Hello- I sure this question was already addressed. But I missed the response. When you purchase a character, when posting an altered version of that figure, are you required to post the original name of that character? Or, are we encouraged to rename the altered character? The reason I ask this question is. When the Artist that created the original character post items related to his creation, he/she use the original name of the character, i.e. Victoria, Posette, etc. What is the correct or respectful way? I am unsure of how this all works. When you purchase a character, do you own the right to alter and then sell the character under a different name? Please explain. Thanks

Heya lplp1 :) It totally depends on where you purchased the character and from whom :) In the case of the two specific ones you have named, Posette and Vicki, yes, you may make alterations to the character, such as changes to the body via morph targets, textures sets, all that, then you may of course give those away, or sell them. It IS traditional in this site to give an abundance of credit to everyone you can think of... just imagine you are at the Academy Awards and you are thanking everyone from God to your Mother, and you will do well ;p So yes, plan to accredit Daz3d for Vicki, Traveller for Morphs, Kozaburo for Hair... and on and on and on... even just inspirational credit goes onto my credit list... one can never give too much credit, now can one? ;p Also, this is the legal way to do things ;p Respecting Copyright is merely good manners and gratitude sometimes.

Thanks Mehndi. Just want to make sure I am keep with tradition as well as giving proper credit where credit is due. Does this apply to non-Daz characters? Or would you recommend contacting the artist for specifics? (Re: It totally depends on where you purchased the character and from whom :)) What does ownership mean? Lets say you purchased 10 cars from Mercedes and modify the body of the cars, and then you sell them as Sedecrem (Mercedes in reverse), you would then make sure to give credit to the tire manufacture, the engine maker, etc., as well as stating that the new cars are modified Mercedes? Is this how it works?

Models not made by Zygote/Daz3d are each different in how the owner of the copyright feels on derivative work. You have to contact the owner of the copyright to be sure before proceeding :) For instance, the items sold in the store here... by the license you are not allowed to create and remarket derivatives off them, even though they first originated themselves as Daz3d work. I know that may not make sense, but it is like this, Daz says it is ok to make derivatives of their work, but the copyright owners who then did, do NOT say it is ok to make derivatives of their work... at least not in a blanket sense. So contact every single person whose work you wish to work off of, to be safe :) Better safe than sorry... better safe than flamed ;p

I agree. Thanks so much for the advice.

To redistribute copy writen work that requires a modified OBJ file you would need to encrypt that file.
The Objaction Mover program that is available in the Utilities section of The Freestuff was produced by Maz to enable the sharing of copywriten material between Poser users without infringing on that copywrite.

To explain by example lets consider an artist who starting with a clothing item from the library alters/cuts/adds to it to create a new garment. They then wish to share their work but because it contains another's copywriten material are prevented from doing so. The solution is to encrypt the OBJ file using the original copywriten model as the key. Upon receiving this encrypted (PCF) file a Poser user may unlock it using their copy of the original OBJ file. Bone fide Poser users will both have the same original figure, and hence the key.

Maz has included detailed instruction on how to use the program within his readme file. If amplification is required please indicate.

Hope this helps :)

Hmmm,- I could see a case that would involve purchasing a character that contained morphs that were available freely and duplicating that effect on Vickie and or the Posette and selling it, assuming you contacted the creaters of the morphs you actually used and got permission. This might not be nice ethicially, but I think it would fly legaly. This assumes that people are selling characters that contains morphs created by others, I don't know if any actually do- it is real hard to say which morph came from where, as they can be duplicated and combined as required. There seem to be so many "characters" lately- I consider a character a figure made by morphs (or textures) from Vickie or the Posette or Mike or whatever, Supermodel Vickie by my reasoning isn't a character,incidently, as she has different mesh, and she can't be used to make Vickie body morphs or visa-vesa.

