This has been a very crazy and emotional couple of days for many people. These issues are difficult to deal with and they are no fun for anyone involved. We are very pleased with the flexibility of people in the community as well as their willingness to work together with one another. On a point of interest in the thread that started this, we have communicated with Tom Knight of Imagination Works and are currently working towards an arrangement that will be satisfactory to all parties involved.

As artists, you all understand how you feel about your original creations. DAZ is not a large company and therefore we also are very close to our work and very protective of it. Additionally, as is the case for an increasing number of you, we make extremely significant investments to produce our work and rely on the money they make for our livelihoods.

With this being the case, I think that most people in the Poser community understand what is fair and what is not right in matters of plagiarism or piracy. Still, our work is important enough that we obviously need something more substantial than the golden rule to protect it. This is why we have our End User License Agreement, which you can read in its entirety by looking in the Frequently Asked Questions section of the DAZ3D website. (See the first question, right at the top of the General FAQ page.)

On the other hand, this agreement has been around for a while, and legalese apparently hasnt clarified these issues in many peoples minds. I think that it may be most helpful to take this opportunity to explain publically and in plain terms why we have the End User License Agreement that we do.

As I mentioned, we put considerable resources into creating our products. The value of these products lies in the fact that they are time consuming, expensive and difficult to create. Our goal is to sell this work to others, allowing them to start their projects from where we left off, and allowing us to earn money to live on and to invest in future projects. The problem arises when someone starts from our work, bypassing the investment necessary to get to that point, and then distributes their work in ways that may compete with our own product.

And thats as complicated as our motivation gets. We simply need to ensure that no one can use our work as an unfair advantage to compete with us. And without having to go into the infinite number ways someone can create and distribute derivative work, this explanation should also help to clarify which specific methods of producing and/or distributing your work are permitted.

You may also be interested to know how DAZ typically pursues breeches of our copyright. We regularly contact various artists and websites in order to prevent the distribution of products that are based on work copyrighted to either DAZ or the artists we broker. In the last 2 months alone we have had to have 5 female meshes derived from either Posette or Victoria pulled from distribution. Some of these infringements are obvious, others are often undiscernable to people unfamiliar with the many professional modeling tools and techniques available. (For example, differing polygon count and layout does not necessarily mean a model hasnt been derived from another model.) As a result, we plan soon to add more information to clarify this in the FAQ section of our website.

Our course of action when we find a copyright violation is first to search for an amicable solution. We realize that occasionally people do this unwittingly. Also, we are only interested in protecting our business, not pursuing vendettas. With almost all first time offenses, we are satisfied when the creator of the derivative work simply acknowledges the infringement, is willing to work with us, and removes the files in question from distribution. Furthermore, for such matters we try to conduct our business with offenders on an individual and private level. That being said, we do have copyright and the End User License Agreement backing us up on this, and when its not an option to protect our business in a friendly manner we will go to all lengths necessary to protect our copyright.

Ultimately, however, the success or failure of this market revolves around community support. If any entity has to spend a large percentage of its resources protecting its products rather than developing products, that business will not survive in such a market. We would like publically to thank Anton and others like him who improve this community by acting on their concerns about issues important to all of us. The fact that this community is made up mostly of people who look for ways to support each other and our market, rather than parasites who continuously look for loopholes that damage others, is what makes this such a strong and growing community. (Speaking generally and not reffering to anyone specifically.) We all benefit from such a community.

DAZ wishes to reconfirm our commitment to help grow this community and improve it in any way possible, as well as express our sincerest grattitude for those who have supported our business.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr
President DAZ Productions