for some pictures to advertise some stuff. eg bringing in a V3 into the pre made scene and using it as an illustration for my novel. Is that okay or would that be breaching copyright of the people who made those scenes? Love esther

The best way to do this is to find out who made the scene you would like to use and ask for their permission. You never know .... they might just give you that permission. Short of that, pre-made scenes are on the CD for learning purpose. .. that is, so that you can learn from them and make your own scenes. Without the explicit permission of their original author, you can't assume they are free to use as you wish.

aha, that's what I wanted to know. what about taking objects eg a flying bird, out of the scene and using it in one of my scenes? Love esther

actually e.on has previously stated that the vues default scenes etc is there to learn from and use.

They did ask anyone using a default vue scene in a render of their own to credit the original artist but the scenes are free to use in your own renders, and so are the objects that ships with vue aswell.

Message edited on: 02/18/2005 04:59

I don't see that anyone can reasonably object. Copyright in the render you make is yours. As long as you don't distribute the .vue file you are not infringing anyone's copyright by distributing your own jpgs.

Mhh... some of my scenes are in the Vue 4 Pro sample CD. My personnal point of view : this is not only a question of copyright... but a question of fairplay as well ...You can easily imagine it's not 'funny' to see your work (usualy hours of work) used and 'copyrighted' by someone that claims it is his own work. When I gave the right to e-on to use my work, I asked the peoples that created some materials or object I used myself, even if all that stuff was freely downloadable on their site for example ... As Agiel said : don't hesitate to ask. It's free and easy. And this is the only way to be sure. The most important thing for me is that the Vue community stay as friendly as today ... Sincerly Patrick

Disagree with Phantast, also. If you use someone else's scene, the copyright does not belong to you. All that you did was "render out" someone else's scene. And as Patrick said, the scene-builders have all put hours into their work. It should immediately occur to a person to think that its not fair or reasonable to use such work without first asking permission.

well i thought because i bought the cds i could use the stuff in them for whatever - you know like if you buy adobe photoshop you expect the fonts (which take hours of work) to be free to use without having to alter them. i mean if i use a pre made vue scene and the main focus is a v3 i bring into the scene i thought that might be okay, or if i need a hospital scene in one panel of a comic story and i use the hospital supplied with vue cd i thought that might be okay. love esther

Well, you can refer this to the copyright forum if you like. Whether something took hours to make or two minutes to make is totally irrelevant. If you make a SCENE you have copyright on the SCENE (the .vue file). If you make a RENDER you have copyright on the RENDER (the .jpg file). estherau's example is a fair one. You can't redistribute a copyrighted font file without permission. But you certainly can distribute anything you like that uses that font as long as you don't distribute the actual font file. The only exception would be in the case of something that was trademarked.

Estherau, you were very good to ask. This is probably a good mental exercise for us. Estherau wants to take one of the scenes available on the Vue "Extras CD" and publish it as part of her novel, to which she presumably will establish a copyright in her name. Lets say she wanted to do this without permission of the owner of the scene. So, now the scene becomes copyrighted in her name as part of her novel. Some are saying that this is OK, because it would be just the "render of the scene" that she is copyrighting, as part of her novel. She rendered the scene out on her computer. She now gets to own that "render" and use it in her novel. Following this logic, if I had a scene and I happened to get hold of Estherau's novel in electronic form, I could then print her novel out along with my scene pictures, and claim that novel as my own now. I could then copyright her novel as part of my Vue scene. Cool, yes! Estherau would be very happy with this arrangement, yes?

Perhaps the moral is to read the copyrights material on the program discs we purchase. Perhaps there are things in there limiting the use of fonts, perhaps.

The equivalence 'Scene - scene' and 'Render - render' holds most of the time, but there are exceptions. There are many cases where a picture of a piece of art is restricted or even prohibited because of copyright concerns. For example, an artist who makes a new building or a statue can request that people are forbidden to take pictures of it, even if it is in a public place. People are not making an actual copy of the statue - they are just making a picture of it.

presuming that is true (i've never heard of such a restriction), but if they received a copy of the statue on a software cd you would presume they could use it wouldn't you?

