I just wanted to pass this along to any texture creators out there to hopefully help you avoid future problems. As nice as it is, the free Bishop texture set for Michael contains the tongue, eyes, and teeth from Zetastudios3D's Breath Generation textures. Stefy and Bishop are handling the infringement themselves, but it's important that you do not use these elements in any other free or commercial texture, or you will be infringing as well. You might want to delete the old Bishop package once the issue is resolved and Bishop can upload a fixed version. BTW Bishop, I personally don't appreciate your little slap at Stefy on your homepage. She only raises her not-so-ugly head when people steal her stuff. Don't make it sound like she's the bad one in all this when it's her work you're giving away. SnowS Hoping his pictures are worth 1001 words.

Lucky old me I already downloaded this texture :) I do hope this means I'm not going to get hassled when I use it? Rob

Actually C1rcle if Stefy proves it is a copyright infringement you will probably be asked to delete the file, unless there is an agreement about its use. Sorry mate, but copyright material is copyright material. Legally there is a difficulty in enforcing something so hard to see when in use but morally you would be obliged to delete it. This happened a while ago with the "Barbara" freebie. Mark

oh yeah I remember that one now :) I was one of the people who deleted their copy too, the memory is starting to go ;) Rob

Well what if you open the tex map and give it your own tongue eyes and teeth? Then is it useable?

Bummer...I downloaded and used it. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for the information.

There shouldn't be any problem with doing what Cimerone said, those are the only obvious infringements that I noticed. Still might be a good idea to wait until it's all resolved before using it too much though. SnowS

I deleted my graphic. I can easily rework it with another texture if the details aren't worked out. I try to be sensitive to copyright issues. All I have to do is think about how I would feel if I found something of mine showing up without credit somewhere else. Thanks again for the information.

Bishop IS NOT the person who made this texture. He's the person who was photographed for it, and who made it available here with the best of intentions. If the Zeta3D studios allegation is correct, Bishop wasn't aware. Again, he is not the texture artist. The man who is is dealing with this matter privately with Stefiana. He has been a very public advocate for her talent, and is a professional artist himself. If he did something wrong, he will certainly correct the issue immediately. I'm certain that malicious or lazy theft was not anyone's intention in this matter. SnowSultan's first paragraph is fine but the second one is inappropriate IMHO. Such comments should have been e-mailed or IM'd directly to Bishop. The last thing these forums need is another Steffy's-evil-no-she's-not mudfest. Neither is it this the place to criticize Bishop or his response to the accusation. He's innocent. Anyway, the heads-up part is good advice.

My apologies. I did not mean to seem to be accusing anyone of copyright infringement. I meant that if there was copyright infringement (any where, any time, by any one with no one specifically in mind) I am sensitive to it (whether it is graphcs, textures, writing, or any item someone may have created), because I know how I would feel on the other side. I don't know anything about the situation....I would rather err on the side of caution. I don't need to use the texture. My graphics are very much the work of a beginner...a fine texture is rather wasted on me because I lack the skill to present it effectively. I do not know any of the individuals involved, and no comment I made was personal in nature. I am sorry if it was taken as an accusation. I did not mean for it to sound that way.

Thanks for your comments xconostle. I was told that Bishop was not the actual creator of the texture as well, and that is not why I accused him directly. However, his comments about Stefy were extremely inappropriate considering she has done nothing wrong here. I appreciate Bishop's good intentions, but you don't turn around and blame the victim when the fault lies with you, accidental or not. Sending a private message in this case would have accomplished nothing except to incite a private flame war. Just today I sent what I THOUGHT was a private IM, only to have it forwarded to someone else and end up causing a misunderstanding. I apologize if this is not the preferred way of handling things, but doing it in public is the way I have found to be the most efficient method of resolving issues such as this. Thanks for your time, take care. SnowS

I made the eye texture, using it in free stuff is OK. Selling it is illegal! So if you find it in a sales item then i would like to know about it. And it you have sales items with this texture in it the fell free to give it away to everybody you know as any texture containing any part of my texture is free to be given away. You should also complain to the store and demand your money back! (buy P5 for the money instead) Staale

This will be the only press release concerning the bishop Texture from kindredXnet on this forum. Likewise, the bishop Texture will no longer be offered through Renderosity and the Starr Texture will be pulled as well. Renderosity was hasty in their actions and ZetaStudios3D unreasonable in their response to an oversight on my part as the model and distributor. The intent here was to provide quality to a group of artists. Such mistakes, as it was mentioned would happen, were corrected immediately when they were brought to my attention. Enough said.

--- FOR RELEASE: 05 Sept 2002 ---

kindredXnet has made small alterations in the bishop Texture to avoid confusion in the future based on the complaint by ZetaStudios3D. However, these alterations will not affect the outcome of any render since ZetaStudios3D made complaints concerning parts of the textures that have little or nothing to do with the look of the final render except in extreme situations.

Again, we thank you for your support.

The Texture is again available at http://www.kindredx.net/pages/art/bishoptex.htm through a mirror link due to bandwidth considerations.

