# Second Life



## Dragoneer (Jan 22, 2009)

In an effort to solicit feedback on the AUP changes, as well as better answer questions, we have created this forum for each individual clause of the AUP. We will modify and/or improve AUP clarity based on suggestions and feedback.
 
- - - - - - - -

*Second Life*
Screenshots from Second Life may be posted so long as they meet the following criteria:

*Avatars and Objects** - *Screenshots are allowed for the sole purpose of showcasing Avatars and objects designed by or for the submitting user. Screenshots may not be posted for posting scenes of interaction scenes.
*Purchased Avatars** - *Avatars, such as those sold by Luskwood Creatures, may only be uploaded provided the avatar contains significant modifications which would distinguish itself from the original model.
*Quantity** - *Second Life screenshots will be limited to three (3) submissions per item/avatar per user. Users wishing to display multiple angles of the same Avatar are encouraged to create a collage.


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## Narffet (Jan 22, 2009)

As a clarification, the Purchased Avatar policy is due to creative ownership policies, right? So unless places like Luskwood have already weighed in on this topic, would it be possible for a SL user with a purchased avatar to get permission FROM their respective creators? Or is there other factors weighing into this policy?

And for clarification, I am completely disinterested in this inquiry. I do not own a purchased SL character. I do not and have never participated in or even _installed_ Second Life. The basis of this inquiry is solely based on a request for clarification based on intentions, perhaps to help ease tensions.

Also, so no one can scream 'z0mg da' mans gots me down so hawd'.


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## Sergeant (Jan 22, 2009)

About the only thing I can say is thank you for this, because it is getting pretty tiresome seeing my watch gallery spammed with SL avatar junk, especially when it's five in a row of "Here is my character from a different angle! Now here he is from below. Bird's-eye view. Up close of his eyeballs. Look at the detail on these fingernails! Ohh, let's not forget the groin shot!"

>_<


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## Dragoneer (Jan 22, 2009)

Narffet said:


> As a clarification, the Purchased Avatar policy is due to creative ownership policies, right? So unless places like Luskwood have already weighed in on this topic, would it be possible for a SL user with a purchased avatar to get permission FROM their respective creators? Or is there other factors weighing into this policy?


*Short answer: *No.

*Drawn out answer:* At its heart _FA is an art gallery_, and we want people to _emphasize their creations._ We want to get back to that root. Second Life is a sandbox that you can build anything in (literally). 

However, simply purchasing an avatar doesn't comply to the By You/For You policy. I could by a Van Gogh, post it up... doesn't mean I made it. I could buy a 3D model from Turbo Squid, doesn't mean I made it. Same principal here. You didn't create it and it wasn't created for you. We're emphasizing that point in particular.

If people take a store bored creation in Second Life and modify it in such a way that it doesn't look "off the shelf" then it would more than likely be allowed, provided it had significant modification. Simply changing color, hair style, etc. doesn't quite comply to the intended rules. You'd have to consider the store bought model a base and build up from there, creating something truly unique out of it.


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## Narffet (Jan 22, 2009)

Removed because I was incorrect!


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## wildrider (Jan 22, 2009)

Narffet said:


> I suppose the first level of this will be that I do not fully comprehend the process that it takes to create a furry SL avatar. From the information I've gathered, it can take a substantial amount of time, and purchasing such a figure is almost, in a roundabout way, a commission for the SL-based companies to take their resources and knowledge to craft an avatar in an image you desire, at the base of course. If your fursona is a black cat then I doubt your end product will be a non-black mystery anthro you have to apply your own time and effort to become more cat-like and become the correct shade of black.



Your not commissioning stuff from the vendors, your simply buying something that was made and can be duplicated when you buy it.  Like someone drawing art and then making copies of it.  They spent alot of time on the original art, but your not buying that one thing they made, your buying the copy of the original piece for a certain price.  You can commission people, but when Luskwood is referred to normally, they are talking about the avatars that you can pay for that hundreds of people may own also.