Attached Link: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/12/179212&tid=153&tid=155

good point.

mm asking for permission is the only way to know from case to case. A point to keep in mind is that you can never apply one case to another when it comes to copyright. A couple of examples: people cant take a screenshot from a website or a photo and change it around and claim its their design, that is a serious copyright infringmenet, unless for some reason that website would allow it. People cant redistribute purchased items, unless that item comes with a license that allows that. People can in most cases take a photo of pretty much everything and use that photo for textures or the photo itself because its theirs, but one cant for one example take a photo of a location with other humans in the photograph and then publish the photo unless you have a written agreement from everyone in the photo. and as far as the vue scenes goes: no one could redistribute the files from the vue cds, including the scenes. But you do seem to miss an obvious point here, e.on themselfs, which owns vue, has claimed that anyone purchasing vue can use the objects and scenes in vue and render a render as their own. HOWEVER e.on has also said that anyone doing so should credit the artist that actually made the original scene. E.on might have changed their mind on this subject now that they released vue5, this was something e.on publicly posted during vue4, so the license for vue5 might be different. Then again, people should always ask the artist/owner in question and never asume something. My point in this case tho is that its ultimately e.ons decisions since its their application, its just like a commercial web/media project, the final results belongs to the company making it, not the people working on it, and once its fully paid it belongs to the client unless the deal between the client and the design firm claims otherwise. So in case of the vue scenes, ask the artists but even if they say its ok its ultimately up to e.on because its their material and application, unless there is a license between e.on and the artist that claims otherwise, but if it is that needs to be mentioned to the people buying vue in the manual, just how it is, and unless there is such a note you actually need to ask e.on not the artist. And no one cant apply what goes for vue to a photo/statue/another application or a website, its all completely different things and its all regulated by that particular situations license, however if there is no license in the case of a website that doesnt mean you can take a screenshot and alter it, because it is copyrighted and if you do so youre commiting a copyright infringmenet and that might cost you dearly in court(its very expensive), but in the case of an application it is regulated in the license/user agreement and it is ultimately up to e.on. So check the manual first, and if theres no mention of the use of the scenes for your own renders in vue5, you need to ask e.on, not the original artist, if e.on say that its up to the original artist then go ahead and ask them, but unless e.on has changed their preferences they will say that the scenes are there to be used, but you should credit the originial artist, and if youre in back luck e.on has changed their mind and could claim that you cant use the scenes in your own renders regardless of what the original artist say, in which case you would end up in serious trouble even if you would have the go ahead from the original artist, then again i know this woudnt happen in the case of vue/e.on, but it could in other cases. This is not my personal opinion so dont flame me, this is based on what the law states and in the case of vue/e.on what e.on has publicly stated earlier on. My personal opinion on copyright infringements is that its serious and i know that we would persecute anyone commiting one, im also a fair believer in asking whenever in doubt, and alot of times you do get lucky just because you did ask and get permission, but people shoudnt in the case of vue/e.on confuse personal feelings whith what the law stipulates. So check with e.on/vue5 user agreement/license and if needed then ask the artist for permission. Sorry for the long post :)

I agree, and if I use anything I will ask. I have a friend who is a lawyer who tells me there's a 10% rule. that if you change an image enough then you can use it as your own. but I wouldn't do that anyway. Love esther

Esther, i don't think it is so easy - the 10% rule i mean. Not only because this is different from country to country maybe. I think the significant addition of creativity is something i would refer to more than a simple number. That is as it is here (in Germany) when i do understand it correctly. Your Adobe font example is a good one. The copyright situation MUST be clarified on the CDS or box or manual that comes from E-on. Otherwise it leaves all in this unclear situation. I haven't checked what is written there and will do it next week. For me it is clear when i would give a scene to E-on so that they can use them that #1 the copyright situation there is clarified and #2 that they have the full rights then. More important in here is the fairness thing. I think it is a question of fairness NOT to use these scenes and declare the results then as yours. We had that case some years ago. That someone simply took the scenes from the CD and posted them with a little (very little) modification here in the gallery and declared them as theirs. NOT FAIR!!! BTW, is it always possible to know who has done objects that are on these CDs? In the scenes maybe - maybe. BTW, isn't there minimum one scene that has the DAZ eagle in it? I don't think that this can be used without problem. But i am not sure wether it is the DAZ eagle really, to me it looks like. Bottom line? Not a real one. We all must think about wether we can arange this with our creative conscience. To use these things or not. That is my credo. I wouldn't.

