Vegro Solari

Does anyone know off-hand where I could find some of those enormous collector freebie packs of poses/anims that were released by their creators into the SL "public domain"? I have a project where I never know what exact pose or animation I might need, and the best way to work for me is flip through a lot until I see something that catches the eye. Static/semi-static/animated poses would all be good to try out. Thanks in advance for any tips, searching in marketplace seems totally hopeless because I'm swamped with thousands of irrelevant results for AOs, furniture with animations or poses, etc.

The DMCA notice is only a request to LindenLab (the provider) to take down something that's allegedly been ripped from some other person or company. It doesn't say you're guilty, or mean you're in trouble, it's a complaint that may or may not be true, and it's not LindenLab's job to decide that - the court of law is supposed to, but as you can imagine, for all the hot air people put on about DMCA in SecondLife, slightly fewer than none of them are ever really gonna bother taking it to court, where it'd be decided if they're right or wrong in their complaining. Doing so costs the complainer astronomical amounts of money and hassle. The DMCA notice also has to be filed by the right owner of the copyrighted thing you're supposedly infringing, not just any random person, and luckily only happens rarely even if your stuff is blatant, so don't worry. They absolutely can't stop you from making products that look similar to something with the current law. If you're using a similar idea that doesn't mean you're infringing copyright, because ideas cannot be copyrighted, thanks gawd. Big RL companies like Disney might still be able to demand you stop using their brand names or likeness for your shirt (if it was their registered trademark in the USA). But SL creators usually don't have registered trademarks (it's expensive), so they actually have no legal grounds to stop you even if you were blatantly using the same name as them on your products, that's to say nothing of using the same "look"! If you're getting threats like that, it's likely just jealous people and they're hopelessly bluffing. Quickly: - DMCA notice against you doesn't mean you're guilty or in trouble, this must be proven in court. - Ideas cannot be copyrighted. That's specifically said in the copyright laws. - Copyright law does not protect brand names or "looks" at all. Another law, called trademark law does though. You must go through an expensive RL trademark registration process to claim something is your registered trademark and be able to demand some legal protection for it in the business world. If you don't have that registered trademark, your brand name in SL is not protected by those laws, and so you can't legally demand other people stop using your "look" etc. Hope that helps sort that out for you. Don't let those DMCA worries block the growth & development your creativity and experimental spirit.

It's a Marketplace website only, opt-in preference. Definitely not public and not accessible to any scripts.

I posted a suggestion to the Linden system today about making the marketplace show more relevant results and ads, depending on preferences that the person sets themselves in their Marketplace options. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4801 So for example, you could opt yourself out of seeing any stuff that's only interesting to people that are into building. Or only stuff that's of interest to those into fashion, or breedables etc. That way the ads and search results you do see are not full of those 4,999L skin templates you don't care about, or vice versa, if you do care about those, you can skip seeing freebie clothing items. To get the Lindens to pay attention to anything in that system, lots of people usually need to vote for it and "watch" it. So that's why I'm posting, plus also I'm curious what people think about it. Do you reckon it'd be a good idea for you to have a feature like that, to simplify the Marketplace & make it more relevant to what YOU do in SL?

Arwen, just wanted to confirm, I have been seeing the same thing as you. DD, products get sold, are registered in Transactions/Orders but don't generate an email message sometimes. Seems to happen at random. If I was a Linden tech, I'd sigh tiredly and say "just check your Spam folder...bet it's there..." but this definitely has nothing to do with that, it's some kind of intermittent problem on the sending side from Marketplace.

You should still be able to put them up via a magic box though?

About prices, I picked up a handy rule of thumb from a famed marketing guru a while ago that I wanted to share. "A product is worth exactly as much as the average customer in their mind is willing to pay and the competition in that niche will allow!" There's nothing in it about the complexity of making the product, and that's absolutely intentional. You see it all the time, there's no just renumeration in the marketplace, it's all based on quickly-made perceptions.

Wow! That's beyond strange. I wonder how many snarky customers they get who tell them it's none of their damn business, or ask how they'd come up with "Wacom"!

I'm pretty certain there lots and lots of room for the texture based clothing designs without any mesh. Just think of it as another tool/possibility, it can't really take out every other form, especially not the art of design outta the equation. Did I read that right? Wacom wants to know how you came up with your email ID, Morgaine?

Hi Keliah, Yeah, they are just ready made meshes and a texture. You take the texture into photoshop and paint your stuff, then reupload and apply to the ready made mesh. That's it!

