Attached Link: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1170237755271

According to the below thread, in the copyright forum, there are a number of Poser communities thriving with copyright infringements that aren't being moderated to remove the infringements. [ http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2746254](http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2746254) One could argue that they're not Poser communities, but I don't think that there's an official definition out there.

If you do some searching about the earlier mentioned forbidden topics and "Poser", I'm sure that you'll find quite a few sites using Poser artwork to represent all kinds of deviant sexual behavior, though they may not be Poser-only communities. Since there is no Poser equivalent to SL yet, there's no way to make a real comparison. Since I'm not an SL member (I looked into it when some friends joined, but was on dial-up till recently, so never joined), I don't know how prevalent the sexual deviancy is. I'd rather people virtually satisfied their deviant libidos than take it into the real world. With the prevalence of nudity and sexual content in even the Renderosity galleries,  there are more than enough ultraconservative communities in this country that would consider this an immoral site. One person's sexual moralities isn't necessarily consistent with another's. As long as a person isn't being nonconsensually harmed, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about what people do in the privacy of their homes.

I did a search in the Renderosity copyright forum and didn't get a single hit for SecondLife. That doesn't make it sound as if there is a world class problem of Poser textures being infringed in SL. Just because a texture can be copied doesn't necessarily mean that it is happening in a widescale fashion. After all, the reports of rampant Poser infringements are coming from people that aren't members of the SL community. Before everybody gets all accusatory, it would be nice to highlight at least a few specific instances so that a real discussion can take place rather than speculate on impressions of short visits to the site.

There are quite a few copyright infringements mentioned within the copyright forum for products in that have been in the Renderosity store. The admins work to fix those problems, but they still occur fairly regularly. There will always be somebody out to make a quick buck and doesn't have the moral backbone to be concerned about how that buck is made. The posts I've read have mostly been fairly simple thefts such as stealing a V4 texture for use on a V4 character. Although it's certainly possible to remap a V3 texture to use on V4, most thieves aren't interested in doing a lot of work. Maybe somebody has stolen a V3 texture and remarketed it for V4, but I'm not aware of it happening. The same practices will happen in SL because it's a lot easier stealing an SL texture and remarketing it than trying to remap a Poser texture into SL. It's not enough to speculate what can be done and then jump to the conclusion that there's a horrible problem with everybody stealing Poser works in SL. It may well be happening, but having real cases to talk about still beats imagined wrongs.

Some quick Google searches on Linden crackdowns found articles of the company going after in-world banks, gambling, sexual activity, and a variety of other things. It doesn't sound as if they're allowing lawless activities to occur without penalty. I don't know if Blackhearted made an official report to have them cancel the account of the user stealing his identify. It would be good to know how long it takes for them to ban the account.

SL users purchase a million dollars in goods every day. That would indicate that a lot of honest users are spending a lot of money at the site. If it was easy to steal everything, that much money would not be changing hands because everything would be free.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon