"Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapginrafr> wrote in message
news:4006a536@news.povray.org...

> news:4005d486$1@news.povray.org...
>
> > It isn't illegal to create derivitive works from another work of art and
> > sell it so long as it is clearly distinguishible from the original. Here
> is
> > some supporting text from
> > http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ40.pdf
>
> What Mike said. Model (and textures) copyright issues are one of the most
> sensitive topics in the Poser world. There has been a lot of name-calling
> over this, and CuriousLabs and DAZ sort of divorced because of it (there
> were other issues though). In any case, tread carefully if you ever intend
> to distribute derivative models.
>


Isn't this sort of like shooting yourself in the foot?  To me, this ranks up
there with Paramount shutting down Star Trek fan-sites that displayed
pictures of the Enterprise.

There's nothing like pissing-off your user-base and generally making people
afraid to develop useful things for Poser, out of fear of Curious Labs
taking legal action.  I'm sure their flip-side is that if they develop their
own clothes (etc), you'll be forced to buy them, because no one else can
develop them specifically for their models.  IMHO, that makes sense in some
markets, but doesn't make sense in this case, where their user-base is more
of a community, rather than "customers."  Imagine if Microsoft created
Windows (TM) such that no one else was allowed to use their API's.

But even if Curious Labs' EULA is not legally binding in the manner in which
they claim, I'm personally not willing to fight that battle.  Even if you
win, you lose lots of money.  Licenses and Copyrights are two different
issues, regardless.  A license could prohibit you from doing lots of things
which are legal under the law.  Once you sign the license (or open a
software package is the same as agreeing to the license), you are generally
bound by its terms (there can be exceptions where the law gives you certain
consumer rights, for which no license can permit you to revoke).

-- 
Jeremy
www.beantoad.com

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