Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12395&Form.ShowMessage=2630448

I am a mearchant and its very sad to see that some people use commercial stuff to make SIMS products. Today I receive 6 emails from clients telling me that someone have used my textures to make a sims character. We must help eachothers and denunciate the copyrights violations. Thanks, Jorge The link is the forum about the a copyright violation of one of my products.

are they selling the character or using it as their character while they're playing the game?

"are they selling the character or using it as their character while they're playing the game?" Doesn't really matter...She is re-distributing it. Tom

If its being used to play the game by the person who bought it .. i don't really see the big deal. Now if she is giving it to other people .. then thats wrong.

I'm amazed you even saw that one!! Wow I can tell it's the same now that you've shown it, but I wouldn't have if I'd have just seen the guy, the beard is a bit different looking, could be the size of character who knows. At any rate sorry to hear you are dealing with this now, good thing someone has a better eye for that than I do! By the way I loooove that character ;) Reminds me alot of a good friend of mine.

I'm still not sure I see where the copy right violation is comming into play. The texture is not being given away or sold in its original form. Wouldn't that be the same as someone buying the texture, creating a pic, then giving away or selling the pic? I ran across a sim site that was using my images that I created as art for their sims game. The were offering the pics as downloads. They weren't selling them. However my permission to use the pics, was not seeked. I asked the website addmin to remove the downloads and they did.

Attached Link: http://webfantasy.info/Roy_Dupuis/Images/Roy_Dupuis_01.jpg

Jose looks a lot like the actor Roy Dupuis

http://www.geocities.com/ms4site2/roywallpaper/rdutvwall.jpg

Message edited on: 03/28/2006 03:02

It's not as much a copyright violation as it is a EULA violation, (which I guess is a type of Copyright violation, with a very small difference). In the Renderosity EULA it says that the textures cannot be used in a form that the texture could be extracted out since Sims bodyshop extracts these files into a flat bitmap, and as Anton shows in the linked discussion the textures would be close enough to be able to be used as a lowres version of the original.

If the Sims kept the texture in a non-extractable form (ie as a part of a propritary file format that was only usable by the Sims) then it would fall into a grey area that's best left to judges and lawyers to agrue.

Compairsons also show that most likely the author is using the promo pics rather then the texture it's self which makes the arguement that it's a violation of the EULA null and void, but a copyright on the promo pic is violated.

Either way it falls into the same catagory as yours, the author is using it in a manner outside of the EULA/Fair Use depending if it's the texture or the promo pic with out the permission of the original author.

I wonder if a simple e-mail to Shahara asking permission first could of avoided a messy situation. I'd be flattered if someone wanted to use a peice of mine as a sim character, but I'd expect to be asked for permission first.

Message edited on: 03/28/2006 11:15