To my great disbelief, a renderosity member called "statisxxx" is selling my free-stuff item: renderupgrade for poser 4 under the name of: ..::render:R the ultimate realism render solution for poser::.. . He directyl ripped the lights from my freebee and put them for sale in his store. To verify I was right I bought his product and came to the conlusion that he just copied the lights! I gave him the option to withdraw his item from the store or change it so that no one would find out he was selling free-stuff for $9.99 dollars. He changed his product, well...he added 2 lights and left all the rest unchanged.
You can see his product here:
http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=20183

and my free render upgrade lighting here:

http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=Shademaster&Topsectionid=0

download my renderupgrade, remove the outer panorama and you will see that you have statisxxx's product.
I wanted to file this as a copyright infringement. Unfortunatly, I cannot prove I have copyright over this product because it doens't have the proof of trademark (may this be a warning to everyone who is planning on putting their work up for free). To proof I haven't been stealing from stasisxxx, the upload date of my renderupgrade was posted at December the 3th 2002. If you still are not convinced, you can do a search for the keywords: "renderupgrade" and "Shademaster" in the gallery.
I hope this convinces you.

I am very afraid that practises like this may damage the free exchange of ideas and concepts in the renderosity community.

Yours,
Daan Pol aka Shademaster.

Did you IM ClintH with this information?????

yes and he said I should do a copyright infrignment. But since I couldn't because I could not prove my copyright I have to do it this way.

Bummer.

I IMed Clint again and I do own copyright to this item but I don't have any trademark.

I don't think you should need a trademark if you can prove copyright....but, on the other hand, I'm no expert on this.

The MarketPlace product was updated yesterday with Verison 2 of the lights. FYI, Clint

I know and I downloaded it. As I stated, he added 2 lights and left the rest unchanged.

So, stasisxxx is charging $9.99 for one light set that isn't even an original creation? That is really sad.

We have an offical copyright infringement claim process located here. Once an offical claim is made by Shademaster the process starts. There is specific information that we need .. Clint

Okay, I'll do that. I am giving stasisxxx a chance to remove his product from the store, if he doesn't do so I'll send the copyright infringment.

Shademaster, That sounds very fair to me. Clint

Product removed from the MarketPlace and is under investigation. FYI, Clint

"This item may be used commercially, but I don't wan't anyone to take credit for it and/or sell this item." sigh Right from the readme. I really hope this isn't the same set, Shademaster, your gift to the commuity was very thoughtful and appreciated by many. I have a copy dated 2/27/03, if you need a third party copy Clint.

A little off topic here, but still falls within the copyright boundaries... When someone puts together a pose package (for sale), of some free poses, and then some poses from other vendors, and only a hand position or a change in neck positioning is apparent, is this an offense? Or, are the slightly modified poses determined to be new poses?

Is it one lightset? one thumbnail? or a set of them? I think you can copyright a set but not a single 'preset'. Same with poses and faces (that are just dial twitching, no new morphs). This is to prevent undo burden on users that hampers their full use of the program and presets. It can be pulled for ethical reasons surely, but I'm not sure it's 'illegal' unlesss exactly the same. Please correct me if I'm wrong or have been misled on this.

Spit....for instance. I have some older pose sets for V2, some from DAZ, some from some of the vendors here, and a few free ones thrown into the mix. Let's say that someone used some of the poses directly from these V2 packages, some identical, some with only a hand or head modification as I said and packaged them for V3. Render comparisons were made of promo shots to the V3 figure using the same conditions (V3 versus V2, clothing and hair) and it was clear to see that these were nothing more than selective repackaging. Wouldn't this be a copyright violation? Just trying to get clarification for my own piece of mind before I make a purchase of this set for use. I don't want to buy something and then find out it has been warezed.

