Minnu Model Skins PhotoSourced from Renderosity???
by Alphaville Herald on 09/05/08 at 8:16 am
Metaverse shocker — pirated skins being sold in SL!!!
by Tenshi Vielle, fabulous fashionista – courtesy of shoppingcartdisco
Do you remember a while back, when we were talking about “what ifs” regarding stolen content across virtual worlds?
I think the best case has to be Renderosity.com artists’ work being bought then redistributed without their permission (and against their own TOS) within Second Life. And of course, the general community in Second Life is mostly ignorant about what goes on at art sites like Renderosity – or, at least, doesn’t think to check there first to see if the content they just purchased in SL is stolen.
One sharp-eyed Second Life community member did notice that a skin she purchased recently appeared to be stolen from Renderosity.com – and emailed the creator, which in turn caused the creator to email me to ask for help and find out how stolen things were handled in Second Life. I guided her towards a DCMA, but I would like to share her email and accompanying screenshots with all of you.
Do you recognize this skin? It’s actually from Renderosity.com, Danae’s Manhattan collection. It’s been warped to fit the templates in Second Life… by none other than Minnu Pallen, the “great” skin creator.
More info below the cut, including Danae’s original email to me:
Hello,
My name is Danae Kotsi and I am a professional digital creator vendoring at Renderosity.com for many years. I create photorealistic skin textures for applications such as Poser and DAZStudio and I have been a Top Selling artist in the 3D community for many years.
It has recently been pointed out to me from a member of the SL community that a certain member – seller of your community is using my original, licensed products as their own. The product I am referring to is the “minnu model skins, generation 4″. The said SL seller has manipulated these textures against the TOS and License provided in my products and without any permission thus violating all copyright laws.
I have included an image of my product’s renders against the ones sold by the SL seller. My work is on the far corners while the copied is in the 2 middle images. As anyone can see the similarities are beyond the scope of mere chance but clearly illustrate that my work has been plagiarized. You can view my full product description here : http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=41330
It is clear that my work has been used in the production of the Avatars and most of the differences come from the change in format an the lower resolution – polygons.
As a professional my main income comes from producing and selling works such as the one stolen from me. It takes lots of research, money and many months of hard work to produce just one item and having this stolen by someone and claiming it as their own is very infuriating and insulting.
I have been informed that the said seller – and I refrain using the word artist for apparent reasons – has been selling my altered and stolen work and passing it as her own for a long time. So, I have informed my lawyers and we are currently thinking about the next step which is sure to be requiring immediate withdrawal of the said product and full compensation.
I was referred to you by someone because they said you know and care about the community and also know the seller. I wanted people to know that what is being sold is NOT original work and that ultimately it’s your community and the honest buyers that have been cheated and stolen from and not just me.
Thank you for taking the time and reading this long mail. Please see the attached images.
Kind Regards,
Danae Kotsi aka danae
<<…>>
Izzy
May 9th, 2008
They do look very similar, this is very sad if its true, and bad form that someone has copied a skin from rendoristy.com
Corona
May 9th, 2008
The PN of course will say its just for the ‘lulz’
Aurora Jacks
May 9th, 2008
WOW. Looks like some one has some explaining to do……………. Thank you for sharing, excellent work.
John Doe
May 9th, 2008
Oh, shit will hit the fan! Minnu does copy good skins though. It’s a pity they cost 1200l and not 30l as they should cost, covering the SL upload fee.
FlipperPA Peregrine
May 9th, 2008
Dang, some people have no shame.
I wonder how much
May 9th, 2008
I wonder how much advertising Tenshi paid to re-post this here. It seems like SLH is becoming her personal blog, too.
In regards to the issue, I dunno. They look similar, but there are many differences still. The fingernails for example are totally different.
Looks like yet another smear campaign, this time targeted towards Minnu. Anyone remember that ‘apology’ a couple years ago, posted on this very site?