That's basically what SL is, but there are some that can make their own things, like I have made my own fat body and muscle body among other things to wear.  I then put them out for sale so others can use them also if they by them or I give it to them.  I also have a commissioned head that someone created just for me and I'm the only one who owns it.


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## Narffet (Jan 22, 2009)

wildrider said:


> Your not commissioning stuff from the vendors, your simply buying something that was made and can be duplicated when you buy it.  Like someone drawing art and then making copies of it.  They spent alot of time on the original art, but your not buying that one thing they made, your buying the copy of the original piece for a certain price.  You can commission people, but when Luskwood is referred to normally, they are talking about the avatars that you can pay for that hundreds of people may own also.
> 
> That's basically what SL is, but there are some that can make their own things, like I have made my own fat body and muscle body among other things to wear.  I then put them out for sale so others can use them also if they by them or I give it to them.  I also have a commissioned head that someone created just for me and I'm the only one who owns it.



Yup, gotcha. I was wrong. You live and learn sometimes, but sometimes only if you ask the stupid questions


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## wildrider (Jan 22, 2009)

Narffet said:


> Yup, gotcha. I was wrong. You live and learn sometimes, but sometimes only if you ask the stupid questions



It was a legitimate question coming from someone who has never experienced SL and there really isn't anything else out there like it to this degree I believe :3

Now you know...and knowing is half the battle! GIJOE! Sorry...I couldn't help myself XD


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## Verin Asper (Jan 22, 2009)

I'm thankful for this too, and with a friend of mines building weapons would this apply to him too.


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## Verin Asper (Jan 22, 2009)

wildrider said:


> It was a legitimate question coming from someone who has never experienced SL and there really isn't anything else out there like it to this degree I believe :3
> 
> Now you know...and knowing is half the battle! GIJOE! Sorry...I couldn't help myself XD


COBRAAAAA
sorry for the double post D=


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## FoxyMcCloud (Jan 22, 2009)

I'm actually curious now if I'm breaking a rule here.  Please note that I wasn't prompted or anything, but this is out of my own curiousity.  I posted 8 pictures of my Second Life avatar.  To explain the avatar, it's a bit of a mishmosh of purchased avatars (and freebies) and clothing put together, as well as a few creations of my own.  Some parts of the avatar have been modified by me (either modified colours or shapes), and some parts of the base avatar were embellished for a more-unique look.  All in all, while the heart of the avatar wasn't created by me, the put-together look is created by me.  Would it matter that I have a number greater than three screenshots of him posted on my gallery, especially if I didn't really have any plans to post any more of it?

I ask, because I have based my fursona after this avatar, but I'm no artist (as far as drawing goes), and I'd be a bit dismayed at having to choose which pictures to take down.  I have two pictures posted especially meant for reference in case I do happen across an artist willing to draw this character for me.

Thanks for answering 

To summarize: The avatar in question is a mishmosh of store-bought (or freebie) avatars, clothing that I put together and embellished myself, and original creations.  Does it count as my original creation, and do I have the freedom to go beyond the '3 screenshots' rule?


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## wildrider (Jan 22, 2009)

Actually I think the pictures of your character goes against the flooding rule, which you are posting multiple poses of the same character.  You actually made a collage, but kept the first 6 that are nothing more than different poses.  If I were you, I'd delete all the numbered ones which are rather unnecessary if you already have a collage picture for reference.  Can't say about the character itself though.


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## FoxyMcCloud (Jan 22, 2009)

Eh, I deleted five of them but kept the one that was actually commented upon lol.  I don't really want to risk breaking a rule, even if it just bending it.


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## maxgoof (Jan 22, 2009)

I guess I'm barely within the guidelines with my post of my Dipper avatar, since I took a standard bear avatar, changed the color to yellow, removed a good portion of the hair, put on a hat and a bomber jacket.

Oh, and altered the eye jpg to match the rest of the avatar color.


