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Volee: Dazzle’s F-YOU to theives
By Celebrity Trollop | July 4, 2006
When I was in New Mexico, I visited the Palace of the Governors, which is now the New Mexico Museum of History. In one of the permanent displays they have a handbill from Las Vegas, New Mexico, circa 1880 which reads, “To all con artists, thieves, rustlers, and bunko-men … if you are found in the city limits after sundown you will be invited to a GRAND NECKTIE party, the expense of which will be borne by 100 prominent citizens.”
Ahh, frontier justice. It was a certainly a more viscerally satisifying justice system if completely inappropriate for modern times. I was distressed to read AGAIN about texture thieving, this time targetting Ginny Talamasca (and perhaps a few other well known main grid designers.) The subject has put the General Topic forum on fire, with postings from DoC Eldritch, MadamG Zagato and others. Apparently, designs, textures and prim work of Ginny’s creations on the main grid have been ripped to the teen grid by one Brenda Barnett. (There’s a persuasive comparison of the stolen vs. the original textures on Ginny’s blog.) There was a posting about some of Siggy Romulus’ stuff appearing in the Teen Grid (he noticed from snapshots over at Snapzilla) a while ago too — I don’t know if it is related to this theft or not.
In any case, Ginny was supremely angry — and rightfully so last night. But this morning she’s decided to hoist a very unladylike — but supremely admirable — F-YOU to theives and released Volee, a wonderful confection of light, texture and color using a cocktail of rendering software that has more acronyms than a bowl of alphabet soup. The end result is phenominally stunning though — ethereal color blending on the bodice to the super slender waistline to the delightfully flowing skirt.
If I were able to offer a word of advice to Linden Labs, I suppose it would be this: you should reassure your extremely valuable base of content creators that their efforts in time, money and design skills are going to be appropriately protected. Sometimes a laissez faire approach is the right one. In my opinion, this isn’t one of those areas.
Topics: Classified Highlights, Dresses, Flexiprims |
this is quite interesting on two counts for me. one.. my son loves the teen grid and recently asked me if he could sell my clothing there. now, being the owner, i can surely give him rights to do so… but i just wasn’t sure what the precident was… i’m still trying to decide what to do. i would like him to learn about business, and all that goes with having a shop, dealing with customers, etc. and he is persistant in asking me everyday, “mom, when will you know if i can sell your clothes?” and i keep saying, i have to think about it.
secondly, about the theft, in RL i have created and own multiple intellectual properties. i approach SL the exact same way i do with my RL businesses. if i were to ever be ripped off, i would most certainly call my ‘high priced heavy hitting attorney’ immediately and have her send a very strong “cease and desist” letter. i would personally copy it onto a notecard, drop it on the person’s av, contact linden, and do whatever necessary. and of course document every step of the process.
i personally don’t understand how one can steal a design… i mean a tshirt is a tshirt, pants are pants, unless it is from a photo and then “recreated” so it’s really stolen, i’m just not sure. i know a friend had that happen with textures and the counterfeits looked terrible… fuzzy, blurry, etc.
for designers… it’s sort of confusing cuz lots of times, things look very similar, so maybe i haven’t run into it, but there are sure a LOT of baby doll dresses that look so so so so similar, but again, not sure what “stolen” means.
i think we all should take this issue very seriously, and you can get copies of “cease and desist” letters free on the web. this is not game, and we should be very agressive in protecting our rights and those of our colleagues.
Not sure about LL, but they should, i would think, ban ppl who break THEIR rules… my goodness if they ban a person who had a name “skinhead” they can and i think should certainly ban thieves. (maybe being a thief is not as un “pc” as having a name “skinhead”)
or… perhaps they don’t want to be the police, but if it can be proven, (which in my friend’s texture case it WAS) then they should take action. Or why have the IP clause anyway?
well, all that to say, each of our brands, av’s, etc ARE OUR OWN PROPERTY, PERIOD… we need to kindly inform those who unknowingly use our “name”, “logo”, “slogan” (who may not know they have violated anything) and for those who have stolen, i say… let them have it good!
well, just my 2 cents.
caLLie cLine™
(co owner of FUNK™, grOOve™, Island Girl™, soo she sue™, 3D™ and more. ;)
Posted by: caLLie cLine on July 4th, 2006 at 4:16 pm