Think about your favourite living artist, now imagine somebody takes a pic of a painting of that artist lighting it with a red and a blue light, then he edits the pic in Photoshop adding some filters and then he sells that image in a limited edition in an "art gallery" for 20 €, 50% for the "photographer", 50% for the gallery owner. What do you think about it?

I think "copyright laws" are sometimes ridiculous and impossible to follow, i agree with the situation needs a good solution… but i also think earning money, even not big money, using the work of others i not right.

I agree mainly with you… but for me money is the limit.

As for what are doing here anyway, here on SL and here on RL, well, it’s too broad. So many theories and concepts. I can only say that I don’t see any fundamental difference between SL and RL. Nothing more than a technicality. Human senses are easily fooled, and our “reality”, in many ways, is simulated BY us (such as SL) and on a universal scale (but conceptully identical) simulated FOR us (check out http://www.bottomlayer.com).

Yes, I believe it’s possible that I am an avvie of someone out of this world who’s playing me right now. He is my “soul”, I am him with fewer dimensions. It makes me want to take better care of my SL av :)

I would love to discuss it but I think it deserves a post of its own. Don’t you?

I couldn’t care less about copyright.
 

(just a remark:: I agree with everything said here. As is RL, money sets the actions of all parties involved. And as d. said, it’s mostly peanuts.
Flickr and LL have the real problem, not us. They are the ones making the money so they’ll take the heat on this one, and they can’t afford to lose because photography is a popular hobby in SL, and Flickr is based solely on amateur photography.)
 
This is much more interesting:
d. said “our technology develops faster than our morality and comprehension of ourselves and our world”
 
Two things come to mind from this insight.
 
One, and I’m quoting Rika “…it behaves like clothing, it looks like clothing…therefore it is clothing”
‘I think therefore I am’ kind of logic, which is true in my view. Of course my avatar is digital! of course it’s a software! but not all of it, It’s also ME, really me.
So we have a new being, part human, part software, what law should it abide by? damn technology got us into trouble again (good! we deserve it)
 
Second, it makes me wonder, did we create the meta universe or is it an inevitable result of certain technological capabilities?
Was alt reality created only when a human first thought about it, or was it already there since the beginning of time, waiting for us, waiting for our technology?
Could we NOT have created it? Are we living in a greater meta than our own toy universes?
I always thought the universe is way, way too big for humans. Maybe technology is overwhelming us because we’re just here to carry it over to the next runner.

later :) 
 
 

Rika, I’m afraid they can treat it as software in the court and I’m afraid we did that EULA thing somewhere with clicking ‘yes’ on ToS of SL.

Moggs, Vint… yes, attribution is nice and useful (for artist, contributors and viewers) if done right and with sense. And it’s more or less easy to be done with a image shown in the blogpost. But if the image above is a part of the comic (as it could be, it’s taken from my test-shots for the comic) then imagine the credits for  all the 24 pages of the episode. It’s additional 12 pages of names and SLURL’s. Or machinima. For ten minutes movie you’ll need 3 minutes of credits scrolling at the end. And aforementioned army of people who will take care of all that.

Big production companies can (and should) afford that, but indie production is dead because of that. After I posted tis one, I sat and thought a bit about comic I am working on. If I have to mess with all this sit, isn’t it easier to fire-up the Blender, delete the default cube and start from the empty space? To create it all by myself? Sure, it’s hell lot of work, but at the end, I am the sole creator, with no problems with other people’s vanity, copyright infrigements on the horizon and with possibility to make a cartoon and any remix I might think of as time goes.

Robert, I was going my way making the same similarity between snapshot and RL photo, but as comments on Betina’s post shows many people think differently. And while everything iSL is created, there is a similarity with photography. You’re free to take pictures of buildings, statues and other artwork and feel it as your own work because you are changing the medium and context. But… some creators and law doesn’t see it that way.

* the names of all avatars featured in the snapshot
* the name and/or creator of an item, if it is obviously the focus of the snapshot
* the sim location (most of the time somewhere in the blogpost)

Of course, this is an ‘I try’, and I do not always succeed. But at least I do my best? ;)