onimusha opened this issue on Dec 17, 2011 · 739 posts
DCArt posted Mon, 02 January 2012 at 5:09 PM
This new mesh is owned by ... who?
OK. Let's say you bought a record album in the 60s, and you decide that you want to re-record it and burn it to CD before your record player dies. After you record it, you use some audio editing software to remove the cracks and pops that the old vinyl record had. But you were able to restore it pretty well and now you can listen to it on your CD player.
Who owns that CD? You do. BUT ... that CD is STILL a derivative of the original record.
Can you sell or give away copies of it? No, not legally. The original artist and the original recording company own the copyrights to the song.
The above example explains why you can't distribute the OBJ file. The OBJ file is the "original record." And you wouldn't be able to sell the "CD" version of it.
Now ... a character or clothing morph is not much more than a LONG list of instructions that tell Poser which vertices to move in an OBJ file, and which to leave alone. It says "Move this vertice by this much. Move that vertice two spots over this much. Leave the vertices in the hands alone." And so on.
So thinking of it in terms of an old record album, you aren't really distributing the record, you aren't really distributing the CD; you are distributing the instructions that turn the record into the CD, that other people can use if they have that record album, and a record player, and the software that you used to remove the cracks and pops.