Well, according to the US Dept of Justice website it IS legal so long as the restriction does not adversely affect competition. It does not affect competition and rather promotes it which means it IS legal and WILL hold up in court.

Attached Link: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/guidelines/ipguide.htm

From the web site of the Dept of Justice:

"In the vast majority of cases, restraints in intellectual property licensing arrangements are evaluated under the rule of reason. The Agencies' general approach in analyzing a licensing restraint under the rule of reason is to inquire whether the restraint is likely to have anticompetitive effects and, if so, whether the restraint is reasonably necessary to achieve procompetitive benefits that outweigh those anticompetitive effects. See Federal Trade Commission v. Indiana Federation of Dentists, 476 U.S. 447 (1986); NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984); Broadcast Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 441 U.S. 1 (1979); 7 Phillip E. Areeda, Antitrust Law 1502 (1986). See also part 4."
Since Morris's License promotes competition in it's scope, Antitrust laws do not apply. The limitation she has put in place, in fact, is lawful in that it promotes the commercialization of the product in derivative form which goes even well beyond what she has to allow for her intellectual property. In the end, she could, instead, make everyone pay royalties, but she doesn't. I find this more than fair.

Message edited on: 04/21/2005 19:54

Acadia said, "The point that you are missing is that it's illegal. Call up a lawyer and ask for yourself." Nobody here has proven anything such. Citing the Sherman and Clayton Act does not mean much in this situation. And doesn't give you the right to say that the limitations are illegal. The fact is , you merely "think" they are illegal, but have not provided any case scenario proving that it IS illegal.

7-5.420 Civil Actions Generally Civil antitrust actions are usually brought under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. Secs. 1 and 2), Section 7 of the Clayton Act (merger cases) (15 U.S.C. Sec. 18), and Section 4A of the Clayton Act (Federal antitrust damage actions) (15 U.S.C. Sec. 15a). Few civil actions are initiated by United States Attorneys. Given the more complex issues of antitrust policy and analysis involved, civil cases generally rely upon "Rule of Reason" analysis. See USAM 7-4.100; USAM 7-4.200. Such analysis requires substantial economic input and evaluation. The Director or Deputy Director of Operations, or the local Antitrust Division field office, can provide advice to United States Attorneys contemplating the filing of a civil antitrust action.

Storm, How about I do you one better. I have gotten into this argument before. I work for Purdue University and on the floor just above me happens to be a Professor in Criminal law who specializes in Copyright, Trademark and Business Law. I will contact him and see what he has to say. You are simply digging and intrepreting. You also took what I said out of context. It is ALMOST always applied to corporate entities. The courts would laugh at this case if anyone tried to take this into a courtroom. The court would most certainly rule on the side of Morris because she is not a powerful corporation, but an artist trying to make a living out of what she does best and here someone comes along wanting to give her a hard time based on laws intended to prevent the public from being gouged, when the intent of the complainee is, simply, to have their way with her hard work. And no I am not a merchant ganging up on buyers, I know you have purchased from me and I am not making personal attacks.. I am not that way and never have been. But this seems like a witch hunt to me. Just another way to get new renderosity bylaws passed which cause more difficulties for us as merchants. It will also prevent merchants from creating such resource kits, which will tend to make production for some of us to come to a crawl. I'm already at a crawl because it takes me longer to comply with all the new readme crap and legal stuff than it does to create my product. I don't even bother to try to produce in a hurry anymore, not worth it.

I'll rest my case with the US governments description of Price Fixing and it's application.

"Price fixing generally involves any agreement between competitors to tamper with prices or price levels, or terms and conditions of sale (e.g., interest rates for consumer credit), for commodities or services. Generally speaking, price fixing involves an agreement by two or more competing producers of a specific commodity, or competing providers of a particular service, in a defined geographic area, to raise, set or maintain prices for their goods or services. It may take place at either the wholesale or retail level and, although it need not involve every competitor in a particular market, it usually involves most of the competitors in the particular market."

Morris's clause doesn't even come .5% close to price fixing.

Find something else because you are grasping at straws. These laws were set into motion to prohibit "unfair competition". Morris is not stifling competition. Her package, in and of itself, is designed to promote market competition.

