Quote - Ok I'm the debates over. I'm back.

Kalon I obviously don't understand what your position is then. It seems to me that you are saying that somehow people are extracting the original mesh from a render and then redistributing that mesh?

Or are you saying that people are taking a mesh, making a render and then redistributing the render.

If its the latter, and is wrong as you are saying, then not only does this entire site, but almost every other poser artist site out there has a real real big problem. 

Because everytime one of us looks at the gallery, we are downloading every render we look at onto our machine. And thus technically that render is being redistributed to us.

For free by the way.

Sorry about the delayed response, storms knocked out my electricity....

Yes, I am saying the latter. And all the examples you keep pitching back to me have one major, and I do mean major difference-- some creative work has been done to them. That is what supposed to happen. It becomes part of a composition of the artist's work. But to take an item, render it with neutral lighting in issolation to provide an artists resource of something you did not create is wrong. And it may suit the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

And before you start comparing apples and oranges again, take a look at the EULA of X-frog products. They specialize in creating billboards of meshes that they own and created. Their EULA is rather strict, because they recognize that this is a very dangerous copyright area.

And it is a competitive product. Using the actual mesh will cast the correct shadows, allow better interaction with other components in your image and not limit the angle in which the item can be shown. However, on the other hand, using a billboard is light on system resources and will allow you to use twenty trees, versus one actual mesh tree.

If you are arguing that the tools are available to extract an item from any composition and use it in your work ... you're right. But that doesn't make doing so right. And if you are using that as justification, then when I shop in the marketplace, I should just download the promotional image, fire up photoshop and extract the item that caught my attention. All the money I could have saved if I had only known... :rolleyes:

I'm not saying that billboards are a bad thing. If you photograph a plant, create a mask and slap it on a plane, I have no problem with you uploading 40 billboards a day. If you create a mesh, render it in isolation and upload 40 billboards a day, no problem. But if you are taking someone elses mesh, rendering it in isolation and uploading as an artist resource you created that's highly problematic.

kalonart.com