I think the concept of "owning" is the issue here. Unless you created the character yourself or commisioned the the character as a work for hire you don't own it. You are given or buy a right to use it. You do not have the right to distribute it unless that is explicitly given to you in writing. You also don't have the right to modify it and distribute it without premission, as it is a derivative work. You cannot give away or sell someone elses work unless they give you permission to do it. Generally this requires that you pay them money or give them credit, depending on how valuable they think it is or any other criteria they choose. Zygote/Daz3D allows the distribution of morphs and other parts of their base (posette, michael, etc) figures as long as you don'tr distribute geometry. So you can modify a CR2 and distribute it without violating the license becuase the license allows this - mostly as the cr2 is usless unless you own the obj file. But if you buy or get free a character (A CR2 file and other parts) that was build from michael you cannot distribute that character without the permision of the creator. The work that the creator did in creating a distinctive character is their work and they own it. So if you buy (for example) Mehndi/Jager's Saluda character you cannot distribute anything that is orginal to that character without their permission. In this case that is the pose files, the textures and the saluda morphs and probably other parts. Othervise you would be stealing from them. If you distributed the file with the Vicky geometry also then you would also be stealing from zygote/Daz3d The only way around this is to distribute your new item in such a way that it requires the original item to be in your possession to use it. That is what Objaction Mover does. However it is limited to obj files only.

Thanks TO: PhilC Jim Burton Kevin I still have a way to go before fully understanding the proper way to go forward. Until then, I will enjoy all of the wonderful creation available by all of you. Jim, I would like to discuss more detailed questions with you regarding Super model Vickie. (What or where is the proper forum to do this?)

Here should be O.K., she is a Poser figure, after all!

In general, the above advice is pretty good. In terms of trying to get a handle on all of it, I would suggest breaking the large question into 2 parts. The first part is copyright law. Kevin largely sums it up, and from some of the terms he uses, I suspect he is a lawyer or plays one on TV. If you want to understand in detail what rights the creator of a work has, a good place to start is the U.S. Copyright Act. You can find it, as well as explanations of it, linking from www.findlaw.com The second part deals with the fact that the copyrighted works Poser folk are most concerned with are considered software (for example, an .obj file). Most software is licensed to users, which means the user's rights are governed by the terms of the license. For example, if you bought MS Word, you would have the right to make a backup copy, but not to distribute copies to everyone you know. And you could develop software that works with Word (assuming MS folk haven't designed incompatibilities into their program...). In the case of DAZ product, it would appear that if you make a "derivative work" by morphing Posette, Vicki, etc., they grant licensees (you) the right to distribute the changes, so long as you do not distribute copies of their original work. DAZ3D does not seem to have raised a problem with the distibution of morph targets for individual parts, but PhilC is right that you would need to use Mover to encode items that embody more of the original work. Jim Burton is also correct in his hypothetical example, and in explaining why it almost purely hypothetical. Someone could make a morph target from other morphs that are freely available for any use (such as Trav's at MorphWorld, if I read his readme file correctly). But someone doing so is likely to do so by spawning the combined morph, which makes reverse engineering of the sort hypothesized by Jim difficult. And as long as I have mentioned Trav's readme file, I would note that, as Jim and Mehndi suggest, that the creator usually includes a readme file in their DL file that explains the terms of use. Usually, the free stuff specifies that personal use is okay, but commercial use requires at least permission of the creator. An example of this is the readme that accompanies stuff DLed from Kozaburo and Yamato. But Trav and Darth Logice seem to be okay with commercial use; some of Angielyn's free stuff can be used commercially, but the textures generally cannot be made available for resale, DL, etc. As you can see, it varies, so check those readmes. And giving credit where credit is due, even if you have permission for use, isn't necessarily legally required, but is always always a good rule of thumb.

And as though I didn't already go on too long, I would add that another reason folks refer to Posette, Vicki etc. in terms of the morphed characters you find in the Free Stuff is because no one wants to waste time DLing a Vicki morph if they don't own Vicki ;)

I only play one on TV, so to speak. The co-moderator of the copyright forum (with Mehndi) is actually a lawyer who really has a much better grasp on the law. All this stuff can get really ugly as you start running into both the computer copyright law and the visual copyright law. Most (or all) of the useful non-lawyer accessible stuff on copyright is for written works, which doesn't necessarily work the same as visual or computer stuff. And then you also have the contracts, which for Daz3D is something like 14 paragraphs of contractese. . . .

Thanks kbade, I have a "better" understanding now.