I'm happy to see this little warning under my gallery images now. "Image are copyrighted to their creators. DO NOT use without written permission."- however it should say "images" not image. :)

Anyways,I sure hope it will help deter the sneaky people here.

Thanks,
Helen

Message edited on: 05/03/2005 21:51

I agree Helen, I feel that is a great idea. But people will still use the images anyways if they don't care. (Which is sad)

I'll bring this to the team attention about the typo.. giggle. Oops i'm typo queen tonight myself Thanks!!

Ryuslilangel
Poser Moderator

Message edited on: 05/03/2005 22:06

Hehe...thanks, angel. :)

Yay! That's a nice addition. Now when they steal our work they've got no excuse like, "I didn't know it was copyrighted!" ;-) bonni

Sounds good to me, Bonni. :)

yes..good to see :)

I still do not understand why they are'nt just left click protected as I have seen at some other places out there on the net. Is there some reason they can't be here, like too much work to do it or something?

They did try the no-right-click briefly and there was a HUGE uproar about it. A LOT of people use their right click button to navigate, and furthermore, it's not pariticularly useful in preventing people from getting images, anyway. I can think of at least four ways around it, just off the top of my head, and if you think the snaggers know it, too, think again. bonni

In this present moment I am using Netscape with Java disabled, without Java "left click protect" doesn't work and also don't know if is or is not protected something that I click with the left button. Navigation without Java is great!, no popups, no two hours loading applets, etc.

Well...the grammar was corrected and the statement under the images makes more sense. :)

Nice addition but it should be above the image, right under the title because if you do not scroll down you won't see it. I don't think someone who wants to take the image and tube it would scroll down to read the credits or the comments.

But honestly I don't think that will change anything. I had that kind of disclaimer under some of my former gallery images and they still have been snagged and shared as tubes.

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 12:41

Would be nice if the statement include writings too. I post in the writer's gallery. It's not necessarily our images but our writings that we want copyrighted.

Good suggestion NothingNess. I will bring this up with JenyK and see if she can add over there as well. Stacey Community Manager

Whoops, I just checked and that statement is on the Writers Gallery images as well. Should have checked before I posted but good to know they got it on this area too.

Just re read what you wrote and you are asking that the statement itself includes Images and Writing, is that correct? Stacey

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 13:25

Stacey, Yup, wonder if they can word it to include writings too. Thanks! Leah

I sincerely appreciate this consideration on behalf of those of us who post to the Renderosity galleries. One of my images was snagged a couple of years ago, it was pretty frustrating. The two people who posted modified versions of my image to a newsgroup claimed "I didn't see any copyright symbol. When you post to the internet, you sacrifice copyright." Enough said. :-)

Ok NothingNess. I will see if they can add the writings along with Images. Thanks for the suggestion Stacey

A fine gesture indeed but ultimately meaningless. I mean, if copyright issues meant anything to someone who'd steal somebody else's work, I couldn't walk up the street and buy a bootleg copy of a certain highly-anticipated film that won't even be released for another three weeks. And this guy could go to JAIL for his actions. Who do you thinks gonna have a prob with Render's tag line about ownership? There right at this moment could very well be some smuck in Nova Scotia making a fortune off your/my images. And you/I'll probably never even find out, let alone do anything about it. Render's intent to protect us is greatly appreciated but we need to also consider that tho we own the work simply having created it, presenting it to the public in venues like this leave every single one of us wide open to being ripped-off. It's a sad, but irrefutable, fact. kmw

kmw - I agree with you. It's a sad but irrefutable fact. I'm no Shakespeare or anything but I value my writings, they are so personal to me. As much as I enjoy sharing them I fear having them stolen by someone else...I feel violated by the mere thought of it.

Yes, NN. Until we find ourselves in the shoes of a Stephen King, people like you and I have a decision to make about work: protect them (i.e., keep them to ourselves) or put them out there for the world to enjoy (and risk exposing ourselves to theft). For now I go with the former. At least in regard to my renderings. I tend to be a bit more guarded with my fiction tho. Anything I've posted has been written specifically for upload to some site.

kmw

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 14:59

kmw - it helps to know I'm not the only one feeling this way. I agree with you, I chose the former as well.

"A fine gesture indeed but ultimately meaningless." I take your points about those without ethics well; there's probably not much you can do about those with malice or those with no respect, but I do think it's possible that the text reminder may give pause to those who don't really have an understanding of copyright but have no intention of "stealing." Clearly there are those who have poor or iffy ethics, but I think it's also clear that some copyright violations are the result of common ignorance. Whether we like it or not, copyright laws simply aren't as commonly understood as, say, "don't exceed the speed limit." When the incident that I'd referred to earlier happened to me, the excuses that I'd cited weren't just lame copouts from totally unaccountable persons, the persons honestly didn't realize that what they'd done was wrong. After a bit of reasonably respectful back-and-forth, I received an apology and all was forgiven. Happy endings may not be ubiquitous, but if you don't believe they're possible, you inhibit their chances of occuring. I'd like to think that the image-snaggers I dealt with learned something from the experience, if only a bit of consciousness-raising. I honestly think that if my image had included a message like the one Renderosity is now posting, the incident wouldn't have occurred. I hate that "images posted to the 'net are public domain" line of thinking, but it seems that some people truly believe it's the case. Steps taken to defy that line can't be all bad. :-)

Well, xoconostle, I wasn't speaking of the naive. I was talking about the guy down the street selling the bootlegs... that guy who, let's be honest, doesn't give a crap about you, me, or our hard work.

