Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=473380

Follow the link to the above message in this forum and judge yourself.... Maxx

Well Maxx, I examined them both as close as I could with my resolution.....and to me, the birthmark on the abs is a dead giveaway....sure looks too close for comfort. What do you do if it is yours? And how did they get yours if it is? Concerned Modeler Sharen

Sharon, MaxxArcher is not saying that it's his texture. What he is saying is that it is a ripp-off of StefyZZ's Asia texture and I think I agree. I compared it to my copy of the Asia texture (on Vicki2) and found the following: What he (NOT MaxxArcher, the OTHER guy) appears to have done was to remove almost all of the skin blemishes from the Asia texture and perhaps alter the color to be slightly less yellow. (StefyZZ's textures are all on the slightly yellow side IMHO). An additional indication that it's a copy is the shape of the pubic hair area, the slighly reddish coloration on the upper chest/throat area and the slightly darker, tri-angular skin area in the small of the back.

He -DID Ron. In the thread he posted the link to.

Quite right, ronknights, I was working on that. Here it is. Because of the JPG degradation of the images some similarities are rather faint, but the original pics do show the spots marked....

And heres the back. Again, degraded JPG images. You will need the original images posted by kagato98 to do a proper comparison..... There are a few dead give aways like the pubic area, folds in the armpits, mole on the lower abdomen, vagina, nipples, pimples ot the back of the shoulders and lower back, lower left bumm and of course, the total way the texture has been colored. Convinced? Well, I rest my case, too many "accidental" similarities... Maxx

/me is convinced.

Alright. Hang on a second....I'm confused here. I'll try to explain so far, and hope that I haven't hurt my reputation too much. The texture that I posted pictures of is not entirely done all by me. There are a lot of modifications done by me, but as I said, it's done with pictures, pattern overlays in Photoshop and other things. Now, first of all, it seems that I have been had. In one of my previous posts, I stated that it would be very hard to create a texture from scratch, so I went to work with a new idea. I found some basic textures that were free to use for whatever purpose I desired. I made sure that these textures were free for use. My idea was to take some textures with only a little detail and add my own details from photos and then overlay a pattern in Photoshop to make it more realistic. I was going to work my way up. I had a problem though....I couldn't make it realistic enough. I was talking to a friend, and he told me that he had a few photo-realistic textures I could use. He sent me a folder full of them, and only a few were actually useable. He gave no readme.txt's or anything with them. For all I know, Stefyzz's texture could be in one of them. It appears that I used her texture as a base....I would never knowingly rip off someone's work. I have bought nothing from the online store, and only glanced at it. I was told that these textures were created by my 'friend' and could be used as long as I changed them and didn't use them as they were. There were no credits actually on the picture itself, so I had no idea that these were someone else's and not his. I apologize for this -_- . There's not much else I can say about this besides it's back to the drawing board....I apologize to all who might have been offended. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make things better. Once again, I apologize to everyone, especially Stefy.

will be interesting to see if store admin follow up on the "friend" Kagato, you'll know to be more careful next time. Post your own work you had before your friend contributed. I'm sure you can salvage something out of it. Goodluck!

Hmmmm...lets see. ScottA looking through his law books What IS the penalty for turning yourself in for unintentional copywrite violation? Ahh..here it is.....public flogging! Just kidding ;-) The person I'm more concerned with is your friend who is giving these things out. Please let him/her know that this can have some very serious consequences. I'm talking about some seriously LARGE fines. Nice detective work MaxxArcher. ScottA

Ron: Please re-read that thread. Perhaps he did not post side-by-side comparisons, but he posted pics of "Asia" just below the "offending" pictures. I had thought that would be good enough, because it was for me. I could see, myself, the specific detail similarities without the "side-by-side".

So I'll still have friends after this, right ^^ ? Heh. Seriously...I didn't mean this. I guess I could try to salvage some work. I don't even know if I'm interested now though. I mean, it's not just the work....I feel terrible. I look like an ass now ^^ . Ugh....Umm....can I say I'm sorry again ^_^ ? Lol.

By the way, It would have saved a lot of time and maybe a little less embarassment if MaxxArcher had asked me about this in private first. I'm not a bad guy....I would have stoped production on my texture if he had shown me proof. But uhh....now everyone sees this. Wouldn't it have been a little nicer if I had been told this in private? I could see doing this if you had asked me about it and I had ignored him or something......My life moto is "Be nice". Now I have a lot of apologies to write -- . Oh well....This letters' purpose isn't to get people to flame MaxxArcher or anything. It's just here to remind people that public embarassment isn't always required. Try to talk to the person before going through such measures. And be nice about it ^^ .