Nicholaz Beresford
May 9th, 2008
I guess for now this article will tell people that they can’t get a better skin anywhere than at Minnu … there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
VooDude
May 9th, 2008
Ut Oh. Somebody’s about to get a public spanking.
Ava Cartier
May 9th, 2008
Why are SL feet so goddamn ugly?
Washu
May 9th, 2008
What exactly are the rules for buying and reselling items from Renderosity? It is not exactly clear to me, since both the site and the seller state that the skin can be used for commercial purposes.
“Buyer acquires the copyright to any derivative works created using this work, provided none of the original materials can be extracted from the derivative work by any means.” I am not a lawyer by any means! But if I read that I would probably think that it was okay to use the files for SL. So, I am just confused.
There are a lot of things in SL taken from Renderosity. I have seen plenty.
Alyx Stoklitsky
May 9th, 2008
Well almost everything in SL is stolen from somewhere, so why should we care about this particular instance?
No More
May 9th, 2008
This is not the first time something like this has happened. When Minnu was told that her new line at Cachet looked amazingly like Alexander McQueen she denied it..and then sent her little followers to a thread in SCD to say derogatory things…you all defended her…and now the outfit contains something it never did before.
A little notecard that says “This outfit is inspired by Alexander McQueens spring/summer o8 collection.”
YOu think you may have learned how good Minnus word was back then. But no. Never an apology. Never a “you know, you’re right, I did take that as a design from McQueen.”
She is no more a creator than a tracer is.
And now her followers come here to say rude things to Danae? Sweeties, not only does your emperor have no clothes, she has no skins.
I want a new notecard in my skin that says “Stolen from Danae Kotsi”
Because regardless of how many of us care about the legal ramifications, how many times do you want to buy things from a creator who does not own up to what she does.
Suddenly, she goes from “these skins are taken from my own body” to “I got them from a google image search”
Never again will I buy from her.
OurNightSky
May 9th, 2008
This is not the first time something like this has happened. When Minnu was told that her new line at Cachet looked amazingly like Alexander McQueen she denied it..
and then sent her little followers to a thread in SCD to say derogatory things…you all defended her…and now the outfit contains something it never did before.
A little notecard that says “This outfit is inspired by Alexander McQueens spring/summer o8 collection.”
YOu think you may have learned how good Minnus word was back then. But no. Never an apology. Never a “you know, you’re right, I did take that as a design from McQueen.”
She is no more a creator than a tracer is.
And now her followers come here to say rude things to Danae? Sweeties, not only does your emperor have no clothes, she has no skins.
I want a new notecard in my skin that says “Stolen from Danae Kotsi”
Because regardless of how many of us care about the legal ramifications, how many times do you want to buy things from a creator who does not own up to what she does.
Suddenly, she goes from “these skins are taken from my own body” to “I got them from a google image search”
Never again will I buy from her.
What's Going On?
May 9th, 2008
For those of you new to this soap opera:
Tenshi has had issues with Minnu before, most recently when Minnu told Tenshi that someone was ripping her off and then played dumb about the whole thing once Tenshi had blogged about the rip off artiste. Looks like Minnu is getting some payback in a karma sort of way.
We all know that many many SL “artists” steal from Renderosity and other 3d sites. It’s about time someone from that 3d community steps up and kicks some legal ass. Too bad the Lindens don’t give a rats ass about it though.
Here’s my question though- I was going back through the Tenshi archives and couldn’t find the story Tenshi did about proxy servers and anonymizers and stuff. What’s going on? I remember Penance Sautereau taking flak for deleting comments, but now the Herald seems to be deleting entire articles? Is the Herald deleting old stories? Why?
Pixeleen? Helllloooooo?
Ari Blackthorne
May 9th, 2008
Utterly shameful “reporting” (and double-dipping).
Easier to just point a finger to my response:
http://commonsensible.net/2008/05/09/blogger-news-of-skin-piracy-slanderous-content/
lol
May 9th, 2008
that hilarious one of the biggest content theft cry babies is a content thief
2 cents
May 9th, 2008
I’m suprised, and shocked, that you all are suprised that one of the ‘great’ skin makers photosources their ‘creations’ from outside of SL.
