sending 3rd party sculpt maps to an alt for building?

[carissabelle]

i bought some full perm sculpt maps, but it says i am not allowed to give them away or resell them.

Can i send those sculpt maps over to an alt and use them for building there? Or do i have to let the creators know... like "hey i bought some full perm sculptys but i am using them on an alt"? Or do they keep track on who bought them and who use them?

I want to make clothes and stuff... but i am mainly using my alt for building.

[Luc Starsider]

If the terms say you are not allowed to give them away or sell them as is, I would guess alts are included in that. But contact the creator and ask. They may (or may not) be ok with you giving them to an alt.

- Luc -

[Innula Zenovka]

I don't know about have to, but out of both caution and politeness I always ask the creator of the sculpts before sharing them with my alt.    

People are normally very reasonable about this.   Usually, if I ask, they even agree to my sharing the sculpts with my business partner.   We build everything together and like to release products with all the prims made by the same person;   If the packs aren't expensive we just buy one each, but when they're a couple of thousand L$,  we do ask if we can share them with each other, and people have almost always agreed (sometimes, instead, they've given, or sold for a nominal sum, the components in question whichever one of us needs them).

But I would always ask first, because otherwise you risk the creator one day seeing a load of stuff in the marketplace and saying "hang on, those are my sculpties in the build but  there's no record of my having sold them to an avatar called Anne Alias" and jumping to the wrong conclusion.

[carissabelle]

Yes that makes sense. So i think i'll better ask them. Thank you

 

[Six Igaly]

Why don't you sent your alt the money and let your alt buy the stuff? 

[carissabelle]

i already bought them here... but next time i will buy them with my alt

[Jennifer Boyle]

It seems to me that it depends on what the license says.  Clearly, a license only has meaning in the context of RL IP rights and IP law, and it can only be enforced using RL legal means.  Therefore, it's obvious that the owner of the account, not the avatar, is who the license holder is.  A license could specifically limit the use of the texture to one account, but if it doesn't, I think you are within your rights to use it on any account you own.  I also think you should not have to ask anyone permission to exercise a right that you have under the license, and for which you paid.  It definitely is not acceptable for someone to  tell you that you are not permitted to do something that the license you got when you bought it doesn't prohibit.  If someone wishes they had granted fewer rights in a license they already sold, their only recourse is negotiate with the licensee and buy them back.

Your goal seems to be to have the texture in a prim created by your alt.  Couldn't you have your alt make a prim and give it to you, after which you put the texture in the prim and give it back to the alt?  

[Innula Zenovka]

Sorry, but that seems to me rather dangerous advice to follow.     Not being a specialist IP lawyer in the US or anywhere else, I can't really comment on how legally sound it is, but certainly the creator of the sculpties has no earthly way of knowing, on seeing in the marketplace items apparently using his or her maps being sold by someone who's not bought them direct, whether that person is an alt of a bona fide buyer or is using them contrary to the terms of the licence.   So the only recourse is to start issuing DMCA take-down notices and let the other person counter-claim if they feel like it.    If the other person's defence is "that avatar is my alt, and I've got a right to pass my sculpt maps to her," then the creator can do, or not not, whatever she or he feels appropriate.   But they can't know it's your alt until you tell them.

That seems to me a situation I'd wish to avoid if I can, so I'd want to the creator to know about my alt before we got to DMCAs and so on.   In my experience,  people tend to react a lot better to being asked "do you mind if I do such-and-such?" than do they to being told "I'm going to do it, whether you mind or not," so I'd be inclined to ask if they minded my giving the stuff to my alt, because asking them is not going to do any harm and might possibly avoid a fight that a flat announcement might precipitate.    

If they say "no," then it's still up to me what I do, should I feel on sound enough legal ground to fight it as you suggest and also feel that fighting it is worth the couple of dollars I save by not buying a second set of sculptmaps for my alt.    But I don't see what I gain by not asking, while I certainly see advantages to making a polite request, even though it might not, strictly speaking, be necessary.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I think you are right.  It's always better to avoid conflict if it can be done at little cost.

I do think that a seller who had not had a restriction to use by one account in the original license would be wrong to tell a buyer that it was not permissible for it to be used by an alt account.  She would be claiming a right that she did not have.  If the seller wishes, for the very good reasons that you point out, that he had included the restriction in the license, but did not, he should not try unethically to add it unilaterally but should just consider that he paid tuition for an important lesson in the school of experience.