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## Eevee (Jan 22, 2009)

Dragoneer said:


> At its heart _FA is an art gallery_, and we want people to _emphasize their creations._


Why is this not stated in any of these documents?  Instead they're geared towards assembling a collection of nitpicks that will hopefully imply what you want the site to be.  Why not just..  say it?

The closest anywhere is "FA is a website primarily geared towards the artistic community...  and as such may contain mature content."  Right now the rules might as well be completely arbitrarily chosen.



FoxyMcCloud said:


> I posted 8 pictures of my Second Life avatar.


Why is that at all necessary?  Even most sculptures made from scratch can be well captured with one or two photos.



maxgoof said:


> I guess I'm barely within the guidelines with my post of my Dipper avatar, since I took a standard bear avatar, changed the color to yellow, removed a good portion of the hair, put on a hat and a bomber jacket.


Would you feel comfortable if that had been a drawing, and you had hue-shifted the fur color and pasted a hat/jacket from another drawing onto it?


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## Armaetus (Jan 22, 2009)

If I could have it my way, I would lump Second Life with the video screenshots rule as I have no interest seeing avatars from this "game".

Do I care about the masses of butthurt furries bawwing if that ever happens? Of course not. They can upload that to a photo hosting site and make a journal with all the entries.


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## Tinintri (Jan 22, 2009)

I agree to everything the admins have set forth for Second Life restrictions/guidelines.  I hope to see them enforced and followed.  The whole "here's my ____ in this angle, blushing" times 5 is indeed getting old.

As for a suggestion...
Perhaps there could be a category when submitting *just* for second life?  And perhaps when that category were to be chosen, the above mentioned guidelines or a description would be made to pop up below the placement and search tag drop downs in an abbreviated manner?  

This could be for all categories and AUP guidelines, not just Second Life images.  It would personally make me go "Oh snap, something popped up.  I'm going to read it now."

I don't know how hard that would be to implement.  Just throwing it out there.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 22, 2009)

Eevee said:


> Why is this not stated in any of these documents?  Instead they're geared towards assembling a collection of nitpicks that will hopefully imply what you want the site to be.  Why not just..  say it?
> 
> The closest anywhere is "FA is a website primarily geared towards the artistic community...  and as such may contain mature content."  Right now the rules might as well be completely arbitrarily chosen.



If you hadn't noticed many people have their own definitions of art, so it might be better to use the phrase Accepted/Acceptable Art on FA, with an emphasis that the accepted art has to show original user created content, link to the Wiki with examples visual and scenarios. This may at least help.


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## Eevee (Jan 22, 2009)

Of course people have their own definitions of art.  People also have their own definitions of 'significant modifications'.  Half the AUP is subjective.  Stating intent and perhaps giving a general definition of 'art' would still be a vast improvement.


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## Tobias Amaranth (Jan 22, 2009)

With the exception of vendors and commissioners, I don't see a point to having people post Second Life art. Vendors need it to advertise to other people that hey, I make -THIS-. Commissioners also fuel the vendors so it's not a horrible thing allow them to post stuff that was made for them.

I do think that both should be limited to 3 pictures per character, and 1 picture per item. And such things should be the focus of the picture, at that.


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## Chaotis (Jan 23, 2009)

Eevee said:


> Of course people have their own definitions of art.  People also have their own definitions of 'significant modifications'.  Half the AUP is subjective.  Stating intent and perhaps giving a general definition of 'art' would still be a vast improvement.



I think you're missing the whole point but here's a general definition of art: "Anything created that appeals to someone's senses." Seriously.

The whole point of art is that is it subjective, some paintings that sell for thousands of dollars I think belong in a dump. There is no conceivable way someone could go through every possibility of art and say "these are allowed" and "these are not" and as such all the rules can ever do is give guidelines. Because they are guidelines, they cannot be explicit so of course they're going to be interpreted differently by different people, the same way "a large sum of money" would be different to everyone because I can't say "one hundred dollars".