Geeze BluesPadawan, tough call-- if these were originally V2 and had enough work put into them to make them work flawlessly with V3, and came from a number of different sets-- #1, I think you would have a hard time proving theft; #2, new "author" could claim enough new work done on them to justify payment. Again, it would depend if these were simple Stand and Stare to the Left poses or the dramatic type Danie and others do. At the same time since many of the dramatic poses are at best, "suggested" by fantasy artists like Royo, the whole question of posing starts to become very grey. I hope this gives no one ideas, I'd hate to be buying constantly recycled posesets. Emily

Sorry to hear what has happened. I have downloaded your renderupgrade too and the pz3 file sais 2. Dezember 2002. Think this is enough proof who originally made it. Regarding the poses for V3 - there is not much work involved to make a V2 pose work with V3. Just a bit adjusting but nothing compared to the work that is needed to make poses from scratch.

Since that light came into the MP something was nagging at me about it but I couldn't put my finger on it. Now I know, the cheeky little b*gger all he did was take out the backdrop.

If someone is caught selling someone else's items, is that person allowed to continue operating a store if he removes the item? I should hope not because that would mean Renderosity is complicit in the deceit. This type of thing should not be tolerated at all. stasisxxx should have his store closed, no more money should be sent to him, cancel any checks not cashed yet, ban him from the site permanently and send a warning to all other Poser merchandise sites.

Poses to me would be hard to proove. and whos to say they didnt come up with it on their own from artwork, observation or experimentation. Example, ballet poses there are basic moves to ballet...what if you are not aware of the pose packages for ballet, but you make the poses from ballet instruction material. Or you go through some of the fantasy works of Roya and that, and develop a set??? As far as stealing another persons model, package etc, and claiming they created it, once they've done that and they have been caught, their store should be shut down, the customers that brought this product should be reimbursed their money, whether it be a store credit or whatever. This is the third case I've heard of here. But the party that has been violated needs to file a grievance with renderosity as Clint has shown, otherwise its your word against theirs. It has to be proven. Its sad this is going on, why do people do this? I think once they've been caught they should be blacklisted. maybe I seem to harsh here, but all the sights that sale need to have a blacklist for violators that they call all access. That should include the violators real name, addresses, etc. When an artist submits a product they should have to provide all that data, if they are on this list they cannot sell, goodbye. I may sound harsh here, but if their brazen enough to try this here, they will do it again here or elsewhere. As long as they can go out and restablsh themselves under different handles, at other sites to this will continue. If the consequences were severer, we would see less people attempting to do this.

I have used your free light set many times, and really like it. You need me, I got your back on this.

Thank you Valandar, that means a lot to me. :)

Stasisxxx his render:R product is withdrawn from the store and he doesn't want it back in there. I am glad I can finally put this to rest. For all of you who see their free-stuff in the Marketplace, may this be an example.

DAMN IT! I paid $9 for a free item and the light set wasn't that good IMHO. Plus if he withdrew it I want my damn money back.

I got ripped off as well :-( Though I do like the light setup; it works well for me. Ah well, I'll take it philosofically. If that scoundrel had not posted the free lights as a product, I prolly wouldn't have bothered trying them, since there are so many free lightsets available, and some of them suck. Now this one happens to be a really good one, if you're into very bright, comics-like renders. It's bright as hell, and still gives great wel defined shadows ans depth. Like a desert-sun. Way excellent, shadowmaster! :-) Get the bastard for me, will ya! :-(

I think this guy should either turn over the money he made from his rip-off to the rightful beneficiary, Shademaster, including my 10 bucks :-( ... or be banned from Rosity forever. And he should apologise. Lastly, he should be be whipped, quartered, garroted, and hanged on the townsquare, and have his right hand cut of for thieving.

How lame :(

I am glad I didn't buy it. This is a shame that this person Stasisxxx could think he actually vould get away with this. I hope this person gets banned from this site and I hope that other sites will ban him too.

Not saying I know Stasisxxx or anything, but I've seen some of his other work and products in the marketplace and they're pretty good. Seems kind of odd that a person of his skill would steal anything? Again, not saying he didn't, just an observation...

That's why I waited 2 more days and gave him 2 chances of removing or changing his product. But after he didn't I decided to step out to the community and the admins about this.