I have been asking the question in previous articles, who can guarantee that the creators being outraged about SL -> SL content theft, havent been stealing their material from others elsewhere on the internet. And here is the answer: there is no guarantee from any creator. Of whatever they create; clothing, cars, lightsabers, magic wands… The SL economy RUNS on copyright infringements. Some even blatantly… I have the pink ‘saleen’ from Fast & Furious myself, a very nice car, flies too, but there’s two infringements there already; in one car: the copying of exact model and textures of the Saleen S7, and of course the trademarked movie title.
of *course* it’s not the exact name, there’s minute differences in the car itself, and the movie title no doubt is written differently. Dont exactly remember the SL creator’s brand name to the letter.
Now I’m not saying we all shouldnt care and just copy whatever we want and be happy about it. On the contrary, I find it very, very lame. It shows a poor artist if they have to steal ‘their’ works from others. A very poor artist.
but, just a proverbial mirror. Dont try and remove the splinter from your brothers eye, if your own vision is blocked by the beam in your own eye.
(if your concience is clean, disregard the above message
)
Brendan Cale
May 9th, 2008
Excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject, but what is Renderosity and how does it work?
Dinky HockerShootsSmack!
May 9th, 2008
It’s strikes me as odd that on this one issue, which, as far as I know, doesn’t even violate SL’s ToS (which is why LL just tells you to file a DMCA takedown) has Tenshi running around like a superhero quite often, while she makes excuses for griefers, who routinely break the ToS. Funny that. Not saying she shouldn’t care about copyright infringement, I just find the contrast confusing. Not to mention, she has been accused of using the IP of other entities in some of her own works (charges she has avoided answering).
Steady hand
May 9th, 2008
“Well almost everything in SL is stolen from somewhere, so why should we care about this particular instance?”
Because Tenshi has some sort of axe to grind.
Darien Caldwell
May 9th, 2008
The question is, who did the Renderosity artist base her skin on? And is it possible they both worked from images that originated from the same source? I see a lot of jumping to conclusions.
DinkyHockerShootsSmack!
May 9th, 2008
From Danae’s read me text file which is on that product’s page:
“These files are copyrighted. The product can be used for commercial and non commercial renders. Do not redistribute in part or whole without the author’s written consent.”
So it sounds like she didn’t get consent. If so, she is in violation of the terms. An offence, to be sure, but hardly the offence Tenshi is attempting to parlay it into.
Perhaps if Tenshi wasn’t always so ready to try and destroy people, she could have simply connected Danae with Minnu, and let them work it out. And maybe pigs will fly.
dab
May 9th, 2008
first and foremost…can tenshi QUIT trying to make her blog sounds like more on gossip and continues on fashion?
tenshi, you have herald, and your beloved SL forums for that, but nooooo..you need to do this.
unbelievable.
Who Cares
May 9th, 2008
If Minnu had sold her skin for L$30 or L$40 (to give her a little profit)or even given them away as freebies (to the improvement of SL society), no one would freaking care. But she’s ripping off everybody who’s buying “her” skins. Hope she gets a little DMCA action. All these IP rights protesters in SL are probably as hypocritical as she is. Karma’s a bitch, eh?
ex-designer
May 9th, 2008
Oh, shit will hit the fan! Minnu does copy good skins though. It’s a pity they cost 1200l and not 30l as they should cost, covering the SL upload fee.
Posted by: John Doe | May 09, 2008 at 10:38 AM
—————————–
Attitudes like that are why I don’t bother creating ANYTHING for sale.
Fuck you. You don’t deserve my works for the cost of the upload fee. You don’t want to pay my prices, make your own stuff.
Everything I make now is for my personal/friends use only. I won’t sell to morons like you.
Enjoy your freebies.
Brendan Cale
May 9th, 2008
Attitudes like that are why I don’t bother creating ANYTHING for sale.