"People can in most cases take a photo of pretty much everything and use that photo for textures or the photo itself because its theirs, but one cant for one example take a photo of a location with other humans in the photograph and then publish the photo unless you have a written agreement from everyone in the photo." Sorry, but this is absurd. Look at the latest issue of your local newspaper. Do you imagine for one moment that the newspaper obtained written permission from every person that appears in every photo? I have heard it said that certain buildings (I think only in the US) have restrictions alleged on the publishing of images of them. If this is legally supported, it is very bad law. Unfortunately bad laws sometimes get passed, especially in areas related to copyright and IPR. I have heard that some congressman has introduced a bill that would make fast-forwarding through the ads on a video a criminal offence.

yep bad laws gets passed, and no you cant go out and take a photo downtown which displays 5 bystanders and publish/use the photo without having their written agreement. This obviously doesnt mean thats how it works in every country throughout the world, but thats how it is in sweden nowadays, similar to the certain building scenario in USA (which is true aswell). Anyway, this thread is about vues scenes and objects and people not making a mistake and ending up in big trouble which copyright infringment can get you in. I would suggest everybody to actually read the eula that comes with the vue manual, the eula together with the fact that e.on has previously and publicly stated that you can use the scens in your own renders but that you realy should credit the original artist indicate that thats more then likely the case now aswell. Especially since theres no written information anywhere about the scenes being the property of the original artist and not e.on. Once again i dont think people should use the scenes, but personal feelings isnt realy important here so if you do use them, give credit to the original artist. And if e.on has changed their minds, they realy should have covered this in the eula/cds read mes.

I really find that hard to believe. Do you seriously mean that every time a newspaper wants to publish a photo of downtown Stockholm, they have to pursue everyone that got in the shot and ask their permission? Come on! And what about all those magazines that make a practice of snapping celebrities through telephoto lenses? Do you suppose the subjects give written permission for THAT? The principle is or was or should be that copyright infringement occurs when the original can be reconstructed from the copy. Thus if I write a poem, and you photocopy the poem and put it in your render, you breach my copyright because the original poem can be reconstructed. However, there's no way to reconstruct the .vue file from a .jpg. (Or a person or a building from a photo.) This has implications for things like Poser textures. If I take a commercial skin texture from the RMP, apply it to a plane and render, I infringe copyright because the original file can be reconstructed more or less from a render on a plane. But if I apply the texture to Vicky as intended and then render, that's OK because you can't unwrap the original texture file from the human model.

i think youre missing what im saying :) i have numerous times said that according to the eula and general practice and what e.on themselves has said people are free to use the scenes/objects that ships with vue in their own renders so i do agree with you on that subject :) However as far as textures goes if you paid for the texture then youre correct then youre free to use it in your render, but if you realy did take it(as in stole it) and ended up using it as a mat/texture for a model then you might find yourself in big trouble, providing someone catches you of course. --------- as for sweden yes i cant take a photo of a group of people and use that photo in any of our commercial client projects without them (the people on the photo) agreeing to it, in fact i cant even use that photo in a non commercial website without having their aproval. Newspapers and the web is completely different things tho and im not up to speed on how that(newspapers)works in sweden since it doesnt affect my daily job.

Interesting thread... I'm not a lawyier but here are some questions . 'Intelectual property' ? Is that what we speak about ? Because the first question for me is : Copyright... ok ... but what is the object (if this is an object) that is copyrighted... Some different situations : If I'm a painter and have created a oil painting. I have some rights on this object. And it's easy to understand that there is an original, the true painting. This object is fixed on a wall in my bedroom (if I'm Patrick Merminod) or maybe in a museum (if I'm VanGogh or Picasso). Copy the original painting is possible, but very difficult. A very gifted cheater may reproduce the original painting even from a photo of my painting. If I'm a musisician, I can copyright a song. But what is a song ? This is not really an 'object' like the painting. In the French or Swiss laws, I think that you have to register a score and the first 8 bars define the melody. A melody is then an abstract object. You can sell the score, and you can buy it. But you don't own the melody. Each time you play it in concert, you have to pay the author and the editor for this. So even if you gave the rights to an editor, you are stil the owner of waht we call the 'moral right' in the french law. You can transform the melody in some way : play it with a guitar or with a piano, and even transpose it, this is the same melody and the auhor is still the owner. For a numeric creation this is very different I think. What is the copyrighted. Suppose I create a scene with Vue 4. I have a .Vue file. If I import it in Vue 5 and save it, the file obtained is not the same because the format is not the same. Even worth if i could import the scene in totaly different software. For example, export the scene from Vue in Lightwave format. This is the same scene, but not the same file. So you can't copyright the source file the same way you do for a song . You can't copyright the jpeg file neither as suggested by Phantast because this is not the only format you can save the render. Impossible to give a complete description of the final picture because you can save it in BMP or Jpeg and even with different compression ratio... So the final object (a file can be seen as an object) has no unique description. Even reverse engineering is useless. So my question is : what is copyrighted ? The idea ? What is important for me is what is original in a creation. So this is not possible with a two clicks scene. All those kind of questions are disscussed in the WIPO - World Intellectual Property Organization. It's central headquarter is here in Geneva, two miles from my home... May be I'll ask these guys what's the matter with our thread :-)

