werun opened this issue on Jun 26, 2007 · 59 posts
KarenJ posted Fri, 06 July 2007 at 6:22 AM
OK I'm going to give a brief outline of what happened with this, because people really can't be expected to read a 55-page thread to find out what happened, and I still see a lot of people don't know the full details of what unfolded.
After that I'm going to lock this thread, because I don't believe it's appropriate to be making comments and speculations about peoples mental health (no matter the provocation.)
**
TAMELA J VS VICTORIAS/3D.SK/XIL/NAGUS/NICU1
A brief version**
In April 2007 Tamela contacted Renderosity, accusing a fellow merchant Victorias (Vickie) of stealing Tamela's work.
Tamela never (despite much asking) submitted an official copyright complaint which would enable Renderosity to investigate fully. She continued to bombard the Renderosity office with emails making claims of theft, but would not supply a list of the products which she was claming were stolen.
Renderosity tried to phone Tamela several times but was told she was too busy to take their calls. She never called Renderosity back.
During the 80 or so emails she sent, Tamela had mentioned a few specific products, without giving details of the parts she was saying were stolen. So Renderosity tried to compare those products, as it was very frustrating relying on Tamela for information which wasn't forthcoming.
On comparing some of the textures, our only conclusion was that both Tamela and Victorias were using photo sources from the well-known and widely-used resource site 3d.sk.
Tamela claimed that this could not be the case as she did not use any photo reference sources, all her textures were based on photos she had taken herself of her family and friends. (This despite the fact that she had a long purchase history of resources from the Marketplace here, and she had previously said that she DID use 3d.sk.)
In late May 2007, as it became clear that we were never going to get an official complaint or list of specific accusations from Tamela, Renderosity closed the case and told Tamela that we found no evidence of infringement.
On May 24th, Tamela posted this thread in just about every Poser forum on the internet, with a link to a page at 3DCommune (3DC) which showed "evidence" that an infringement had taken place.
At the same time, 3DC owner Mark sent out this same accusation against victorias in his weekly newsletter - which goes to thousands of his subscribers.
The "accusation and evidence" file also gave an ultimatum to all merchants using victorias' products:
At this initial stage, the majority public opinion was that one viewing the "evidence" posted at 3DC, the pictures were so blown up (about 5x magnification) and blurry that it was impossible to make any judgement. There were calls for Tamela or Mark to provide clearer shots.
Most of the thread participants at this time were merchants who were directly affected by these accusations, since they used victorias' products. The general opinion was that even if the accusation was true, 3DC was being incredibly crass and unprofessional in making this very public accusation, and in "blackmailing" merchants to jump ship under threat of legal action.
Mark at 3DC then announced on the Friday that he was going away for the long memorial day weekend, but would return on Tuesday with "irrefutable" evidence that Tamela was right.
However on Saturday 26th May, Tamela posted again at 3DC with the most incredible reversal and counter claim that the Poser community has probably ever seen.
She stated that she was dropping her accusation against victorias. In fact she had never believed victorias was infringing her products, but she admitted she had deliberately falsely accused victorias in order to "reveal" the real infringers - four well-known photographers: 3d.sk, nicu1, xil and nagus.
Tamela's rather incredible claim was that these professional photographers, who spend hundreds of dollars in time and money doing professional shoots with professional models in order to produce photo packs for sale - had taken parts of Tamela's poser textures and pasted them into their photos, as they were so envious of Tamela's incredible realism.
The community's response to this can be best summed up as "WTF?!"
Her post rather begged the question of why on earth any photographer would bother cutting and pasting from a Poser texture - which is laid out on a template that doesn't look like a human at all - and blending that piece with their own real photo of a real human. What for??
By the time Mark returned on Tuesday, the whole issue was in a state of critical meltdown. Mark made an apology to victorias and to the community as a whole for allowing his site to be used in such an unprofessional way.
Tamela was supposed to post an apology but in fact made some statements which basically reiterated her claims and ended with "I forgive you all" - you can understand why people are still very angry and disgusted with her.
To my knowledge, Tamela is still claiming that the photographers stole her textures to paste onto their human models.
Tamela is banned from selling at Renderosity.
======================
OK folks - that's it in a nutshell. So anyone still thinking "Hmm, maybe Tamela was right and victorias is a thief" - forget it - Tamela herself admitted to falsely accusing victorias.
I'm now locking this down because as I said, regardless of how we feel about her actions, it's not right to be talking about Tamela's mental problems.
Karen
"you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love." - Warsan
Shire