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Licensed publishers won't be using Daz for comic books or covers, I'm afraid.
Jeez this is a hard read! OK, so this addition of an Editorial License is new here. I'd like to get a few things more clear if possible, in case I've missed something here.
-Is there any chance of older props also having that license added?
-Is a seller of 3D props [Daz3D, etc] required to make sure that each owner of those items is aware of a license being newly added in this way?
-What if I have already used a few of those props in a booklet which I sold a few years back? Could I be sued in that situation?
-Last question: In that worse-case scenario, who do I, in turn, sue?
Seriously, I may be naive, but most of us are little guys who never make enough money to be worth calling it a 'profit', so I can't believe we could be in danger of being sued for that. So I'd think they'd simply tell us to remove the 'offending' images.
[I'm getting a different opinion from some people around me, and this is why I'm asking. On the other hand, I live in a retirement community, and some us are, um, more 'retired' than others].
It seems to me that even if an offending image is not sold as part of a product, but shown free in a gallery, it would still be out there in the public sphere, assumedly causing the corporation endless trauma to their 'brand.' So in this context, the offending prop shouldn't be available at all, even as a freebie.
I see no logic in many things now-a-days, and I'm beginning to think that it's not me who's going crazy.
Where can I go for some clear, SIMPLE explanation of what this is all about?
The Editorial License thing was only fairly recently invented, as in late last year or something. It's not going to be retroactively applied onto products from a few years ago, or even onto ones already released a few days before the new licensing scheme was added to their toolbox.
As for whether someone might use Daz stuff in a 3D-rendered comic, or on a novel cover... pretty sure I HAVE heard about some comics that were 3D-rendered, though I never looked into it far enough to determine what render system they did them in. Many years ago, I remember hearing about an entire Batman comicbook issue that was 3D-rendered, but I don't know if even Poser existed back then, nevermind Daz Studio. That said, I KNOW Doz Studio stuff has been used on novel covers.
Anyway, if a publishing company who has a general license to do, say, assorted Aliens-franchise fiction books, I could very easily imagine some particular one-shot graphic novel set in that universe getting submitted to them, done in Daz.... simply because the particular writer and artist likes Daz Studio and is proficient in it, decided to create it in that, and submits it to the publishing company... and I doubt the publishing company would reject it simply because it wasn't hand drawn or something.
Indeed. But that path doesn't lead to money for DAZ.
If a company can pony up for a licence for a well known franchise, they are going to commission more expensive artists making things from the scratch. For a professional comic book from a larger publisher it's going to be easier and faster to hire 3d modelers for custom assets, because DAZ premade assets might not be flexible enough.
I doubt it's a realistic concern with editorial licences. DAZ isn't even the only 3d assets site having products sold under editorial licencing. The practice is brand new to Daz, but not to the market.
well I have seen a lot of daz products used commercially for games, books, and other stuff and I know one artist that makes a living this way On a side note the latest product from midnight stories think is stretching it a bit cause think it's not an exact copy and different enough more of a style really and if they didn't include in the render promos of stuff not included such as the navigator, face huggers and calling it alien with those items shown wouldn't help think could have gotten away not having the el added
Companies who have paid for licencing to publish for a known IP also have access to promotional materials made for said franchise. They don't need to commission work made with Daz assets. They can straight out use movie production art with things like facehuggers or the ancient aliens interiors. They don't need 3rd party props that look close enough.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't recall a scene that this resembles closely enough to warrent an editorial license. It has been a long time since I saw the Alien series of movies so maybe I've forgotten something. Or is it from a differnt movie?
In the first movie, there is a crashed alien ship containing scores of alien eggs which leads to the parasitic infestation of one of the crewman. Imagine this set with a tone change, eggs, and a "sky pilot" . Note the very characteristic oval ports.
Wayne definitely sabotages himself with his promo images though
most of his stuff based on known IPs and he is by no means the only PA who is heavily inspired but the promo depictions remove all doubt
I'm thinking the creator of the spider/crab-like alien creature you speak of, should have to buy an editorial licence to legally display his own product in the promos.
