should be posted here so we can avoid them, and if we've got them, delete them. If we have something we really like, then we can go back and BUY THE PRODUCT from the real creator. I don't understand why people do this. They should know they'll be caught and ruin rather than make their reputation. There are ways to distribute things like this so that only if you have the original purchased products will they load. Encoders work very well. Its a little extra effort, but I'd think it'd be a lot better than getting the reputation as a pirate and being (eventually) banned. And you're wrong. She owes you the full price for the product times the number of downloads. If you sold a dress for $10, she should be coughing up $20,000 per dress, times 13... so $260,000. The 'sity should be giving you all the contact information they have for your lawyers. I'd also report her to the software piracy associations. This kind of crap doesn't encourage people to get into making products. Of course it happens, but this is blatent and very disheartening.

Here we go again.

I think this is a big website and not a lot of staff to handle things in an immediate and swift action. I also think the staff here has done a fantastic job in responding to complaints and keeping the fast moving forums on track. All that aside, I hope the staff does take action after careful and reasonable investigation because we all like DAZ, we all want the folks connected with DAZ to have a presence here, and we all hate 'arvedarr' software. You know, Arve Darr, the best of the pirate world. These kinds of threads are ok once in a while when the rare exception gets by the PTB, but it seems like they come up just a bit too often these days.

Free stuff review sounds like the best solution. Banned people will come back as somebody new or just move on to another site and continue.

I am not trying to be an ogre. This problem in Freestuff is nothing new. It's just noone talks about it. Everyone handles it behind closed doors. I think the way freestuff runs needs to be re-thought, revamped, and changed. I agree that infomation should be shared. Requests by me in the past have been refused. Unfortunately I am not sure how mods or admins can identify items they do not own. This is also a problem in the Marketplace that slips by betatesters at times. I am not sure if I know what the solution is but something has to change. But banning people doing it is a good start.

Anton, no arguments from me about this issue. I have no respect for people ripping people off. Cin~, if there is ever a question about something like this, that you are hosting, let me know, I'm sure that if I was to get it and compare it ( if I have the retail product ) then a third party evaluation could be used to settle the dispute. ( in such a circumstance, I think that it would be possible toget the commercial product mesh for comparison, with it understood that this is not a product being given for any other use )

I think it's silly to allow the copyright theives to remain while banning other members for silly infractions such as calling a moderator a dufflebag. Renderosity has banished many fine members who contribute greatly to the community, while allowing criminals to remain.

Anton: I'm with you 100% on this one. I have your Majik set from Daz and that hair she offers is identical to yours. I thought a single instance of theft was supposed to get people banned, but she's done this before under the same identity with those period dresses (I also have the "real" one of that as well). Fortunately I have never downloaded any of "her" freebies.

Looking into this matter now. Working with Anton via IM's...

I cannot see how anyone would even have a clue if a free or fee product is stolen or not.... How am I as a downloader able to know that that hair, as an example, is stolen from Anton??? How do I know that Lady Luna has been doing this? I don't go out and download a free item, open the mesh and compare the triangles and polygons of everything against the original....there are thousands of for sale products and 10 times as many free items.... I can't even see how the admins here can do it.... That leaves the original product creator the task of continually searching all the sites to root out the evil ones...checking the textures, meshes and stuff for stolen items...yikes But I think it is up to the site owners to rectify the situation to everyone's satisfaction....fast...when this is found out..and proven.. stealing is stealing.... there should also be notices....possibly even on the free stuff or marketplace that lists items that are known to be stolen---so the innocent purchasers and downloaders can remove items from their hard drives. In addtion, if I buy an item here, or any marketplace, and it is found to be stolen, I should get a refund or credit.

Anton, it's good that you're bringing this up. I've downloaded her things and never knew they were yours. I have to assume that all the other people who have downloaded them had no idea either. I'll be deleting her things out of my computer. Thanks for letting us know. I just wonder why she doesn't get the point. And she hasn't come in here to try to defend herself. I guess she knows she's guilty. Melanie

The hair was offered by someone else. (Unless this is a clone account, though I doubt it.) These are two seperate issues, but both affect Anton. Spike and Anton are apparently working this out, but I did want to pop in and thank everyone for discussing this in a calm matter and giving us time to look into it. Cres

I don't know the people accused...but in some circumstances, is it possible that what they are doing just doesn't ring a bell that it is wrong? Maybe not in this specific case, as it appears it has been going on and brought to their attention...but in other cases. Poser content is a bit of a strange deal....we have people pulling pieces of Vicky out to build clothes, skull caps and stuff....using templates to make textures...there are quite a few people that manipulate other's textures to achieve new looks...its ok to produce poses from the geometry...its kinda hard to always know what we are able to do or not...

