Wow. OK, lots of feedback on this whole license agreement protection thing. I can tell this is going to be a long post already. :) Ill start with some background; hopefully that will make things clearer not only about what DAZs practices are, but why they are that way.

Its easy to be restrictive in enforcing a license agreement, especially when one chooses to prohibit any type of distribution of any files that might somehow, sometime, somewhere be damaging to the sales of the product. Its easy to state such a stance in a way that is clear, concise and easily understood. On the other hand, its tricky to try to foster the free trade of add-ons and modifications for ones product without jeopardizing the sales of that product and opening the situation up to confusion and misunderstanding. That said, DAZ has chosen to pursue the latter option.

This is because we see a huge value in promoting the free trade of add-ons and modifications 99% of the time. We realize that our small company will not be able to provide all of the options that every individual in the market will want, and we realize that it will be better for our product line and the market in general to have many others able to fill those needs. We also know that the vast majority of users and developers in this market are not trying to do anything wrong. On the contrary, they are just doing what they enjoy or providing a service (for free or for money). This is wonderful and it benefits all of us.

As Steve has mentioned, the difficulties arise when people (usually inadvertently) distribute files that were created based upon another artists product, and yet which largely circumvent the need for that product. Im sure that you can all see the problem with this situation. Again, it would be easy to eradicate this problem by communicating clearly that no derivative files may be distributed in any manner. We actually debated whether to do this on day one, in clarifying our stance on the distribution of our .cr2 files, and we feel that we made a wise decision to allow such distribution. However, that decision left us with a gray area to deal with; some things are permissible and others are not. Again, this is tricky ground for any business to tread. We want people to be able to use Victoria 1's .cr2 and freely distribute it with any modifications they may have made to it. Those of you familiar with the nature of the products can see how distributing Victoria 2's .cr2 would not be good for our business, however. No one would buy Victoria 2; they would buy Victoria 1 and then get the freely distributed Victoria 2 .cr2 from someone else.

OK, thought Id start out with any easy case of circumvention. Hope the Victoria .cr2 example made sense to everyone. ;) Lets reaffirm the basic concept with another situation that most people should understand. Say someone purchased Jim Burtons Super Model Morph Vickie, DAZs Victoria, and Codetwisters The Tailor. Then using The Tailor he creates a morph target for Victoria that gives her the shape of SMMV. Nothing wrong so far. Then he distributes that morph. Now admittedly, hes not giving away SMMV itself; this new Victoria .cr2 will not have everything that the original product has, and it will be different in some ways. However, many people would choose not to buy SMMV if they could get this less expensive version that accomplishes most of what they may have wanted with SMMV. So again, this isnt right because the new distributed file was created by using Jim Burtons work, and it seriously hinders the sale of the very product it was based on.

Still with me? Lets try a trickier example, then. :) Say someone has Michael 2, and she really wants the clothing items in DAZs Combat Pak to fit some of his morphs. And she achieves that with The Tailor. No problem so far. But say she wants to distribute her morphs. Will that be permissible under the license agreement for Michael 2? Good question. Id recommend anyone considering any project in such a gray area to contact the owner of the product that may be damaged by its distribution. In this case, however, I can tell you that DAZ wouldnt mind if you took every Michael 2 morph and put it on the Combat Pak and distributed that. Why not? Because we dont feel that this would jeopardize the sale of Michael 2 as much as it would help. Some of the reasoning here has to do with the nature of these clothing items. An item like a tank top is not very usable without a body underneath that matches, so almost everyone will want to use Michael 2 in conjunction with an M2 version of this shirt. And we feel that the pants, while they cover enough of the underlying figure that Michael 2 wouldnt be necessary for their use, are still not a big enough disincentive for many people to buy M2. After all, even with a lot of morphs, these pants just dont accomplish much of what Michael 2 does.

But thats just our thinking here at DAZ. Other developers could easily decide that this is a serious enough threat to their specific product that they will not want to allow such distribution. For example, if youre using The Taylor to make a bikini fit Voluptuous Vicki, I wouldnt think that Wyrmmaster would mind. It will be pretty useless without Voluptuous Vicki. However, if youre considering making a tight suit that covers most of her body, and which would be just as usable with Victoria (1 or 2) as it would with Voluptuous Vicki, I suspect that he might not want people who didnt purchase his product to get those morphs created from his work. In either case, I would ask him first.

And just to further illustrate what DAZ considers in such decisions, Ive included a couple of images. One shows a clothing item that works almost as well on Michael 1 as it does on Michael 2; it also fills a need that serves as one of the main incentives for many users to purchase the Michael 2 product. The other image shows a clothing item that doesnt. (I think youll know which is which.)

So, where are we now? Am I close to clearing up any confusion about this whole thing? We would love to be able to explain our stance on copyright and license agreement in one quick sentence, but in order to do that it cant be a very explicit sentence, unfortunately. It would have to go a little something like this: DAZ encourages the free distribution of add-ons and modifications to our products provided that we dont feel they will seriously hinder the sale of our products. If you arent sure whether this is the case, please contact us. OK, so that was two sentences, but it was very general, as promised. ;)

In closing, I would hope that DAZ will get positive acknowledgment for what we do and how we try to do it, and even for the freedom in distribution that we do try to sponsor. I hope that you realize the difficulty of the position that we are in as a business that has chosen to make our livelihood in this market, especially when our peers in the 3D industry thought we were suicidal to offer so much for so little and open ourselves up to license infringement in ways that we never dealt with when working for production studios. Were happy with our choice. We hope you are, too. We love our work, and we love this market. We want this market to thrive and grow, and know that as it does it will be better for us all. We recognize and appreciate the overwhelming amount of help that we regularly receive from you all. Without your understanding and support for issues like respect of copyright this really wouldnt be a viable market for our company. We hope to return the favor by continuing to work hard to provide resources that will benefit you all.

We realize that many people may have misunderstood DAZs position on this issue, and we hope this post will help to clear up the majority of the confusion that may exist out there. Unfortunately, we will be out of the office for the rest of the weekend. Well be back on Monday, when we can check on how this thread is going. Thanks for not crucifying us in the meantime. crossing fingers

Chad Smith
DAZ Productions