As for second life, I hope those of you that simply want to push it out of the way stating "it's just a screenshot" or "it's pointless to show anyone" understand that it's also a fully capable 3d modeller, if you can think of it you can probably make it in SL. I don't see how this doesn't qualify considering pencil drawings are "just graphite spread on a piece of paper" and digital artworks are "just big arrays of numbers". Like someone else said, when you get down to it it's not what the medium is but the skill and work put forth by the person doing it. While I don't understand those that want to post 25 pictures of an avatar they bought I do think I should have the right to post pictures of something I've made, within reason.


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## Eevee (Jan 23, 2009)

So we shouldn't say this is an art site because that's subjective, but it's okay for the guidelines to be subjective because they have to be?

What?

Of course you can find someone who will consider anything you want to be art.  Good for them.  That doesn't mean the average person will consider a close-up screenshot of a pre-bought SL model's dick art, or a bad webcam shot of a manga collection art, or a recording of someone saying his/her name art.

Of course, if the submitter can reasonably establish it as having artistic intent, then you know what?  Cool, keep it.  The issue here is, ultimately, people who upload something they own but didn't create, barely modified, or generated automatically just to show off what they think is cool.  That's not what FA is for, or at least that's strongly implied.

I really don't see how a mission or focus and a few very broad rules could be construed as _bad_.  Right now we just have a growing list of Bad Things assembled from submissions that have actually existed but violated some unspoken prime directive.  That's ridiculous.  Tell people _what you expect_, and then clarify with all the nitpicks if necessary.  How can anyone even realistically contribute to discussions about whether X should be allowed if the criteria for judging what's allowed aren't even stated anywhere?



And yes, it _is_ the skill and work put forth...  but a lot of modern media allow someone to create something more or less aesthetically pleasing with _no_ skill or effort.  This is a rather recent development; traditional drawing/painting/sculpting/etc all start from scratch and will probably look like complete ass if you don't know what you're doing, but programmed environments can be deliberately designed to _prevent_ you from making something too ugly.

But this raises the question: what's the difference between something beautiful but trivially created with a program and someone's stick figure?  They take the same amount of effort; the only difference is, frankly, that people are less embarrassed about spamming the site with the former because it looks okay.

So how do you outlaw one but not the other?  Or do we want to ban really crappy drawings, too?



We could stand to think about this a little more deeply than "do we allow Program Of The Week or not?" and come up with a general solution rather than degenerating into a flamewar between two factions who don't give half a fuck about each other every time.


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## Eevee (Jan 23, 2009)

(dupe)


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## Chaotis (Jan 23, 2009)

Eevee said:


> So we shouldn't say this is an art site because that's subjective, but it's okay for the guidelines to be subjective because they have to be?
> 
> What?



I think you pretty much answered your own question right there, they're subjective because they have to be. I also didn't say we couldn't call this an art site, no idea where you got that from, you asked for a generalized description of art and I gave it to you was all. ("and perhaps giving a general definition of 'art'" as you said) Mainly to point out that you really can't get anything useful from it.

As for the rest of your post... I'm completely unable to figure out where you're going with it. Just about every issue you pointed out has been taken care of in the current rules. As for having a general rule, we already have one and these subsections exist to clarify it for different areas


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## Cilis (Jan 24, 2009)

Sergeant said:


> About the only thing I can say is thank you for this, because it is getting pretty tiresome seeing my watch gallery spammed with SL avatar junk, especially when it's five in a row of "Here is my character from a different angle! Now here he is from below. Bird's-eye view. Up close of his eyeballs. Look at the detail on these fingernails! Ohh, let's not forget the groin shot!"
> 
> >_<




My simple solution is don't watch people who do this, you don't like to see it and I don't like to see the odd cubfur porn shot that pops up in my watchbox.

When it happens I be an adult and stop watching that person, not go on a rampage to get their ability to post it removed. 

Tinitri's idea is a good one, honestly I wish searching/filtering by media type worked better and was more obvious than it is now, what little there is to be had anyway. 