I think I mentioned X's Magic Woman hair at the time as looking like Anton's Magik hair-- my god the names are the same. The rest of his hair looks original-- I own just about every hair model so I'm a fairly good touchstone on hair. What I don't know is if the mesh is the same. I think the best policy to set up is -- if you see something in Free Stuff that looks suspiciously like something you bought, notify someone. Who is the question? I don't always remember who made everything I have. It would be good to have a mod in charge of warezing free stuff. Otherwise, any comment is going to get lost in the forum. I know if there had been that mod, you would have heard about Magic woman hair when it first came out. Quoted from a post of mine at Poser Pros on Jan 4th. Does anyone think these might be reworks of old Poser 4 hair? I hadn't until I saw BigMan hair and that looks like no5-- I think-- that Kozaburo redid. Slightly different but the same basic shape, and Nice man is like no. 1-- I may have these backwards, of course, assume any number. . . Just like magic woman hair looks like Anton's magic hair lite. Emily

Anton, If you are not getting satisfactory support for this issue over time, you can always use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to "nudge" Renderosity to help you. Any claims on their part that they are not responsible for content uploaded are pretty much invalidated, as the US courts continually agree that that is not an excuse, and that service providers, of any form, are increasingly responsible for the content on their networks/forums. - Ray

I can't speak to Luna's stuff because there's nothing put out there in way of proof one way or the other by either her or Anton -- maybe if someone put up a side by side comparison of the actual meshes? Insofar as JS's hair work, my guess is that in his case it's more naivite than wanting to put something over on the community. He probably saw what Koz did with two of the male hair props and decided to do something similar, not knowing that doing it with Anton's was over the line. In this case, I'd cut him a bit of slack after advising him of what he did in error. But another poster raised a good point: there are literally hundreds of things uploaded to freetuff every week, on top of the already thousands of items in existence. You'd have to have an extremely sharp eye and an incredible memory to be able to recognize everything when a copyright violation comes through. My recommendation, Anton (assuming you're even inclined to take one from me), is that you put up the side-by-side images and make your case to Admin. If it's that blatant, you know they'll ban Luna -- they've done it before to others. Just my suggestion.

yeah queri, "quoted at Poser Pros"

Problem is that not all of us go around at ALL Poser forums to read stuff... Ive been to Poser Pros. I'm a mamber there. But I almost never actually GO there. Renderosity and RL takes up enough of my time as it is G

So a warning about someone should be posted on EVERY site where the stuff is downloadable.

Anton, I'm sorry that you'be been ripped off on those occasions. Wondering about this X person though. There have been a LOT of posts here regarding this great hairpieces, and this is the first mention I've seen about it being a rip off. Not saying that it isn't.

FWIW, I have my original MAX files of ALL my Free Items, in case anyone doubts my ownership of those. Well not MAX files of the textures of course, but in those cases I think I have the psd files as well.

I don't like the idea of "rewiewing" free stuff. Honestly, I contribute free stuff coz I like to share it when I have made something new, and I don't like the idea of a "testing period" before I can release MY items. Of course I could just put it on my site, but then again, what's the use if I can't announce it anywhere?

Keep talking, Anton. The more people who know about these scams, the better. Sometimes people use things through ignorance, and if they knew it was stolen they wouldn't. 100% support is needed from Rosity on this. Take no prisoners.... just ban the people concerned. mac

Anton did post side-by-side pics of the mesh of one of Luna's dresses and one of his which showed that part of his was cut out and incorporated into the other one (it was a perfect match).

In an earlyer thread about 2 weeks ago. Anton DID post side by side comparisons of Lady Luna's mesh and his. Admins checked and severed links and took the pics off. No bann of the person though. This is NOT a new issue for this person Lady Luna, it is an old issue of a person distributing illegal copies of others work and claiming it as their own. Blatently. I'm very suprised that nothing has been done about this issue. Someone brought up the money factor, it's a lot of money, it's hurting someones reputation, and hurting their wallet. If a modeller, texture creator etc polices sites and finds something for purchase (re: Turbosquid) or freebie that there is some issue with, it should be delt with swiftly. I know more about this Lady Luna from these threads, and whats going on than I wanted to know, or should know about. Anton, keep up the good work, it's nice to see someone standup for their work when there is a violation, or even a question about a violation.

I missed that thread, so I'll check it out. Thanks for the heads up, guys. But I still think we should give JS (the hair guy) a little slack on this. Show him what he did in error and give him the chance to correct it... which he may have already figured out since the links are apparently now gone.

Anton, since we talked at Dragon*Con this year, I have come to know a bit more about the person behind ALL that stuff I have purchased of yours. I find you to be honest and hardworking and imaginative. I hate what has happened to you. I might tend to agree that the FREE STUFF here @ R'City is a big draw. But, the site is so big now that they should no longer have to depend on that to draw people in. I also think it would be a tough problem to find a solution for...considering how big it is. With all the warez going on out there with EXACT copies of stuff, having this site not going to extra mesaures hurts a significant amount. Some people say that someone shouldn't complain about a problem unless they can offer a solution. I don't have a solution 'cause I'm not smart enough. I just wish there WAS a solution.

