Ripped content?

[Rufferta]

I was impressed by some of the "prop avatars" at SL13B, so I went to the inworld store of the person who was labelled as their creator. One of the models in the store was identical to a high-prim art piece that has been around SL for a long time, but the creator has moved most of his business to another virtual world. I contacted the original creator thinking that perhaps he had come back and changed his name, or that he had given permission for his sculpture to be copied in mesh, but he said 'no', that someone had just copied his work, and that was one of the reasons he had left Second Life.  

I suppose you could argue that taking a high-prim sculpture and recreating it in lower-prim mesh involves a certain amount of work, and after all, the person who copied the model did add some details to the suit and painted the tie a different color, but to me it just isn't right. 

Since I'm not the creator there is nothing I can do about it, except to make a note never to buy anything, ever, from the person who copied the work.

 

 

[ChinRey]

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Rufferta wrote:

I was impressed by some of the "prop avatars" at SL13B

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I'm not sure what you mean by "prop avatars". Just a visitor there or are you saying one of the exhibitors is a copybotter?

[Rufferta]

I've seen the items called "Mesh People" or "3D Models" or "Mesh Avatars." The person who copied at least one of them called them "Prop Avatars". They can be scripted to give a response and can serve as NPCs (non-player characters) in games, and some can be animated. I've used similar static sculptures as props for photos because they hold still very nicely, and I've seen a lot of them used to help give life to inworld shops.

The ones at the Birthday Celebration were being used as part of several displays, but I don't fault the exhibitors for using them. As far as I know, the person who copied them did not have an exhibit at the Birthday Celebrtion. 

The original creator is listed as Dileoo Kirax or Ub Yifu. He used to run Mesh Gallery in virtual Paris but it is empty now. Some of the original models are still on the Marketplace at The Clone Factory. The person who made the copy of the "old man" is selling a set of 24 "prop avatars" for $999 inworld, and I do not know how many of them besides the "old man" are copies of other peoples' work.

The only reason I am mentioning this is because the person who copied the "old man" sculpture has a large inworld store full of furniture, buildings, and other things and I feel bad that they are still here and apparently thriving while the person he stole from has left Second Life. I felt that something needed to be said. 

 



 

[ChinRey]

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Rufferta wrote:

The person who made the copy of the "old man" is selling a set of 24 "prop avatars" for $999 inworld, and I do not know how many of them besides the "old man" are copies of other peoples' work.

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Is that the guy who describes himself in his profile as "An architectural lunatic in Secondlife who is called [name omitted}, with his pure soul on this field"?

Maybe a purity test would be in place then.

But to be fair, there is a very good chance the reason for the similarity is simply that both are based on the same stock photo so we have to be very careful not to judge anybody without more info.

[Rufferta]

 

Chin Rey wrote: Is that the guy who describes himself in his profile as "An architectural lunatic in Secondlife who is called [name omitted}, with his pure soul on this field"?

Reply: Yes.

Chin Rey wrote: But to be fair, there is a very good chance the reason for the similarity is simply that both are based on the same stock photo so we have to be very careful not to judge anybody without more info.

Reply: You are quite right - I did plug the jpgs into Google Image Search with no result, but that doesn't prove anything. Also, there is always the possibility that he innocently bought the 'old man' statue from someone else, since his specialty seems to be designing buildings, and refurbishing full-perm mesh furniture.

Thank you, as always, for being the voice of reason. 

I will go back to re-arranging deck chairs and submitting JIRAs.