Shelby, to me it seems that your thinking would become at once clearer and less prejudiced against online academia + their well researched ethics articles if you were willing to question your own relationship with the copyright concept from the roots of it, up. You're calling it "using other people's stuff", but that already presumes a certain kind of judgement made about so many things that are central to the ethical controversy, and are so far undecided. I think you made this judgement unconsciously, not really thinking it through, just following the spirit of the times, and there's no way to say for certain if you're right or wrong, but I'm sure you'll agree that is a very dangerous thing to do (not thinking a thing through) when considered in general. To wit, it remains to be shown that when someone creates something, the right to copy it is somehow "their stuff". It remains to be shown that punishing everybody else for "infringing" this supposedly exclusive right to copy is good for society, the intellectual ecology, and even the artist's own mental health.

That's a really good point.

Wondering what more experienced merchants had to say about up-to-date best practices for small inworld stores. Do you fuss over the prim names and keywords making sure they're all "show in search"? Or is that nowadays pretty much a waste of everybody's time? Do the Linden classified ads and Picks work as far as letting people find you better? What's your advice? Sassy R. are you reading this? Thank you in advance!

Good one, Susanto. ahah

I think reality dictates to us that it's perfectly insane to expect anybody but trained professionals to RTFM. And even those are going to be doing it half-heartedly with a sad face on. Too much info overload everywhere. Ignoring just about everything around you makes for a critical, if unrecognized, skill needed to survive and succeed in today's world.

Why is everyone trying to confuse this person who's probably quite new? Hooded, yes you CAN have your own land in SL without being a member of the Linden premium thing. Since you want empty land, with less neighbours, you should get a parcel in the size that you want from an Estate. There're two kinds of land in SL- Mainland where you need to be premium to own it, and Estate which is exactly the same but on private sims and you don't need to be a member of anything. Costs are pretty much the same for both. Just find a nice estate that has parcels of the size you want (in prims), and enjoy! If you get stuck again, IM me in world, I'll help you find a nice place somewhere.

Even more basically, don't sweat about IP and use the pic you like for your SL shirt! Monkey see, monkey do! A lot of people who are not uptight copyright lawyers still believe this is a natural and inalienable human right. If you ran a huge shirt printing business then you'd have some reason to worry over legalities of the images you want to use, but don't let all that parsimonious fine print spoil your fun creating and enjoying SL!

Good thinking with printing out a template on paper and drawing on it- a lot of pro artists working with Intuos do that, so you'll be just fine too once you get used to the special technique of tablet-ing. (it's like anything) The intuos pen is much nicer than Bamboo and you have options with it. The Bamboo is a fun toy and basically a waste of money that would be better put towards a proper Intuous. You do not need the super large sized one either (those are more for drafting etc., and less convenient for art .the standard one or medium are both perfect. I'd get the standard.). The intuos brings a touch into your workflow that is difficult to accomplish with digital drawing, your personality and "hand" will come through much more. The draw space on the tablet maps to the screen, so the corner of the tablet is the corner of the screen - regardless of the resolution you're working on. So to use the printout template, you'd just make sure that you scale the printout to the proportions of the tablet (since it's not square) or scale it smaller and utilize part of the tablet if you prefer working 1:1. There's also an expensive product called Cintique that is a tablet that actually displays what you see on the screen, letting someone draw right on the pixels. Very good, but pricey.

Could I share with you what personally I would do it if were my hard work being ripped off? I'd first hold myself a small celebration to affirm that I'm what other people only want to become and admire enough to blatantly rip me off. The confidence they have about selling the ripped work speaks volumes more about the marketable quality & relevance of the item than the fanciest blogger's review. Being ripped is a great gift, only you have to be generous enough to accept it all. I'd secondly, devote a day or two of focused attention to my original product, making sure it's got all the subtle marketing touches it needs to succeed, far superceding the imitators (legit competitors) and the more blatant counterfeitors. I'd thirdly smile. And fourthly, on a very optional basis, hire someone to either pursue DMCA takedowns for me related to this, or send out scaremonger "our legal departmet is onto you" notices to the more blatant guys. The outcome of said activities would be totally irrelevant, LL takes it down- fine. They don't - fine! Using this recipe, I would free myself from worry and resentment, and as a creator, focus on my creating again. So many new things to invent and create, that only you can do, and that others are in fact just begging to imitate! I would gradually or suddenly, more and more feel the comfort and deep satisfaction, as you just let go of the mentally corrupting sense of financial entitlement, and choose to create unfettered again. Thanks for reading!