Aardvark sticks his neck out a bit I remember the thread about the photoshop overlays. Perhaps Kagoto98 should have been a bit more clear on how the new texure was derived. However I agree that this could have been handled more discreately, before a persons rep is ruined over a misunderstanding. A wise man once said: "Imatation is the most sincere form of flattery." IMHO

a little further PS: He did say he was sorry, and he did stick around and take the beating vs. running away with tail between legs. I admire that.

I agree. I think it's too bad he was misinformed, and I think it is admirable that he has stuck around to discuss what happened. On top of that, I think he did good work. One way aroudn the problem here is that he can distribute the PHOTOSHOP file WITHOUT the layer with steffy's texture. Then only people who already had it could re-create his texture. This way he can still let people use his work (I liek the way his turned out, it is a nice variation on Steffy's tex). Just a thought! And don't worry - it can happen to all of us when we get started.

Kagato, in the future, if you don't know who made a texture, don't DARE make an attempt to redistribute it. If the altered textured is only for your own use, that's fine. Even if the texture is supposedly "Free for Use", which Asia definately was not, keep in mind that 99% of the artists who do contribute to the freestuff here normally have readme's saying that you cannot redistribute it. The best way to find out, is that if you don't know, ask on the forums, post a render and someone should be able to identify it for you, perhaps even tell you who created it. Then, you contact the author, and if it was indeed soemthing released as a freebie, then the original artist may be entirely okay with you posting the modifications.

My 2cents is that this is a really messy way to get an education. Getting caught even when you meant the best is a very hard lesson to learn. The old ignorance of the law thing. The up side to the "public" way this rolled out is that we can all put ourselves into Steffy and Kagato98's shoes. Neither are very comfortable shoes to wear. I do think that this shows that people don't have to resort to paranoid means of enforcing their own anti-piracy policy. At least not with members of this forum. :)

I sort of got the argument, but being made to scroll backwards and forwards is far more heinous crime.

Kagato98, don't worry, you'll still have friends :)

The second I saw kagato98s post I knew I was dealing with a texture of either Noa, Asia or one of the YYY girls by StefyZZ. After a brief check of my texture folders I knew it was Asia, no doubt whatsoever. However, to be sure, I rendered a scene by myself to compare the files. After seeing the match, I sent instant messages to both ScottA and StefyZZ addressing a possible copyright violation at Renderosity requesting them to take proper action. And yes kagato98, as a matter of courtesy I should have sent you too an instant message inquiring about the texture and warn you about you violating a copyright. My sincerest appologies for neglecting to do so, I learned a lesson wit this too. However, with regard to any damage that my have been done to your reputation, I cant and wont take any responsibility as it was you who posted the texture in the first place and talked about your plans with it, without verifying yourself whether a copyright issue could arise or not, especially with your commercial intent. So, any damage done is self inflicted. Apparently the word of a friend dumping a load of pictures on your disk isnt sufficient in this case. I do believe you acted in good faith and as Im not the grudging kind, I wont hold anything whatsoever against you and I hope the same goes for you. People at Renderosity work hard, mostly just for fun, I just couldnt stand another case of copyright violation. Look at traveler for example, the morph guru, he even shut down his MorphWorld 2.0 site, because people were selling his free but copyrighted morphs, with a stripped down MorphWorld 3.0 as a result. Finally, I do agree with jamball77 stating that this is a hard way to learn, but I think too as creative individuals we should stand out for eachother and make sure that creativity, fun and friendships come first... Happy rendering Maxx :-)

I have a feeling were going to see this for some time to come. It hasnt been that long, after all, since we saw an entire line of textures pulled because someone else had "appropriated" them, modified them, and then put them up for sale. When pressed, the artist claimed he had made substantial changes and therefore had created a whole new piece of art, which, to a degree, he had. Were they new? Only to the same degree that a texture made from photos is "new". In another thread, pokeydots has demonstrated a WIP of a texture that is amazingly lifelike... as it should be, since it was created from photos. But that raises another somewhat thorny issue: they're not Pokeys photos. Theyre images taken off the Net. So how do we draw the line? Is using photos downloaded from the Net to create a texture any less a crime than starting from, say, Asia? Those photos are just as governed by copyright as a painted texture. After all, someone took them, even if the photographer isnt mentioned by name. Im not trying to create an atmosphere of complete paranoia, but I feel we do need to deal with this issue a little more deeply. Using a photo from the Net is just as much a copyright issue as using Asia for a starting point. Are we making allowances that verge ever so slightly on the hypocritical?

And Maxx, please. Not everyone has a 36" wide monitor. I realize a side by side comparison works better than a top to bottom one, but it affects the layout of the rest of the thread. And I dont want to spend the rest of this one scrolling left to right to left to right to read a post.