Fuck you. You don’t deserve my works for the cost of the upload fee. You don’t want to pay my prices, make your own stuff.
Everything I make now is for my personal/friends use only. I won’t sell to morons like you.
Enjoy your freebies.
———————————————
She’s not a creator, she’s a thief, thats why they should be 30L, just to cover up some upload fees instead of stealing someones work and marking it off as there own. I suppose you’re no ‘designer’ either.
Observer
May 9th, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriation_art
Look it up people. Appropriation. Artist community have adtoped this for ever. Get over it.
Bored with it
May 9th, 2008
@ Who Cares…..who cares? there will be plenty of other designers who will step in to fill your shoes…go ahead and keep your shit.
@Danae, any good lawyer worth his salt would have told you to stay quiet about this and not go blabbing all over obscure blogs, so either you’re lying about a lawyer, or you better find yourself another one.
good luck either way, you’ll need it.
Rosablanka Allen
May 9th, 2008
What does she mean by “there are SIMILARITIES”????!?!?!?!? (on both skins)
Is it THE SAME?? (skin)
Is it The same fricking skin someone sells as AN ORIGINAL template on Slx for example?
What the…
One skin is in RL the other in SL – thats the difference.
Stop wining about stupid copyright (when there is NO OBVIOUS issue), becouse soon THE AIR will be copyrighted and we ALL would have to pay!!
What a stupidity….
Rosablanka Allen
May 9th, 2008
Now that is really disturbing all the DRAMA and stuff.
If you were REAL designers – you wouldn’t have been in SL – TRUST ME.
If you were SOooooo recognisable, increadible and UNIQUE.. you would have been VERY succesful and quite famous in REAL LIFE.
Now, Is the CONTENT of SL being sold out-world (RL)???? (and i mean for real $$ and not for cheap cents?)… coooomee onnnn…
OMG… Minnu pictured MY Copy-f-righted ASS in her skins… I’m gonna sue her!
Got the point?!?
flopsie mcardle
May 9th, 2008
ex designer- your comments might have a little more weight if you werent hiding behind anonymity.
Scout Schwager
May 9th, 2008
Is this the way to make a copyright challenge? I think no.
There is a legal process, and not very hard, using the DMCA notification. However, the offended must SWEAR under penalty of perjury. Making claims in public is not the way to do this.
lol
May 9th, 2008
to digitally render something of that high quality takes entire teams for movies or months of work for one person, sl lowers the quality but its obviously a rip of another digital design not real picture like somebody said, its basicly and exact copy made worse by sl’s graphic quality
Mia Jones
May 10th, 2008
Most of the skin creators in sl make their skins the same as Minnu does using the same technique buying texture from these websites reforming them to fit SL and then selling them – so about 90 percent of the skin creators who do this same thing as minnu should all be shut down too ? Why the hell are you picking on Minnu only when MOST OF THE SKIN CREATORS USE THIS SAME THING TO MAKE THEIRS ?
Everyone knows this is how most skin creators make their skins in sl WHY IS THIS NEWS whey all the sudden its OMG ITS SO BAD HUH
sounds like someone singled out ONE SKIN CREATOR to go after for a personal reason
THIS ISNT NEWS ITS OLD WELL KNOWN AND HOW THE SKIN CREATORS IN SL MOSTLY USE TO MAKE THEIR SKINS
JESUS HOW PATHEDIC all the sudden its something important NOT MOST PEOPLE KNOW THIS IS HOW SKINS IN SL ARE MADE
ONLY A FEW MAKE THEM OTHER WAYS THAN THIS
JESUS HOW SAD GO AFTER ALL THE SKIN CREATORS THAT DO THIS YOU WOULD HAVE TO HAVE A LIST WITH ALMOST EVERY SKIN CREATOR ON IT
CHRIST SAKES
beau culprit
May 10th, 2008
I really do not see a point in telling whole SL community about something that lawyers should be dealing with.
If the claim is true we will know soon enough.
Either we would be all made fools or there would be only one fool – Tenshi.
