Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Another day in SL...Another theif

I always intended to keep personal things out of my blog. I wanted it to remain design related. While this is personal, it's also design related so I've deicded to post and let those of you who check here for new releases, see something that has been going on. It's come to my attention that someone is selling a copy of one of my designs. I wan't going to post his name because I didn't want to make drama but after this past evening and his continued lies and refusal to remove my hair, added with the fact that he has at least one other stolen design he's selling with MY textures on it, I decided that all's fair. So his name is Micheal Kingsford. I've repeatedly asked him to stop, (for over 3 weeks now), he either says ok and stops for a while, then puts them back into his store, or he lies and never takes them out at all after telling me he will. He even went so far as to take them out for a week or so. I thought the issue was over, but sadly I found out yestrday he has them back out again. He's been spoken to by others as well. To no avail. He claims Linden Lab told him he is not doing anything wrong and they said it's ok for him to resell. When asked to produce proof (ie: forward the so called email), he stopped responding. So I decided to make public so those of you who help new residents will shy away from his so called new resident help store, and avoid him at all costs. He also has a custom motorcycle store. So if you like to ride choppers in SL please avoid these as well. I am going to include pictures in this post so you can see the designs and hopefully this will prevent more sales for him. Design theft is something that we see more and more in SL on a daily basis lately. It sickens me. I hate seeing someone taking something we as designers put our heart into and then just blatantly reselling with no morals, no remorse and sadly so far, no consequences. I abhor lazy people like this and hope that you too will avoid doing any business with these type of people. It should be noted he has an entire store of items that are likely stolen as well along with freebies also. This hair is so obviously my design and texture no one will deny this man is a lazy theif. I hope you will stand behind myself and other designers, sadly far too many of them, and refuse to be a patron at any of these type of stores. Let's stand together and show the lazy theives that we are interested in quality, honesty and most of all supporting those who try to help make SL a better place with their designs. Thank you for reading my rant.
Update: I spoke with Tigerlily Koi. It was her men's hair that he copied and used my texture on. I guess he thought no one would notice. He thought wrong. So he's taken her design down but mine remains. Which leads me to believe her's will return shortly. It's his pattern. I hate that she was feeling so good about him taking it down on her blog This guy seems to think he's invincible. I hope we are able to show him he's not.

Here is my design.


Here is the one he is selling. An older version of the same hair that I recently updated.


Here is a mens hair we have confimed is copied from Calla Hair with my texture.


And here is the screen shot of the hair properties clearly showing it's my design he's reslling. Click on the image to see clearly the properties box where it states I am the creator of the hair he's selling.

6 comments:

Tigerlily Koi said...

Ugh. You're not alone.

http://callatropia.com/blog/2007/06/why-must-people-steal.html

Teagan Blackthorne said...

Calla is the guy's hair. Calico's was the one stolen last week.

Whatsername again....? said...

not another one :((( this is awful!!

i dunno if you know about this yet: http://com2.runboard.com/bdesignvoice
but this is a site set up by sachi Vixen of Adam & Eve...designers coming together to help each other out with this sudden rash of design theft.

-Wednesday Soon

Anonymous said...

I am confused as to how he stole this from you and its shows you as creator, if copy bot was used wouldn't he be creator?

Tami said...

Hugs Tigerlily. It sucks.

Thank you for the clarification Teagan I changed the entry to state it's Tigerlily's design.

I did register for Sachi's forum thanks for the heads up though.

I am just as confused as anyone. Maybe it's a permissions bug exploit. It is an older design and aparently he's had it for a while now. As for copy bot I thought the copy bot showed the theifs name as creator but Calico's recent theft too showed her still as creator I'm told. The conversations I've had with others such as Sasy, Teagan etc. Have ended with everyone shaking their heads. So I have no idea. What I do know is I NEVER gave him or anyone hair with full perms to resell or anything. So how ever he came to have my design he's reslling without permission. And the hair he stole of Tigerlily's was textured with MY texture. I have never once shared any of my textures obviously as they are my trademark. I've got my paperwork ready for thr DMCA report. Once that's done I'm going to put this behind me and move on. Otherwise it's gonna just make me mad at him every day and honestly he's not worth my energy :)

Unknown said...

As a texture designer... I am terribly worried about this kind of theft too... Harder for us since we have to sell with full perms.

Oh well... will be interested in how the dmca goes. Will you please keep us informed if anything does come from it.

Hugs Tami.