Who gets the money for the new-fangled license? The creator of the prop? I'd support that. Better question, what is the money used for?
Lemme whine: I was feeling so good up until now; new machine, possible job creating images for a writer's promp book, etc. Now I'm seeing a new team of lawyers with a new excuse for watching over people who would occasionally like to boost their ego with a few pennies for their art. Why is this suddenly necessary when it wasn't before?
I'm nervous, even though I can avoid props with that license. Why? Because no one yet with 'authority' has provided a clear, SIMPLE but detailed explanation of what this is all about. And since it's a surprise to everyone, what else is coming? Why do I have to rummage through a 5-page forum thread hoping to figure out what's happening here?
It should be a well-written, detailed description of what the license is for, who benefits, who is protected and why, etc etc. No lawyer-speak, please!
And dog-gone-it, what if I had never stumbled upon this thread? Being in my usual hurry, I could have bought something with the new license, and got lucky and sold a ton of amazing images... Thank god that'll never happen!
Some of it seems kind of silly when you really break down how some of these sci-fi things were kitbashed to begin with. Imagine being stopped from making an antique camera set with a flashgun because of Luke's original light saber. The facehugger, for example, wasn't directly from a Geiger design the way the Easy-Snap base was. We're talking a sheep intestine, some crab legs, and some gunk to hold them together. The PA could have done away with the two kidney-shaped appendices and bypassed the resemblance entirely, especially given how skinny the body is compared to the original creature.
Sorry, but the best you can get is a remotely "inspired by Giger's work." In the details, it's very little like the referenced source. Sucks for Midnight Stories 'cause he seems like a good guy. Maybe you could say it's more inspired by the interior of the Juggernaut in Prometheus, but also, it's its own thing.
And let's not even touch the scores of video-games and other projects that owe their look and feel to Alien and Aliens, not to mention other items in the store that sit far closer to their sources (Alien, Star Wars, et al) without the odious EL license.
I agree. To me it doesn't seem close enough to the crashed alien ship interior to warrent an editorial license.
I do think putting the facehugger look-alikes and other wanna-be props in the alien base promo pictures might be pushing one's luck. But then again...
Whole list of Alien inspired products... Redacted because it's not my job to point that stuff out. But hey... Anyone can search using appropriate terms and see where that goes.
Against my better judgement, I will elaborate. The law is not this simple fixed thing; it is a negotiation with some rules. The question isn't "is this product a direct copy of someone's intellectual property"... the question is " does this product resemble previously created intellectual property enough that we don't think it is a given win in court to defend it". The products are offered under certain conditions which preclude some situations that they creator and vendor don't want to have to legally deal with. They have complete rights to decide this as the customer has complete rights not to buy the product. In all the cases I have seen here, the intellectual properties referenced are clear so their creators could argue that the products are derivative.
^This. Editorial licences exist to protect a company from a possible litigation. Even if they think they could defend it, litigations are costly. If they think the item might cause one, it's put under editorial.
Some things in the store are also strongly inspired by existing franchises, but they also fall under "generic scifi combat gear" or "generic space uniform", etc.
Having said that, I'm not going to use editorial licence items because they are also limited for kitbashing.
That is resolutely sensible. It is understandable that people might not like the conditions that these products have and they should vote with their dollars. This is a far cry from insisting that a creator take a legal risk they don't want to do when they can mitigate by placing the product under a precise license.
I get that. And yet, there are other products that are even more blatant as offenders and have no limits at all.
As I've said many times, I won't even download freebies with EL. Are you certain the creator picks the license? Here, I suspect Daz does that. Midnight Stories has another item that pumps from the same well. No EL detected.