Will you be reading her blown up stories again?
Who Cares
May 10th, 2008
@ Ex-Designer:
Yup, I will be enjoying my freebies. Thank you very much.
And oh, you’re punishing me *so* badly by refusing to design for SL…. I’m crying. I really am.
2 cents
May 10th, 2008
@ Steady Hand
“Because Tenshi has some sort of axe to grind.”
Not meaning just Tenshi, but all hypocritical ‘creators’ bawwing and falling over eachother in comments on copybot and other fashion stealing articles right here in the Herald.
I woulndt know if Pix ever created anything, all I know her from is from her articles here on the Herald.
Aya Pelous
May 10th, 2008
Im not really surprised that someone has been stealing, I never shopped their, and I pretty much know when theirs a red flag whenever I do some shopping. Danae could lifting her own stuff for others, and so on and so forth. Theres no honesty in the world. Oh well.
Ranma Tardis
May 10th, 2008
Yawns!
I tried to look up the website and found this “Sorry, ‘rendoristy.com’ does not exist or is not available!”
The skins were so pale! Wonder why?
Catface
May 10th, 2008
Well from personal experience… What I know about licensing when you take from an artist or copyrighted material its big JUJU. Things to know… Especially with the years of experience and the studio the Renderosity Skin creator is from…. You will more than likely get sued, it will be nasty and damages will be sought after. When your life is based on art it is your profession and people stealing your LIFES WORK… RL INCOME that you went to school for is something to take serious. I work for a production company that works with films and other media. We hired a graphic artist to do some posters and what not. We get the material… find out later that some of the work was ripped off copyrighted material… Our studio became responsible… You get sued! Know who is working for you. If you are a creator get a licensed version of your graphic programs if you are making any sort of profit… If you even use your Photoshop brushes that have a license stating mention or payment if used in something for profit… DO IT! Ignorance does not excuse you from the law. I suggest to anyone who uses any sound clips, logos or other trademarked gear it’s a good time to make your own logos and think about getting your stuff copyrighted. If you work in the entertainment field it’s easier to do. Sometimes someone will do you a favor.
Penance Sautereau
May 10th, 2008
Heh, and I only wiped comments from two articles when I was new to the Herald and hadn’t figured out it’s better to just ignore idiots and pompous twits.
If Sweet little Princess Tenshi has somehow deleted entire articles to sprinkle a little more creamy frosting on her horse-shit, all I can say is;
Who’s surprised? She’s a teenybopper fashion tart with delusions of importance.
As for creations, well, I actually do create all my own stuff in photo-shop by hand, so there ARE some of us who do our own work. In the cases of pop-culture tees, like say a Superman tee, I always list the owner of the original copyright and my tees are always cheap. My skins however I make from scratch, painted in PSP and touched up in Photo-shop. The only photo-sourcing I do on them is on the breasts, because I can never draw nipples quite right, so I just blended in my own.
If someone stole a Superman tee design I wouldn’t much care. I don’y own big blue, and I sure as hell didn’t create him. But my skins? I worked DAMN hard on my skins as an artistic expression, because carpal tunnel makes it too hard to draw with pencils anymore, so Photo-shop is my outlet. I’d be pissed if someone stole my skins. Fortunately I don’t share the root textures so I don’t see how anyone really could.
As for the theft claims here, I dunno, they do look virtually identical, but can you really prove that?
I might come back to the Herald after all. People can debate whether my writing was good or it sucked all they like, but at least I wrote just to write and have fun, not undermine and destroy people to feed my ego or legitimize my own blog.
(Which’d be hard to do since the closest thing I have to a blog is a diary group on SL I remember to update MAYBE once every three months or so.)
Think I’ll go talk to Pix.
Promo-drama Campaign
May 10th, 2008
if the “scandal” over Textures R Us’ “content theft” is any indication, what this story is really about is that Danae is opening her own store in SL and needs the publicity to trash the person who has been selling derivatives works of her original work to ensure public attention, traffic, and sales off the bat. Thats all the TRU story was about: someone who got a license from the original texture creator created the theft story to smear the competition.