Patrick, this would be an excellent idea to ask these guys. A really interesting question even when i see it more intelectually for me. I would not use any of the stuff in a scene anyway. I have thought again about Esthers comparison with Adobes free fonts on the Photoshop CDs. One little difference is here that is important. Adobe explicitely says that you can use the fonts for your work. E-on obviously does not say this (otherwise we wouldn't have this discussion). There is an important difference to me. And the copyright not clarified only because they come on their CDs and only because E-on said once in the past that you can use stuff from there. Another aspect to make it more difficult. The copyright treatment from a company like Onyx (TreePro). They don't allow the use of the models an owner creates with their software for other than in the owners own images. And if you read that literaltely even that is questionable in their blurb. I asked about the legality of this once in a legal community here in Germany. The answer was that this is not possible and that i should take them to court because they haven't told me that before i bought the software. And that results of a software can't be copyright claimed by the company that created the software. Maybe if you ask these guys in Geneva really you can ask this issue as well. And then we hunt Onyx with some lawyers and become incredibly rich!! :-))) Ok, i repeat my credo from my first part here. My artistic pride allows the use of things in my work only if the copyright is crystal clear. Full stop. If i have bought the things and/or if i have read the copyright words for any free stuff. and IF i use anything i always will credit the creators for the parts they have done in any of my images. This is an absolut minimum standard for me.

I think most sane folk view the current system of copyright, especially the way Corporate Suits are pushing it, as criminally insane ;) Using someone else's entire work is morally wrong, 1st and foremost. But re-creating it from the ground up? .... For example, a painting created by a livinga rtist, you make it in Vue, but tweak it to your tastes and do not claim it's created by the original artist. That's plagarism, but if plagarism was illegal well... It's just getting absurd. Lawyers, lowest form of life on the planet ;)

mm intellectual property and copyright infringment can be absurd, however in this case its real easy, its e.ons call, if they dont allow it, then its not allowed, regardless of the situation with another company/product, if e.on allows it then it is OK, legaly.

Moraly im with wabe, i woudnt use any of the scenes in v5 and render it as mine, however that is a personal opinion and has litle to do with the law.

So as interesting as this thread is :) we realy need e.on to come forth, because it is entirely up to e.on, and this is where it could get realy interesting.

If e.on doesnt have a legal contract/agreement (which i would be damn surprised if they didnt have) with the artists that created the scenes, then e.on has created a big pool of trouble because that means that even if e.on allowed its users to use the objects the artists could deny it and if it would be used the artist could then sue both e.on and the person using the scene.....

and considering that eons eula doesnt mention one tiny bit about this, we the entire vue community needs yet again a public statement from e.on regarding the agreement between e.on and the original creators of the scenes.

Have to say that its in my opinion quite a bad move on e.ons part not to specify this in the eula. And yes, lawyers are amongst the lowest lifeforms on this planet :)

Message edited on: 02/20/2005 17:20

Wabe wrote:- "If i have bought the things and/or if i have read the copyright words for any free stuff. and IF i use anything i always will credit the creators for the parts they have done in any of my images. This is an absolut minimum standard for me. " Please don't take this the wrong way - see below. i agree that artists should be given credit if you use their stuff in your work. it's the polite thing to do. Just out of interest Wabe, if you take a photo and display it do you write, Garden bench crafted by Thompson carpentry, and painted by Walton brothers, building architecture by Smith and Sons with bricks from Carlton and Hughes from the Quarry at Birkdale. Garden design by Stewart Baker and mowed by funny little man with a hat who flatly refuses to give me his name despite my written requests and now acuses me of stalking him - oh i can't use that pic because i don't know if he minds or not

war2 wrote: "i cant take a photo of a group of people and use that photo in any of our commercial client projects without them (the people on the photo) agreeing to it, in fact i cant even use that photo in a non commercial website without having their aproval. Newspapers and the web is completely different things tho and im not up to speed on how that(newspapers)works in sweden since it doesnt affect my daily job." Sorry, this makes no sense at all. I do not believe that in Sweden or anywhere else there is one copyright law for newspapers and another one for websites. Copyright does not work like that. I think that what you are labouring under is something other than copyright. If you take a photo of someone in the street and then use as part of an advert for Pepsi or something, they might claim against you for misrepresentation or invasion of privacy or something, but not copyright.