Actually, it occurs to me that ISP's and web hosts will usually cancel the account of a person who offers illegal materials online. Apart from banning here and pulling the links, if they don't quit, it's usually possible to contact their web host- and having an established account cancelled and deleted is usually a fairly significant blow to the willful copyright infringer... not that its a permanent measure at all, unfortunately; just a temporary setback. Just a thought, since links to stolen stuff are usually posted on multiple websites. And, ryamka, please, don't go dragging the DMCA into this... that whole act leaves a rather nasty taste in my mouth, since it smacks of censorship (Red Hat (a Linux distributor) actually refused to release product documentation to US citizens recently, due to the DMCA.)

Why not post the (real) names and (real) addresses of known warezers, either internally or externally, and share that info with other 3d sellers and brokers? No need to share Credit Card info, but just the person's name and addy. That way, the warezer cannot buy the stuff he or she needs to copy off of, and if it is posted externally, the humiliation alone would be more than enough to deter other warezers from buying. /P

"Red Hat (a Linux distributor) actually refused to release product documentation to US citizens recently, due to the DMCA.)" Err, say what? /P

If you posted thier names you would risk being sued, unless they had already been convicted in court in which case the judge might authorise it.

Please remember that we don't host the free stuff, If we did, it would have to go through a approval process. We do want to get this issue closed, but have to be fair to all involved.

Anton, I read your earlier post about Lady Luna. I had not downloaded any of her stuff before and specially not after reading about what she had done. When I saw her posting in the Free Stuff area again, I was a bit surprised and I thought that there must have been some solution to the problem. I'm very surprised that she was not banned. Anyway, knowing about the earlier events, I stayed far away from her stuff and now I'm glad I did. About that hair guy, I'm with ernyoka: this is the first I've heard that there are some issues concerning his hair items. What exactly is the problem? Did he use some of Anton's hair meshes or what? Which hair items are we talking about? I'd like to know because I don't want to use any illegal items.

Spike said: "Please remember that we don't host the free stuff, If we did, it would have to go through a approval process." Perhaps not, but I don't see much of an argument in a court of law since the Napster case, where they didn't host the material either. They just posted the information of whose PC they could download it from. Seems like you are in the same "boat" here, Spike. Signed: Non-legal expert...who THINKS things look similar.

JS apparently starts with the basic Poser hair props and then reworks them, much as Koz did with Male Hair 2 and 5, and apparently he reworked Anton's Magic hair as well. All links to his materials seem to have gone, which is a mixed blessing IMHO, as his body texture work was very different and very styled. I'm gonna say it again: in his case, I think we're looking at naivite more than wholesale deception. JS is, as far as I know, new around Poser circles and quite possibly didn't understand the restraints.

yup, the Napster correlation does look similar. I think freestuff needs an approval process too. I think an idea would be to have people apply to offer things for free first, where they have to part with some confidential personal information. You might have less free stuff, but I think in the long run we'd all be better off. I used to be involved with the game mod community, and know for a fact that this behaviour is mainly to say to your buds 'look how great I am' And some take the short cut to that notoriety, guessing perhaps they might not be caught, or that enough people do the same thing they do, so nobody will do anything about it, and jeer/witchhunt the people that actually have the guts to complain. (I've been there, so I know) So here I am cheering Anton on... go Anton go. Never stop talking about it, because when we stop talking about it is when the honest majority of this community loses. In the end, this warezing kills the creativity of the community, because what happens is that the people that actually create the cool stuff stop doing it. and Anton, I love that bombshell hair.. thanks for making it. :) Its the closest to my hair in real life.

Thanks, VirtualSite. I agree, I think it's very likely that JS didn't mean to deceive people. Now I'm starting to vaguely remember that he had some Magic hair kind of thing. I didn't download that one. As for the reworked Poser hair, those would be all right to use since I have Poser anyway, right?

you're supposed to use pcf encoding on the mesh that its based on. This is even done for Eve and Azura, who are based on the Posette mesh. You're not supposed to distribute the raw obj if you didn't create it. I don't understand why some folks have an allergy to pcf encoding, but some do, and I suspect its for the reason I detailed above... to brag to your friends about how great/generous you are.

Uhm Bijoucat.. Is what you're saying that Free Stuff porviders only post free stuff to say "Hey look at me. I'm something"?! I'm not sure I like that idea. And honestly I don't like the idea of people having to give out a lot of personal information in order to GIVE SOMETHING AWAY! sheesh... if this is going to be the solution, I'm going to find another place to give all my stuff away.

Very good points on the freestuff. I will bring this to the team for review. Don't get me wrong here, Please don't stop talking about the issue, I am only stating that Anton and I will deal with his matter via IM or e-mail. This is a big issue and I would love to put a stop to it. We might have to change the way the free stuff works as well. It would be a sad day when you have to go through a approval process to give something away. But the actions of some members might make this happen.

I want them banned. He bought Majik hair and reworked it and posted it for free. He even triangulated it to disguise it. All he did was chop off the top. Nothing was improved or "Reworked". NOONE IS THAT STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Same with Lady Luna.

Spike, You guys were suppose to look into it before and never got back to me. I would rarther handle this publically since private has never worked before.

We can openly talk about some issues, yes, but others we can not. I can not talk about what actions we have taken to other members as you know. I am taking this to IM. Please check your IM's