Well, you really dont have to read any thread if you get fed up with them. And as for the appologies, they were addressed to katago98... Maxx...

unless it is explicitly branded as public domain. don't use pictures unless you took them yourself. there's no question on "how do we draw the line" there! which is why i've had to handpaint/filterise my textures - i can't be bothered taking my own pictures... and everyone i've asked said no :P i've got a prudish set of family and friends! it's all quite simple really... i guess we all get to learn this at our own speed. and yes, i meant "oy" not "yo" ;) this thread is difficult to reply to with that wide pic in there... wish there was an edit button MaxxArcher.

no, cos further up you've left one of them checked... i don't know for sure. you will know if you get an email from this reply ;) it's the first thing i do, uncheck that box. we've asked for it to default off, i'm not sure if that's been done, haven't looked at my preferences lately.

First, I'm sorry for the delay and thank you very much Maxx!! I've known about this tread only now, and this is very sad. Seeing the Kagato's renders I can perfectly recognize that that is a mixed verison between my Asia and my Yuma. The neck in the front is the Yuma neck and also the back elbow and the front legs. I don't know who is the friend who given to Kagato my Asia and my Yuma textures for free (I can only imagine...), but surely on the Yuma textures .jpg is written very big "YYY Mega Package by Stefania Zampini Distribution of this Map violates Copyright Law. Copyright by Stefania Zampini 2001". I think that Kagato is not telling the truth when he've said he didn't know that I was the creator of the 2 textures he used and mixed to created his "own" one, 'cause on both the head and body Yuma textures are written with very big letters the copyrights; maybe the friends have deleted them from the map? I'm sorry but this is not believable to me. Thank you again Maxx very much for you precious and kind help. This is very frustrating and I will work to do something to protect my hard work and the honest customers that have always supported me. Kind regards, Stefy.

I hate to do something to distress people, but I think you're begging for this question. Just what legally constitutes a copyright? Can a person merely place the words "Copyright" on a work, or do you really need to file a copyright notice with a government agency? I have a feeling this legal issue is far more complicated than most of us are willing to admit. But if you're going to weild "the law" around like a weapon, then you should know the law. So tell me: "What legally constitutes a copyright?!" Give me some quotes, some links to government web sites, etc.

Attached Link: http://www.nolo.com/encyclopedia/articles/tc/PCT16.HTML

I did a search on "artistic copyrights" and came up with this website.

Attached Link: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/

OK, I've posted a link to the US Copyright Office..That should help. I read through this web site, and at first it seemed clearcut. Then it sounded even more confusing. Here are a few key paragraphs. WHAT IS COPYRIGHT? Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of original works of authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. WHO CAN CLAIM COPYRIGHT Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright. HOW TO SECURE A COPYRIGHT Copyright Secured Automatically upon Creation The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following Note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See "Copyright Registration." NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, although it is often beneficial. Because prior law did contain such a requirement, however, the use of notice is still relevant to the copyright status of older works. HOW LONG COPYRIGHT PROTECTION ENDURES Works Originally Created on or after January 1, 1978 A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire," the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

So I guess anyone can say their work is copywrited without having to submit any kind of forms to an agency like a patent process. You just have to have the date involved on it somehow and say that it is your original work. But, does this need to involve any written material from original art that is purchased Daz or Renderosity? If so, that's a LOT of text file documentation to keep track of. Or do you only need the documentation proof when you are legally questioned on the copyright itself?

I'm not going to attempt an answer to those questions. The whole issue of copyright has been debated, in courts and legislation for decades, if not hundreds of years. There are even sections about copyrighted works before/after certain dates. Why do you think we have a copyright office and copyright attorneys?! It appears the laws have been changed to favor the artists/creators more, and make copyright easier for them. But no one can fancy him/herself their own "backyard copyright attorney." OH, and I can't resist: "This message is copyright 2001 by Ron Knights."

Velvetdream2: If you want to be sure you have the most accurate information, always look for an official government site first. I saw some sites for copyright attorneys. I'm sure they'd love to take someone's money for legal assistance or legal opinions. But the government web sites usually give us a wealth of FREE information. That is our tax dollars at work. (If you're a US resident, grin.)

"Seeing the Kagato's renders I can perfectly recognize that that is a mixed verison between my Asia and my Yuma."

I don't think anyone is debating that :)

"I think that Kagato is not telling the truth when he've said he didn't know that I was the creator of the 2 textures he used and mixed to created his "own" one, 'cause on both the head and body Yuma textures are written with very big letters the copyrights; maybe the friends have deleted them from the map? I'm sorry but this is not believable to me."