I think that artist/store interactions and negotiations are and should be a "black box" for customers. The artist and vendors have remedies for what they have agreed along. It is literally none of our business. Our business is the agreed purchase of products under specific rules with no more or no less. Midnight Stories has a few products (as well as RawArt) but legal agreements are never retroactive. They can decide that future products that might seem risky might either be rejected or get the editorial license. I appreciate that there is an attempt to find a middle ground here. If I were a customer who was concerned about accidentally buying or using a product with the editorial license, it takes two seconds to have my browser search for the string "editorial license" and another two seconds to drag the products into a category in smart content or whatever manual folders that people create called "for personal renders only".
like you said previously inspired or in the style and even then stretching it really of but not a replica exact copy of otherwise any future scifi corridors (like Stonemason's and other artists), ships, lazer swords, guns other weapons extra as well as tanks, planes extra would fall into this too because they are all patented which is like copyright it is a slippery slope true as well as very stressfull worrying and I suffer too much from stress as it is
So then there is a danger of older products being flagged as too similar to a corporate's product.
Who decides that I'm safe in using one if it's suddenly in the crosshairs of a group of lawyers with one thing on their minds?
I recently (barely) escaped from 1 1/2 years of repeated collection agency threats from a medical establishment which refused to submit my bill to the VA as they were supposed to do. The lesson I learned was that certain people with power don't care about the rules. They go to the weakest link and attack there.
I'm probably over-thinking the issue, although this thread is helping to resolve it for me. But again, bottom line, there are simple questions (for tired brains like mine), that haven't been addressed by the people in charge. And I'm really pissed off about it...
This is always an issue when you are creating any creative content. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_subject_to_plagiarism_disputes. By giving the option of an editorial license, Daz3d is giving you indication that you are at higher risk so you can mitigate the problem. No company and no content provider can guarantee that you are at zero risk.
Not convinced. I think now that there is EL, the option is, take the EL or have the work pulled from the store. Fact is, lawsuit will splash Daz along with the vendor. Other fact is, I got a long list of stuff on the site that looks blatantly like stuff from pop culture IPs. They don't get pulled and they don't get EL. If there is some great concern about IP and lawsuits, they should probably get pulled or get EL. Maybe they should not have been posted in the first place. Of course, some stuff does get pulled and now some stuff gets EL. But I think if EL is offered to a vendor, it's take the EL or take the product somewhere else. And if no one with direct knowledge is going to say, then our opinions carry equal weight but my opinion makes more sense given that lawsuits will certainly name the company because the company agreed to put the product in their store.
Also, some of the offending products are DO products. So that would be on Daz to do what needs to be done to protect themselves.
There are three options: 1) take the EL, 2) pull the work from the store until it is remade to a new form, or 3) don't buy the product. This is a slightly tricky thing to talk about since IP rules are amorphous and differ from country to country but, as a rule, you can't apply changes to contracts retroactively so Daz3d, a US company, can't easily add retroactive status to products. The EL is for edge cases; there is an implied arguement here that there are two states: legal and something that you can be sued for. This is a fallacy, you might have to defend any product in theory; some of them might be harder than others to defend. Daz3d might be quite happy to defend Vicky 9 as being their own product, unwilling to defend some products that they don't let in the store, and has small category of iffy products that customers might like but can't use commercially so there is no legal exposure. Remember, your use rights can't be changed retroactively; well actually they can be made more liberal and this is speaking for the country of origin (US).
One thing I'm wondering about is whether Daz3D, by adding the EL as an option, wound up with a situation where staff aren't trying as hard as they used to to check and adjust incoming new products to be less like some movie or TV company's IP, in order to request minor modifications to the submitted product before making it available to us the buyers... since now it's simply easier and less stressful to just slap EL on it and go to the next subimtted product. I don't get the impression this is what the intended purpose originally was for the EL, but it seems as if its what resulted from it. And that bothers me, because some of these prodcuts, its pretty clear it would be danged easy to make minor changes in certain of these products to take out the "Too much like XYZ" factor. Some of them, as trivial as simply deleting some distinctive 3D lettering off the object, or removing a couple of small pieces off a doorway or off of a wall, or something.
Don't mind me... As the items were scattered and getting burried, I'm just reconsolidating a list of the current EL items here for future reference...
// Editorial License List //
https://www.daz3d.com/retro-apartment-props-2
https://www.daz3d.com/cyber-racer
https://www.daz3d.com/r35-cyberpunk
https://www.daz3d.com/mars-spider
https://www.daz3d.com/easy-snap-alien-base
Thank you for bringing this thread back to its true purpose, which was to gather the items as a list.