Ari Blackthorn has some well balanced comments here. Frankly, to me it doesn’t really matter if their bellybuttons looked similar, apparently the drama over content theft is even more heated on Renderosity than SL on a constant basis, and the licenses do allow for ‘derivative works’ to be sold commercially. Normally this means photoshoots made with avatars clad with the skins, however its vague enough to allow for someone to take the skin, modify it a little, and sell it as a derivative work. Then what we are left with is a legal situation akin to the whole ‘sampling’ debates that rappers went through in the 90′s.
I mean, really, how many ways can you present the human body? Its not like Danae invented the female form.
Avon Delight
May 10th, 2008
As some have said, there are few real artists on SL and most things are replicas of the works of others. To be honest, if Minnu did or is going to rip off from artists, pick a person who can make a feminine face. I have never been crazy about minnu’s skins because they have very masculine or bland faces and gross feet. Not to mention the outrageous prices… 9k for a pack of skins? I couldn’t justify that price for them, no matter how good people think their quality is. If minnu is guilty of theft, I hope she plans to return that money to the consumers or at least pay the original artist and inform everyone what the skins are taken from.
Unwashed Mass
May 10th, 2008
“She’s a teenybopper fashion tart with delusions of importance.”
I really like that phrase
Can I keep it, please?
Doesn’t bother me that Tenshi has brought down (and oh HOW she has brought down!) an SL fashionista icon. Tenshi can be a right cow, but I am SO glad she can, and is, she’s the source of a lot of entertainment.
If I were to grade SL drama from 1 – 10, this one gets a 10
Such fun. Thanks Tenshi 
Lord Kamina
May 10th, 2008
And then in swoops Copybot and WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?
DinkyHockerShootsSmack!
May 10th, 2008
I hope that Tenshi realises that the way you treat others always, ALWAYS comes home to roost on your own doorstep.
This is not a “public service” as she and some others are claiming.
She is using both Danae and Minnu to further her own warped agenda.
You ought to be fucking ashamed of yourself Tenshi. That’s ok, because when you start losing RL jobs and relationships because you treat other people as rungs on a ladder, you’ll hopefully start to figure it out. Perhaps I am giving you too much credit in that last sentence.
If Minnu did what she is accused of, she should be ashamed, however, Tenshi should be ashamed regardless. Not that I think she could possibly be ashamed. People like her tend to not have a very realistic self image.
That’s ok princess, you’ll get yours some day. I have no doubt about that.
Penance Sautereau
May 10th, 2008
@Unwashed Mass; Keep it,it’s yours. Hell if you want I’ll make you a teeshirt of it.
Lixena Lamourfou
May 11th, 2008
The irony of it all…I went over to Renderousity.com and one of the first models/(skins) I saw was an undeniable exact likeness of Halle Berry (an Oscar winning actress). I wonder did the artist at Renderousity get Halle’s permission to sell her likeness. I think I will write her publicist and let them know that Halle is being exploited in the 3D content world. (said sarcastically) Really people is anything created nowadays really original content. Aren’t we all influenced by what we see, feel, taste and experience. The person that made the post related to “appropriation” what completely on target.
(¯`v´¯)
`*.¸.*´ LIXENA
¸.•´¸.•*¨) ¸.•*¨)
(¸.•´ (¸.•´ .•´ ¸¸.•¨¯`•
Lixena Lamourfou
May 11th, 2008
where is shoppingcartdisco.com the website has been taken down?
JuniperThalheimer
May 11th, 2008
Please…give me a break. And OMG RAC skins look a lot like yours as well. Guess you copied theirs to. Is it possible that this whole stealing textures/items has gone to far and people are ready to jump on the bandwagon for attention? Give me a break…I see major differences…the shadowing is way different, and so are the lips. Minnu works her ass off…stop complaining and suck it up that someone out there makes good quality skins like you do but in their own way, and stop being petty.