I have a scenario in my head: PersonA produces a high-profile unicorn mesh model that has lots of sales. PersonB blatantly rips that mesh for pure commerical profit, and also has a lot of sales. PersonA follows due process and eventualities lead PersonA and PersonB to court, both defended by competent attorneys. PersonA is prepared and produces screenshots and vertex maps, and the different creative stages of how the unicorn in question was made. PersonB also is prepared and produces screenshots and vertex maps and different creative stages, that were all made by a low wage contractor at their request. Of course this latter fact is not advertized. The court deliberates, deliberates, a pile of money is wasted by all on attorneys and misc fees, and in the end the judge dismisses the allegations because nothing could be decisively proven. Sanctimonious legal FAQ writers would only shrug: "well, the laws are not perfect yet...we just need to legalize total 24/7 government surveilance on everyone's computer usage, that would help protect precious computer game mesh unicorns from thieves. Here's our business card, we're the friendly party with the swastika." A good way to save yourself a lot of money and wasted nerves is to just let it be. You can do it with no trouble, just try to remember how you worked, how you were an independent creator, before the copyright virus messed with the creator's ego. Copyright used to be a legal issue for isolated high-profile disputes. Let it grow on you, and it's just like every other toxic idea - got a very good chance to become a creatively disabling mental health issue.

"If there was no fascist copyright law to mess with everyone's head, then the GOOD corporations that make the tools and products we need would go bankrupt. Therefore I should believe in the cause of fascist copyright and all it entails." What does the statement above more closely resemble- A) The logical truth all reasonable people must accept and deal with. B) Just another cheap propaganda line trickling down from the copyright lobby.

The saddest thing is that it's not just Monsanto, the "pollen" of Copyright is infecting the minds of all creators, mesh creators in our case. I was reading a forum thread recently where an obviously very skilled SL creator was lamenting about how one of her long-discontinued works has resurfaced, was allegedly copybotted and co-opted by someone else. It was a little shark she made. She had screens that showed the original, and the derivative that this enterprising guy made. Same mesh, no question about it, 'cept the guy made the colours brasher, pasted bigger shark teeth (probably "stolen" from some google-image copyrighted stock photo) and gave it a hilarious grin. See, the pollen of copyright messes with a creator's mind. We are brainwashed to look out for "infringers" and expect our hard work is going to be "ripped off"... That whole mental frame is toxic, because, now instead of laughing with childlike glee upon seeing what someone did with your little shark, this person might be depressed for days, lose motivation to work, or waste precious and irreplaceable energy on filing idiotic DMCA forms... All because they've been WRONGLY taught to believe that "this is theft", "they are ripping you off", "take action, this is your turf you must protect it" and all of that phony crap that's been foist upon everyone by the Publishing Industry. A human being's natural reaction to what the Industry are calling "infringement" is to laugh and be happy. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. No "profits are being lost", on the contrary, the artist is gaining, if not financially, then in some karma-related sense, or in the approval of the community who are making these derivatives of her work... Only autistic, desacralized drones would reduce everything we do as people to financial motive alone, especially in the field of creativity. And honestly, we could use with fewer of those drones in the world, and more creators, everyone knows this. The original creator of the little shark felt like she had no choice but act like a drone, it's the done thing, and by doing so that makes everyone who does the same a little bit more drone-like. The real toxicity of Copyright will not be felt right away, but after a few years, when people wake up and realize their last remaining vestiges of real art, real culture are GONE, all privatized and turned into an unaffordable luxury. That's what's happening because of this toxic "monsanto" pollen being spread everywhere. If you're a creator who like the shark person, deeply cares about your works, I want you to ask yourself, what if the guys who are "infringing" on you turn out to be little kiddies, or persons with equivallent mental capacity? They can't ever hope to achieve your level of expert skill. To paste a silly grin onto your shark and do the sneaky wiley trying to sell it on marketplace may well be the whole extent of that person's creative ability! That's all they CAN do! Do you see what I am saying? That's all they CAN do, if they could be like you, they would be! They're trying! In their own stupid way, trying. And we're all agreed now that this makes them criminal undesirables. Please educate yourself about what fascism really is. It is not what is shown in sappy movies. You need to know what the face of Fascism looks like, so you will wake up and snap out of it, if you start recognizing more and more of it in the bathroom mirror. Best wishes to everyone!