Tongue, teeth, and eyes? Oh my, that is serious! Does the person who did this live in a state with the death sentence? I sure hope so. They deserve it!

Hi SnowS, thanks for being such a good sport, and I've also read your response with respect. Best regards, Xoc

someone post teh eyes tongue and teeth for comparison please, these are foolish threads with nothing to compare (watermarked of course)

Rwilliams, I'd like the mustache off one of Catharina's texures too...does it matter how much of a texture someone uses without permission? ;) Thank you too Xoc, it's surprisingly refreshing to disagree with someone and not have the whole thing turn into a lock-worthy thread. :) Take care. SnowS

To steal any part of someones work is wrong! Even if you used someone elses texture as a template to design your own texture, and covered every area with your own, you would be stealing even though no visible part of the texture would remain. It would be wrong. That wasn't my point. My point was that some texture maker(s) are compulsive about looking for their work in other peoples offerings to the point of having a psychological problem. If they didn't act like that I would own their textures. But I refuse to buy a texture that ends up as a witchhunt every time it is posted in a piece of artwork. I feel sorry for soemone that spends so much valuable life-energy fighting a battle with a ghost that can not be beaten. They should get over it already and enjoy creating and profiting from their art. If they believe they are making more from all this effort, they truely do need their mind examined. This is just my opinion. Sorry if it varies from anyone elses opinion. But I have been there, done that, and learned that it doesn't pay. Life is too short for all the negative emotions.

Fair enough rwilliams, you make a good point. It's just that we don't really have to look very hard to find infringements like these. I noticed these the moment I opened the texture up, and most of the ones in the past have been easily found as well. Many people around here seem to think that if you aggressively pursue infringements against your own creations, you're an obsessive nut who has nothing better to do than find fault with everyone else. What those same people choose to ignore is that fact that nearly every time texture infringement is suspected, it turns out to be real. I've also been there, done that. :) Thanks for everyone's comments and opinions, I appreciate them. Take care. SnowS

Hrrumph, ZetaStudios3D and the witch in charge of iy has just lost my interest in ANYTHING they have for sale or free, in fact anything I already have will get sent straight to the trash can as I will have nothing to do with such a person in any way shape or form. I'd make several more comments about here but then one of the 4 listed on the top of the page would have to wave a spear gun in this tunas direction and say you can't do that so I'll leave those comments unprinted.

Lemme get this straight Charlie...someone steals her stuff, she calls them on it, and SHE's the witch? LOL, I still don't know where you and the other screwballs around here came up with these ludicrous opinions of her, but to each his own I guess. At the very least, it keeps this place entertaining. :) SnowS

So Bishop spends about a month or two getting a 100 or more digital pic of HIS body taken to be made into a tex map including HIS eyes then after all the work is done some broad come and claims that SHE alone own claims to red haired, green eyed male textures well EXCUSE ME! I know the whole story on the developement of his texture, apparently you don't after you automatically took her side and started the line here.

This issue is resolved and the texture has been corrected. I'm not going to argue with you Charlie, since neither of us will change the other's opinion. The eyes, tongue, and teeth were absolute carbon copies of her textures and she had every right to ask that they be edited. I don't care what the development of Bishop's texture involved, if it's someone else's textures being given away, it needs to be fixed. End of story. SnowS

Hello everybody,

only a quick note only to thank very much Snow Sultan for brought to our attention about the bishop infringment.
I want to let know everybody, it was a misunderstanding problem of the creator of the texture, that is an honest person and also a really good artist.
We've clarified the situation with him, for inserting parts of my B-Gen textures identical as they are in the bishop ones, explained him it was not allowed from the license and everything was solved in a friendly way.
Thank you Frank for your honesty and don't worry no problem for the incident.

For those who have mentioned, there is no need to worry, if you've used the old texture in your images.
We only ask to those have downloaded the old vesion and read this thread to replace them with the new ones.

Thank you for your time and your kind attention.

Sincerely,
Stefania.

As Stefnia and I have worked well through problems before, I feel that this situation was resolved with as minimal mess as possible on her end and our end. Those of you who reacted to my comments failed to realize that Stefania is a wonderful artist, but it was not her who contacted me. Just because she has employees (or agents) who are not as tactful as she is not a reflection of her personally, but of those who created more of a problem than was necessary to resolve the issues at hand.

Stefania, thanks for working with Frank to get this quickly taken care of and for assisting in getting the texture corrected for yet another future release.

bishop
(speaking for himself here)

I'm glad to see it was sorted out with limited hassle for all concerned, & I'm glad we've all got the chance to use the wonderful textures mentioned here too :) Rob

Quick Note:

Those on the Usenet Poser group have discovered another problem with the MAT files that I created. I have discovered the reason.

--forwarded email--

I use Edo as my base texture for everything. I have my default characters start out with him loaded. When I loaded the bishop up to create the MAT files, I didn't see that it had slipped in Edo's eyelash transparancy request into the mix.

--end forward--

If you are on the newsgroup, I have posted corrected MAT files there. If not, then they will be fixed when we release the third and final version of the bishop Texture sometime over the weekend. Just ignore the request for now if you don't want to redownload them or want to wait for the final release.

bishop