Message edited on: 04/21/2005 16:13

The Sherman Act does not apply here. The Sherman Act was enacted to prevent corporations from gouging consumers and in effort to prevent monopolies of which we have many, operating legally I might add, in the USA. The Sherman Act doesn't apply because of many factors. It is almost exclusively applied against corporate entities to which the consumer has no vlaid recourse if the need should arise. Morris' product in no shape or construct provides case for a Monopoly issue. It also is not relevant to price fixing as some have touted here. I can't believe that some would bring Morris down like this. I am appalled by this behavior. You all are digging for dirt because you are so hell-bent on drama I guess. Before you all go off starting to intrepret laws to your own satisfaction (or to hear your own voices) perhaps you should talk to a bonafide attorney before demonizing someone or their intent. Ridiculous... is how some of you come across.

Kawecki,

The statements that have been made here ARE NOT the law but rather intrepretations of the law or maybe even assumptions.

Perhaps someone should point us to a government page in which they are referencing these laws because I have failed to find them.

I suggest peeps visit the U.S. Copyright page and pay careful attention to distribution rights of the author. The copyright office has made it pretty clear that the distribution rights belong to the author. This makes the copyright argument, in Moriss' case, void since it falls out of the jurisdiction of the copyright office.

The distribution then falls into consumer and business law and I still fail to see anything illegal within her ditribution contract (or clause; to be more formal). Also, comparing the sales and redistribution of artwork to that of lemons for lemonade or nails for an outhouse is, simply, comparing apples to oranges.

Message edited on: 04/21/2005 14:29

Message edited on: 04/21/2005 14:35

Kawecki said, "The content of this product cannot be used in products sold by black people" This clause by itself is illegal and just puting such a statement you have commited the crime of racism and falls under the penal law. There is no need that a black person have purchased and used the product, even you haven't sold anything you have commited a crime." Huh? I'm baffled by that analogy. First: Please point out, in Morris's clause, an illegal statement. Second: Point us to the law reference which makes her statement illegal.

stahlratte said, "Sorry, dont waste my time to explain the concept of INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY to a citizen of a country that was founded by the highly ILLEGAL act of Revolution." Please keep your ignorant political convictions to yourself, they have no place here.

Wow, looks like everyone is missing the point here. This is a License issue and not a Copyright issue. Morris is allowing the use of her items via a contract which you abide to when you purchase her item. The CONTRACT (license), in fact, WILL hold up in a court of law. By using these items in a way the, merchant, has prohibited , you are in violation of the CONTRACT that extended you the rights to use it in the first place.

I think the product in question may have been released some time ago when reverse normals were not at issue. I'm not all too familiar with Poser 5. Does it have a setting for rendering backfaces? If so, this would solve any rendering issues.

Ok Thanks Clint ;)

I just found out that Renderosity is not going to allow use of this on storefronts due to certain past exploits on browser vulnerabilities. I, for one, feel the programmer's are just a little paranoid about this since the past, discovered, exploits using IFRAME have described the potential threat at the local level. I don't have the slightest idea why, we as merchants, would attack our clients especially when the IP address of the executable source code would be resolvable through this exploit. In other words, it would be known just where the attack came from. The other issue is that the vulnerability is not with the IFRAME extended markup but with unpatched vulnerabilities in browsers and email clients (which are many and not just exclusive to IFRAME as we all know). There have been several similar exploits using FLASH, which is allowed in banner ads here as well. FLASH is actually more vulnerable to a boatload of exploits since it contains code to begin with, whereas IFRAME does not. The security threat comes from a MIME exploit in some browsers and email clients which can allow a malicious designer to execute code inside an IFRAME. This threat is more prevelant with email clients since many will view HTML documents and if vulnerable to the exploit may allow the code to be executed without the user having to open an attachment. However, it requires that the designer to be malicious to begin with. So, if I were to be malicious toward my clients, I could think up hundreds of ways in which to do this through my storefront. It's, however, ludicrous to think that I would even concieve of doing that to my customers. However this isn't my web site, so I'll leave it up to Rendo to decide what is and isn't allowed. However, for many of us who wish to give our customers more imagery of our products in detail (without loading them all to one page), I'd suggest we all voice our opinions on changing the upload page to allow for image popups (that are sized to the image and do not open a full browser window replete with toolbars etc!). Since Rendo, does take half of our sales, I think the least they could do is offer us this. They could still allow for the images to be stored remotely, but just allow us to have the option of having them in a popup (not a new browser window).