Kwik- Yeah, a person can become a jew by choice. (you are factually wrong) Yeah, copyright isn't here to protect creators, only the right-holders. (you are factually wrong) Yeah, making a copy is not profit-theft, but a basic human right. (facts again) The "right" of copying naturally belongs to everyone with the technical ability to do so. The whole point of Copyright is to legally steal, excise that right away from everyone and give it to the few. Copyright is the theft, or if you prefer, amputation of everyone's natural ability to copy, emulate, make derivative work, etc. This travesty dresses in moralistic garb: "won't somebody think of the poor artists?!" Cheap excuses and lures are used: "your financial security as creator could be at stake..." We see fascist, draconian enforcement of the policy, revving up from one year to the next, ruining the lives of thousands of innocent, good people. If these things stay unconscious, unexamined in the mind of the public, it's bound to get only get worse and worse as copyright is used for everything an overreaching world-wide Nazi regime needs to conduct its business of control and domination. The following are just a few of the current trends: - corporations can claim copyright on genetic code, including that of unwitting persons whose DNA was acquired via tests and medical procedures. - If a "copyrighted" seed (plant) is found in a farmer's field amongst other noncopyrighted crops, that field's yeild automatically by law belongs to the "copyrighted seed" rights owner. - if a copyrighted persona appears or their voice is used in a video produced by you+me, that entirety of that video becomes the property of said rights holder and their subsidiaries. - high tech copyright enforcement agencies are running bots and scanning content; the law allows them to claim ownership and DMCA-takedown (=censor) absolutely anyone and anything, with no proof required. In one case, such an agency wrongly claimed copyright over birdsong in a forest that the person recorded themselves 30 mins prior to posting that video. The video was taken down. The person tried to fight it with a counter DMCA, but the company STILL claimed they had positive-ID, that birdsong had to be theirs (and their subsidiaries). It only backed off when there was a giant public outcry and hundreds of thousands emailed the company to express their contempt for this practice (by no means isolated or rare). No penalty of any kind applies to this sort of action on behalf of corps "looking out for the creators", and the law is constantly abused to snuff out smaller competitors by means of lawsuits that financially kill them even if they win it. If you accept all that, and where it's taking us, with open eyes, that's your choice and moral decision, but it's not good that the Industry is duping good people into going along with it blindly. At least, if you wish to listen to the Industry's fairytales about it, then please take it upon yourself to also read and think about the fairytale I posted on the first page for everyone. It's an important one for creators to be familiar with, so as to not make the same mistake of believing the Lawyer and Publisher on their crooked word. They do not belong in our world, as they are not creators...their methods are fascistic, motives corrupt, and their lies so blatant that many good people are actually nowadays believing them..

The selling bits seem to be working "OK", it's the search (and hence how many customers are likely to buy from you) that likely got messed with around Apr 30.

Thanks, I'm glad your soul craves the same things, like simply some justice and telling it like it is without all the fascist posing we get in TOS, omnipresent DMCA threats etc. Most of it being moot anyway because, let's face it, nobody even at Nintendo could afford or want to litigate against tiny 3d pikachu every time somebody made one for the SL market. The thing is, unlike real creators, corporations don't have to litigate, they routinely scare people into submission with legal threat, without any judge or jury. That's what corpy-right is all about, the corps have all the rights, and ordinary people wanting to make some lemonade and sell it from a little stand now have to navigate the corporate legal minefields to get anywhere. How else? It's Lemonade, now. The message is pretty clear, just give up, you don't need to create, you are just here to consume what the Industry makes for you. I used to read Ray Bradbury a famous scifi writer who often emphasized dystopia where paper books are forbidden and think it's unrealistic, took it as a metaphor. But now? More and more it's becoming the absolute reality these days, thanks to copyright and related laws. Paper books don't have DRM chips, so they're a vehicle for infringement. Corporations like Amazon and Google are digitizing everything for their electronic readers and trying to claim perpetual copyright on those digital versions of public domain works. Digital books can be remotely changed anytime right on your Kindle (if it was necessary) to make them politically correct and that's just perfect for the party line, so the big gov is big on copyright too. Under those kinds of conditions, I fear the criminalization and mass destruction of paper books, Nazi style, could be just a matter of a decade or two. We're gonna do it to celebrate being "green" and saving trees from abuse, or to fight global warming, or something trendy like that. I was stupid, Ray Bradbury was smart. We see constantly how policy makers are trying to dupe people into becoming prim Nazis and ratting each other out to the "copyright police" every chance they get. But you do not have to willingly follow along with it, don't march to that tune waving the new nazi flag thinking it's going to mean financial prosperity for you in some mythical future when all the jews and thieves are legally eliminated. It will not, it's a big lie and cultural cancer. And if you wanted to ask me, I'd even say it's every creators civic duty to have utter contempt for those attempts and practices, even if that makes their opinions unpopular with the status quo. I hope the OP makes that little 3D Pikachu, and that little Pikachu ends up prominently shown in the SL marketplace listing giving the middle finger to an unknown yet pervasive newfangled tyranny.