This morning I awoke to an email from Edo Tone of Styles of Edo he was very upset and showed me photographs, taken by Maggie Mahoney of Runway magazine. The pictures showed copies of his 'famous' tailcoat worn by M(ark) Linden at his first public appearance at the SL5B opening on sale at OMG! Inc.When I arrived at Sununu, next to our head office, home of OMG! Inc and saw the suits on offer, I could see for myself it was his tailcoat, it is unique. But I was also disturbed by the similarities of others on the wall and buying the white tux shown found it too was from Edo. Edo came and confirmed it but more disturbing he also pointed out designs that were from another designer Simone Stern.
I brought Simone in and, although blurred and photoshopped a good deal, she confirmed some were her textures, pointing out highlights and shading that were unique to her designs.Next I tried to contact Kaddan Yue CEO of OMG! Inc. but it was the middle of the night for her so I asked Intlibber Brautigan to remove them from the sim which he did as soon as I appraised him of the situation. I admit I was impressed with the speed he grasped the facts and dealt with them.
When Kaddan came online she immediately confirmed that she had bought the textures some time previously and they had been sent to her by email. She was totally unaware they were copied/stolen and shocked when shown the pictures. She took immediate action and removed all designs made from textures sent by kraus Folland. I know Kaddan and the work they are trying to do with OMG! is commendable, these designs were bought at the beginning of the project. Kaddan told me that now they are using only inworld designers and no longer buying textures because of the copybots.
I have rarely seen anyone so upset and I can't blame her. It was a horrible position to have innocently bought stolen textures and used them.
I arranged a meeting with Kaddan and Edo where Kaddan apologised personally to him for the mistake which Edo accepted with an offer of friendship to Kaddan.
Later Kaddan released this statement;
"OMG Inc is a co-operative company meaning we collect designs to sell from many designers as well as creating our own.
We have bought designs from many places like XStreet and designers inworld.
When I was informed that some of the designs we were selling were copies I took immediate action and removed them from all of our stores.
I will also delete all copies of the textures I bought from kraus Folland.
These textures were delivered to me by Email and I have destroyed the originals stored on my PC.
I wish to apologise publicly to those that have had their textures copied.
I would never deliberately resell someone Else's work without their express permission in writing and had I known that these were copies I would never have bought them.
Texture theft is a big concern in Secondlife and because of it we are now working only with designers inworld in the hopes of preventing this from happening again.
All I can do is apologise to Edo Tone of 'Styles of Edo' and also we think Simone Stern of 'Simone' and accept full responsibility for reselling their designs."
My question now is WHY IS COPYBOT ALLOWED IN SL?
This situation was awful for all involved, Edo and Simone had their textures ripped and altered, Kaddan and the OMG! team were, in all innocence, selling stolen goods (which in real life is no defence) but here we can see the ones to blame are those that continue to use the CopyBot and decide to profit from other peoples hard work!
I guess some will always try to profit from others hard work - just make sure you know the source of any textures you buy! So we can minimise the profit these people can make from copying.
Dana Vanmoer
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