Actually, it is believable to me. Those people who send out pirated information routinely repackage and alter the data before sending for a variety of reasons - and this would be a trivially obvious alteration.

In fact, Kagato seems to be clearly aware of the issues of copyright law and so on ... in a post above the quote is:

"so I went to work with a new idea. I found some basic textures that were free to use for whatever purpose I desired. I made sure that these textures were free for use."

In other words, we are dealing here with someone who understands the issues and went to all the trouble to check on the issues involved. That they took someone else's word that the pirated textures were free as well is an indication of naivet.. not malicious theft.

Now, I can see where to you - as the artist who's work it was - this will seem like a malicious act... especially given your rather passionate stance on the topic to begin with.

But that doesn't mean it was a malicious act.

To me, the telling issues are:

• Kagato seems to understand copyright
• Kagato did not attempt to leave a false trail when they were notified of the issue, but accepted the evidence.
• Kagato apologized.
• Kagato stuck around in the community - not packing up and simply deleting the account the way a pirate would.

So to me - it seems like a simple mistake. It was pointed out, apologized for and fixed. It hinkt he torches and lynching rope can go back away.

Folks, Ive said this countless times before. If you want to prove your copyright on something, put it on a disk, get a printout, and put the whole mess in an envelope that you send to yourself by registered mail and then do not open the envelope. The biggest issues in copyright is the date of creation, and that becomes even more fragile with computers, since the computers clock can be reset to any date you want to make the file creation date any you wish. But if youve sent it by registered mail, the government provides you automatically with the date protection, and as long as it remains sealed, you have your proof. Copyright is much like divorce when it comes to attorneys; "lets make it as confusing and obtuse as possible so no one but us will be able to handle it". In its most essential, copyright is not that difficult if you want to prove your work is indeed yours and that someone elses is a derivation of it. Anyone can look at the textures above and see, without a doubt, that one is based on the other (and pretty freely taken at that). The only question that would be left is, Did he indeed know it was copyright material, and thats an entirely different issue altogther.

From one of many copyright FAQs at http://www.rexx.com/~jaguar/copyright.html#4 "The mythical "mail myself a copy and don't open it" method offers little more protection than the non-registered copyright, and is generally a waste of a stamp.In the U.S., only registration with the Copyright Office is acknowledged as legal registration."

This is a part of the license included in my Asia and Yuma Package as in the whole Renderosity Products. "The Artist (Author) retains all copyrights to the enclosed materials. The Buyer is not purchasing the contents, only the right to use the contents. The Buyer may not redistribute this archive file, in whole or in part. The Buyer may not store it any place on a network or on the Internet where it may be referenced by a third party. Buyer acquires the copyright to any derivative works created using this work, provided none of the original materials can be extracted from the derivative work by any means. If Artist can show that any of the original material can be extracted from Buyer's derivative work, Artist can demand both the original and derivative work, and all copies thereof be deleted. For example, Buyer cannot make an image of a texture map mapped to a flat plane, such that the original texture map can be cut & pasted from the image. This is designed to protect the Artist from Buyers releasing work, which lets other users obtain the copyrighted material, and is not meant to infringe upon the artistic endeavors of the Buyer."

I understand that Stefy, I am just unsure what that has to do with this... no one is claiming that your copyright isn't valid or that it would have been wrong to distribute the altered map as a derived work. Anyway - I am glad it all worked out before any damage was done.

Steffy, what people are saying is that Kagato98 unknowingly used your texture. It's like buying an item at a store, only to find out later it had been stolen from someone else's house. (Or, in this case, accepting a present from a friend, only to find out it was stolen later on.) Kagato98 has appologized, has retracted any plans from using the texture, and I'm sure has gotten rid of the texture from his computer. The thief who needs to be dealt with is the person who gave him the textures, assuring him that they were royalty-free. If Kagato98 privately discusses the issue with the admins and helps them find the culprit, then I think any blame against him should be absolved. And since this is a private matter, unless I see a Forum announcement of his banning, then I will believe that he did cooperate and was not guilty in this matter - Innocent until proven banned.

Keiraw, regardless of what it says at the site, it works. And I can tell you that from personal history: I had a designer rip off, almost stick for stick, a stage design I had done some years ago. Were not talking about an adaptation or an hommage but a line for line theft. I hauled his ass into court and sued him for every penny hed made off the project (which was a pretty sizable sum, far more than I received when I got the original commission from a much smaller theater). The one thing that saved me was being able to prove the date of creation, thanks to the US Postal Service and its registered mail. So while it may be "myth" to the bureaucrats in Washington, it holds up quite nicely in the courts.

I believe you. I am just saying that the only way to be absolutely positively sure is to register your design with the copyright office.