This isn't about optimism. It's about practicality. Believing Render's warning will stop at least one small child from breaking the law? Well, that's nice. But let's face it. That's an honest, moral individual. Which is why I'm not worried about them to begin with.

take care

kmw

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 16:56

As I noted, now when they steal our stuff (i.e., we know they're going to, anyway), they won't be able to give that dumbass answer, "I didn't know it was copyrighted!" You might be surpirsed at how many people think Renderosity's galleries are their own personal candyjar. At least having that notice will take away one of their idiotic excuses. bonni

Sorry peeps apparently I still have not learned my left from my right. LOL

But ya' all knew what I meant anyways. Thanks for answering the q for me about protecting the pages from doing that though. It had not occurred to me, but now that I think about it some more, I guess you are right, a scrren screen capture etc....would still get them around it.

Anyways, after having an image of mine stolen from the gallery's here, to be used for-profit by someone else, I too am glad to see that warning message in there.

Thanks to the PTB for putting it up there.

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 19:01

hmmmm... BDC and xoconostle: Could you relate the details of your piracy? I mean, how'd you find out your work was being used, what you did, etc. I think the details would be quite fundamental to the rest of us. kmw

After a bit of reasonably respectful back-and-forth, I received an apology and all was forgiven. You're lucky. Sometimes they get REALLY nasty and will bomb your email (i.e., flood it or other such tactics), spread pornographic images on the net that they claim are you, try to hack your website, complain to your ISP that you're "harassing" them, send you viruses, attempt a Denial of Service attack against your IP address (or your website), even make telephone threats (all of those things have happened to people at R'sity who confronted people who were using their work illegally, by the way; you learn such interesting things hanging out in the Copyright forum here... ;). bonni

A terrific idea. Glad to see it mod guys and gals. :)

kmw, I hear you about the difference between the naive and the thiefs. About that past incident: I had posted an image to the Poser newsgroup that was intended as a sort of prayer for the well-being of a much respected fellow group participant who had serious worries about her health. A couple of persons posted re-worked versions of the image to the Poser group and alt.binaries.subgenius, one making the angel in the image look like she was holding a cockroach, the other giving her the face of "Connie," the wife of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs in Subgenius lore. These folks meant to have a joke, they didn't claim that the original image was theirs or anything like that. Still, it felt like a violation and it hit me like a blow to the gut. Frankly it wouldn't have hit me so hard if it wasn't that image at that time, and if I'd known that the cockroach thing was a convention at the Subgenius group. I waited to cool down, then posted a response in protest to both groups, and made mention of my retention of copyright on the original image. I received the aforementioned excuse comments, but the snaggers also made it clear that they meant no harm, and didn't know about the lady's health issue. They agreed not to do it again, and so far as I'm aware never have. This isn't quite the same sort of situation that I've seen many people indicate in this forum. I was lucky to be able to end the matter on a positive note, but I can understand the frustration expressed by others when things like this happen. Although I'm not inclined to post copyright reminders to the newsgroup, it's possible that if I had, the incident wouldn't have happened. I dunno...

There's not a lot you can do to protext images really, unless you want to put a big old copyright symbol right in the middle of the image, which some people do on stock photo sites. I'm sure I've had images stolen, we all have. But when it comes down to technicalities, I have the wire frames and source images used to create the image, so I can prove my case should it go that far.

"I still do not understand why they are'nt just left click protected as I have seen at some other places out there on the net. Is there some reason they can't be here, like too much work to do it or something?"-Quote from elizabyte RE:Unfortunately,all images/videos are loaded into the browser's cache.. Also I'd like to thank the mods/admin for thinking of us to protect our work in this manner! THANK YOU VERY MUCH! BTW, I also hate surfing with my Jave "SCRIPTS" Not Java(*Winks at elizabyte, I remember the destintion!;D} And active X as well, makes it a hellava lot safer!

Left click protection is easily defeated using the prtscn button on your keyboard.

takezo3001, I didn't say that I didn't understand why they're not right-click protected (that was BDC, who said left but meant right, of course ;-). I was the one who explained why they're not (i.e., the "protection" is mostly useless and there are many ways to get around it). Glad to see you remembered the Java vs. Javascript thing, though! Yay! :-D bonni

hmmmm...

BDC and xoconostle:

Could you relate the details of your piracy? I mean, how'd you find out your work was being used, what you did, etc. I think the details would be quite fundamental to the rest of us.

kmw

KMW,

It was a sept 11th image of mine that was stolen.
so This happened to me quite sometime back.

As for how did I find out my work was being used without my permission, I found out, initially from someone else, that I used to know in a chat room, they informed me that it was being used by someone else who had a yahoo as well as a tripod account. I went to the site addy's my friend sent me, and saw that yep it was, I contacted tripod, and yahoo and they promptly sent me a form letter and did nothing else about it. To make a long story short, I learned from that whole experience that if its something really good, or something that I don't want stolen for some reason, its easier if I just don't put it up in my gallery, or on any website. :)

Message edited on: 05/06/2005 21:09

They do say that imitation is the highest form of flattery... Not that that makes any difference. I think it's a good idea because it robs the pirates of one of their excuses. Yep, they've got others and it probably won't stop them, but at least it's easier in our screwy legal system to hold them responsible for copyright violation now. Personally, I'm going to start embedding watermarks in everything I post...