Forum: Complaint & Debate


Subject: DAZ's Texture Map Copyright Laws

annemarie opened this issue on Jul 18, 2001 ยท 88 posts


atthisstage posted Wed, 18 July 2001 at 8:09 PM

I don't think anyone here is "interrogating" DAZ, Questor. I think instead we're all looking for the limits, because a license forbidding anything "in whole or in part" means that almost anything generated for a Poser character could be seen as a technical violation of the license. I'd happily bet that a lot of the conforming clothing generated is using part of the Vicky mesh somewhere in its construction, no matter how small. So does that constitute a violation? If this string is any indication, you bet it is. So where does DAZ draw the line? By forbidding everything that's not DAZ-approved? That's gonna make it pretty tough for the hobbyists, who live to see what they can do with these characters. So here we have something that was generated as a freebie. There's no loss of income to DAZ because of the texture's existence, only the knowledge that one can visibly see the texture was used as a starting point. In terms of the licence, hands down it's in violation. No question about that. But does anyone win by telling SnowSultan to pull it? DAZ isn't going to make any more money than they had before, so that's not an issue. Snow put enough work into it to make it his/her own creation, so that's not the issue either. Frankly, I'm not sure any more just what is being proven here, save that DAZ wants (rightfully) to control what's theirs. And that's admirable. I just think they could have chosen a better target to make their case. This is like whacking a fly with a sledgehammer, and I don't think it would kill DAZ to say to Snow or anyone else making textures for a DAZ product, "Look, we don't want you to pull your work needlessly. Just let us take a look and give it our thumbs up before you do something and put it up for distribution." That way, people get to create, DAZ sells more product, and everyone wins in the end.