Eternl_Knight opened this issue on Apr 11, 2005 ยท 82 posts
Eternl_Knight posted Thu, 14 April 2005 at 7:55 PM
I have some problems with the text as written as I find it is just as unclear as previous "clarifications". Basically, the text Dan has written is useless as a "fire & forget" agreement. I replied to him in regards to this. My post is in italics below. Feel free to nit-pick my response as much as I did his. With all due respect Dan (and I do have respect for someone who can build a business like DAZ - I am not being sarcastic), your clarifications are not what I (or other developers who have contacted me since the start of this situation) are after. Let me state for the record that I am VERY sensitive to language in these "clarifications". After all, I am trying to get a somewhat "fire & forget" agreement here and as such these words are all I have to back up any work I do until the "developer's agreement" is finalised. Firstly, I do understand your position and am not trying to "steal" DAZ intellectual property. However, the paragraph that talks about how others have tried using loopholes boils down to "We have the right to veto a product should we deem it competitive". This is no better than before as I STILL need to come to you with every product to determine if it is OK. Your line "we cannot thoroughly outline exactly what is allowed and what is not" basically invalidates the use of this statement as any kind of defence in a court of law as you can simply state "Well, this situation was one of those we couldn't 'outline exactly'". Secondly, it is next to impossible to create clothing without using a DAZ product in the creative process. That is, I NEED to use the V3 figure mesh somewhere in the creative process to fit clothing meshes around! As such, the answer to the first question is also useless (unless one happens to have a 3D photographic memory). Perhaps you meant "'provided only the [i]form[/i] of the content is used and not the content data". If so, could the wording of the answer be changed to reflect that and you have my apologies. Next, I assume by the answer to question two that you mean I can use the joint parameters for the use of fitting and using clothing, but when redistributing the clothing I need to state in the license that the joint parameters used in said content are to be used in accordance with the DAZ EuLA? If this is the case, could DAZ provide us with the legal language for us to include in our licenses, as they too are subject to misinterpretation. There is also the issue that there is a significant amount of content out there with licenses making no mention of this requirement. As such, a person using such an article of clothing is not "legally subject" to it. This is something DAZ will need to deal with as I cannot find reference to this continued ownership anywhere else (though I personoally am quite fine with the clause). The third question is answered quite clearly and I thank you for the clarification. The last question is answered quite clearly as far as the joint parameters are concerned (as long as one ignores the "right to veto" paragraph at the start of the message). There was no UV data answer though due to the fact you didn't see it as necessary to my creation of clothing content. As I mentioned in my initial message, this is in regards to "clothing or texture related" products. As such, I wanted the clarification in regards to "texture related" products for the figures themselves. Given that you have the UV templates available on the products page, it is quite possible that using them as a basis of texture products is acceptable "fari use" under copyright, but I was asking to be clear on the issue. In summary, while I appreciate the time and effort you are putting into this - the answers leave us no better off than before in terms of clarity because of two reasons - you have reserved the right to veto any products you classify as competitive (in other words - the above agreement can be read that I cannot create a better catsuit, as an example) and the use of figure meshes are required in the creative process, otherwise one could not fit the clothing to the mesh. I am not trying to cause a public hassle with all of this (as mentioned - I tried to do this in private), however as you have stated your wish to have this dealt with in this thread - I am raising my concerns here. Regards, B.J.Tolputt