I was looking through the freestuff collection yesterday and I was struck how many items are categorised as "non-commercial only". Checking some items against the readme files, I find this restriction is actually not intended by the author. Clearly, a lot of people submitting stuff to the site simply don't notice that the default setting is "non-commercial only". This means that the tag as it appears in the freestuff pages now is unreliable. For "unreliable" also read "useless". It takes a certain sort of mind to object actively to someone profiting in any way from a render that features their texture or prop tucked away in a corner (though I personally can't imagine what that mind can be like). If someone really takes such an objection, then they should have to declare it by clicking a "non-commercial only" option. The default should be "all uses", because a lot of people will just take the default whatever. And I cannot believe that most contributors really care to restrict how their item is used.

If someone makes money from using your freestuff item, you don't -really- care? If this is true then you need to check the appropriate box, however, there are people who don't want their items used commercially just because they -are- free and so, leave the default.

Why should anyone care? They aren't losing anything; someone is gaining something; the sum of total human happiness goes up. This got more of a discussion in the Poser forum (as I expected). The base problem is that a lot of people probably mistake "commercial use" for "commercial redistribution" which is not what's meant at all.

To be honest, I don't think a lot of folks pay attention to the check box when they upload it... I can thnk of a couple ocassions where the person providing the files asked why it said that.. I agree the default should be for comercial use...

(As I posted in the Poser forum:) It's far better for people to miss a freebie that was mismarked as non-commercial only rather than members of the community leave because they feel they've been taken advantage of. As well, we have fan art freebies - super hero character textures and such. These can not be used commercially without the creator's permission (Marvel, DC, etc.) If someone forgot to tag them appropriately, then there could be legal problems down the road. As a courtesy, and to head off possible legal complications, it's better for us to keep the default of "non-commercial use only" but I am trying to get better definitions for usage.

Crescent has a point, the default should stay non-commercial...