I'd just remind people that it is possible to create things in SL that are pretty awesome, and took weeks of work... don't shut them out again, as it was awhile back, but continue to welcome them like the revisions in the policy have as time has gone on.


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## Cilis (Jan 24, 2009)

Question for clarity.

If I made the avatar's skin and such, and did the textures myself... Would I be able take pictures of that avatar in different poses (some of which I might make myself) beyond 3 pictures, or is that one avatar (lets call it Blue) only allowed to have 3 total pictures up if he is the main subject of the picture?

This part of the policy always irked me, maybe because I misunderstand it.

What it says to me is that it is okay to do every pose in the karmasutra through any media as singular submissions except for secondlife. 

That kinda sucks if I went into the effort of making the avatars, the animations and the setting. I've spent a week on a setting as I've said before, so the idea that "it is limited because it is easy" as a blanket policy really hurts me.


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## Aden (Jan 25, 2009)

Cilis said:


> Question for clarity.
> 
> If I made the avatar's skin and such, and did the textures myself... Would I be able take pictures of that avatar in different poses (some of which I might make myself) beyond 3 pictures, or is that one avatar (lets call it Blue) only allowed to have 3 total pictures up if he is the main subject of the picture?



3 pictures of 1 subject, max. I really really encourage a collage, though. Seriously.


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## Cilis (Jan 25, 2009)

Aden said:


> 3 pictures of 1 subject, max. I really really encourage a collage, though. Seriously.



That doesn't seem fair. 

An artist using any other medium can take a single character they designed and use that character in any number of poses, settings and situations. 

From the sounds of it if I want to exhibit a pose I made I've got to make a new character twice to show off six home-brewed poses. Four if it is a couple's set of animations. 

We don't tell anyone submitting any other type of work to make collages of their big breasted or large balled centerfold 

I think it'd be a better rule if it was 3 images generated from static objects so that they're only showing off a sword, bike or other item in three shots... where as avatars should be allowed more freedom, especially if you put a ton of work into it.

I also don't want to see 10 submissions of two custom avatars in the missionary position but at the same time I don't think it is right to say you can only have 3 images of your work regardless of the other content in the subject of the piece.


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## Aden (Jan 25, 2009)

Cilis said:


> That doesn't seem fair.
> 
> An artist using any other medium can take a single character they designed and use that character in any number of poses, settings and situations.
> 
> ...



No, you're not getting it.

Two scenarios:

1. You have imagined a character. You draw said character ten times and post it. _That is allowed_. Each individual drawing is an original work.

2. You have created a character in SL. You screencap the character ten times and post it. That is _not_ allowed. The created character is the original work, not the screenshots. The screenshots exist to showcase the work. Maximum three submissions of one work.

One can make the analogy that screencapping an SL creation is like taking photos of a drawing you've done. You must see the distinction between the actual work and the representation or showcasing of the work.


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## Cilis (Jan 25, 2009)

Aden said:


> No, you're not getting it.
> 
> Two scenarios:
> 
> ...



If the poses, clothing and setting are different I shouldn't have my work thrown out because the subject presenting said work is one I've shown 3 times already. 

I could make the same argument about flash characters, as it is quite possible to make 'lego' parts of the character from side, front, 3/4 and negative 3/4. Then use this sheet to reproduce said character as much as I want in as many poses as I want with tweening and very little fresh work.

This'd be fine.

It is not fine for SL. 

Thats discriminating against mediums as far as I see it. If I'd made the animation myself, the clothing and so on, I should be able to show it regardless of who many times I've posted the character wearing it or presenting the motion (if I was using a flash video or GIF to do it for example.)

I guess what I mean is the current AUP is vague and I want it made more clear than it is. 

It'd be more helpful if it said "One avatar, three times at most." or "One avatar in the same presentation three times at most" 

This way we wouldn't get 20 uploads of a single scene, but at the same time not make people like me feel totally unwelcome in showing off new clothing designs or animations.


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