The discussion becomes absurd more and more. @Esther. The example with the gardne bench is a good one. Of course you don't have to do the credits when you take a photo in general. But when you out in a garden bench catalogue you better do. Or when you say all done by me you better do it as well. It is not so easy always and there is not only a black or a white. I think as well that you better ask for permission if you sell the photo. But that is a gray zone mostly. Regarding the newspaper thing. There is a very simple rule. As long as you do photos from situations that are "in public interest" you are allowed to do that, you don't have to ask the people. The moment you take private moments you have to get permission. Some yellow press magazines have paid a lot of money to clebraties here in Germany the last years because they as well didn't understood the differences. Again, the difficulty is that it is not always black or white only. That there are a lot of in between moments. Back to the sample scenes. I checked them again. They all say who have created them and says nothing about the copyright situation. That does not mean that you can do whatever you want, that only mean that you better ask first. And you have to ask E-on or the creators, not here in a public forum. This here is only an intelectual game and has no real meaning to the issue. It is a perfect theme for the E-on registered forum i would think. Oh, regarding the lawyers. I don't like some of them as well. But i would love to hear from the big haters again when someone touches their ground - physically or mentally and they need to fight for their rights. I had that case - clients that didn't wanted to pay invoices and without a lawyer i probably would have been bancrupt a long time ago.

Actually wabe I'll play devils advocate against my own argument. Although you might not give credit to the bench and the building etc when you do your photo you would undoubteldly give credit to the female model. Well in the case of poser objects, they are all models. Love esther

oh lawyers has their purpose of course it was more of a joke from my part, without laws and institutions and lawyers to make sure people act according to them (especially when it comes to getting paid from your clients) it would be hard getting anything done, then again they sometimes do more harm then good to.

as for newspapers i never said there was different copyright laws and i never said that not being able to publish a photo with a group of people in it in a commercial project (or even non commercial website) has anything to do with copyright laws.

It was just one example which i felt was related to the thread since were not just talking about copyright here but intellectual property and all sorts of issues, i also said that im not 100% up to speed when it comes to newspapers (which you started to talk about phantast) since it doesnt affect my daily job, but wabe kindly butt in there, and in the end it wasnt that much different. ------ e.on: one thing that came to my mind, even tho i dont think people should use the scenes in their own renders i also believe that delivering a 3d application like vue where people cant use the content which it ships with would seriously cripple its value for alot of potential buyers. And if that is the case,failing to mention it in the eula and on the website before people buy the product is a seriously bad call.

Message edited on: 02/21/2005 02:57

The point is that restrictions on using photos of people, where they exist, are nothing to do with copyright, but rather with invasion of privacy. Ordinary law suggests that, in the absence of permission, you can use your renders of those scene files as you see fit, because you are not infringing copyright, you are not infringing trademarks, and you are not invading privacy. There is not yet a law that says you may not do anything at all with anything without a license. It isn't really right to blame the lawyers. The problem is more with businessmen who decide they have the opportunity to increase their profits if there was a law to prevent people from doing things they were previously allowed to do, and the politicans who will make those laws to order in return for "campaign contributions".

mm and i think thats what we both have been saying in regards to the vue scenes :) And if people arent allowed to use the scenes, then e.on has made a big mistake of not including that in the eula, not to say that i strongly feel that a big con like that should be mentioned on the website aswell before people purchase vue. regardless of people agreeing or not on that, e.on needs to clarify it, both for their own sake and potential customers.

I've just asked them to do that on their help website thingy. I'll keep you posted. I also gave them this forum URL and copied part of it for them to see. Love esther

If they say, "Yes you can use the scenes in this way" then everything is cleared up. If they say, "No, you can't", then arguably you still can and be in the clear legally. Though you might not want to.

The objects are free of rights for any picture or animation you make using them within Vue. However, you cannot distribute the object files themselves, as these are copyrighted. If you come to base your work on an existing scene (for example one that is provided with Vue 4 Pro), it is usually courteous to mention the original scene author if your work is to be published. Best regards. John Canver note - in their typical eon way they did not make any comment about our suggestion to clarify this more on their site and on the software documentation