Bad Katz is Fighting My DMCA in Second Life™

If you recall my last blog post about my Titania Fairy Wings being infringed by Bad Katz, known as Katz Republic in Second Life™, there’s now a part 2 because she filed a counter notice with Linden Labs which forced me to sue her in order to defend my IP, and I found MORE evidence she infringed my IP . The full details of the claim aren’t publicly visible yet as of this writing, but the link is https://dockets.ccb.gov/case/detail/26-CCB-0586 and shows the names of the parties involved. It should be fully visible within a couple days.

Ironically, she’d asked me to remove her city and state from the screenshot of her Etsy purchase receipt in my previous blog post and now that, and her real life name will become public record as that is what the CCB requires.
If you missed the 1st post you can see it here, and below is a comparison of my original wings and her infringing ones from my Exhibit A file. Ignore the coloring, and look at the veins as well as the outline, which you can see matches almost perfectly to that 2007 real life wings photo of mine.
The SL image of my wings shows the version I had in SL before she released her infringing version. Below that are the counter notices.

I found my 2017 Titania 2.0 wings vendor image so I could prove they predated Katz’s infringing use in SL as well. Below is a screenshot of that file with the info from my hard drive, because unfortunately SL’s Marketplace doesn’t show original listing dates. I wish they would.

For the heck of it, this was my oldest Titania Fairy Wings product ever as far as I know, back in July 2007.

Even if she never saw my wings in SL, I can prove that my Titania design was on Etsy months before she released the infringing items, as this sales email shows they were in my shop at least since August 31, 2018.

And, although it might be too late now to edit my claim details, I should be able to add this file, which is a screenshot of my email notice from an SL group that Katz was also in, announcing the release of the Pixie meshes! I literally just found this in the middle of making this blog post. As you can see, the date is Nov. 3 2018 which is months after the confirmed presence of my Titania overlays in my Etsy shop and a year after I re-released them in SL.

Oh and if she tries to argue that the curls on the tips and tails relieve her of an infringement charge, guess what - I’ve made them already with curls myself over a decade ago in 2010 as seen below, and posted them to my Deviant Art gallery here: https://www.deviantart.com/faeryazarelle/art/Titania-Grand-Wings-side-160183242.

There was also the infringement of my Bee Fairy wings overlays, which expressly forbid using in Second Life™ in the Terms of Use, that I had proof of her purchasing from me but the infringing texture I bought from her before she removed listings wasn’t all that obvious.

But then I found this SL image from one of her customers, Mondi Beaumont, that confirmed she used them, shown here under fair use solely for the purposes of news reporting & showing evidence of a legal claim. I darkened that image just slightly and color corrected to bring out the green & cyan to more clearly show those highlights & shadows near the wings’ tips, which perfectly match my Bee Fairy Wings texture - and it’s a texture that came from a combo of my real life wings photo and digital hand painting & editing. I edited the colors in my Bee Fairy Wings to match the image & warped them the same way Katz did, then inserted that into a mask shaped like her wing shape - and it’s nearly a perfect match that’s impossible to be an accident.

This was the only listing I managed to grab a screenshot of before things got removed. It wouldn’t have been quite as bad if she wasn’t selling the texture itself, but this woman has that kind of audacity.

In addition to all of this evidence, I got a message from a disabled SL creator after I posted about the issue in an SL Discord group, who says they had a similar experience with Katz!
They said Katz had used their script but violated the terms, and after making an agreement to pay the scripter a percentage of all sales of the items containing that script, Katz eventually stopped paying. When Lunasea used the DMCA process to have the item(s) removed, Katz sent a counter notice. As this was before the CCB became available, they could not afford to sue her in court, so Katz continued to profit unfairly off their work without paying the agreed upon royalties.
Lunasea also says “I also found that she and her partner frequently obtain meshes from stock model sites for use in SL (often after decimating the model, keeping the UV and primary structure remind the same). I reported this to both Turbo Squid and CG Trader though I doubt anything came of it.”

None of these allegations are surprising to me.
Her over the top reaction to my DMCA, contradictions of her own words, and false accusations against me already led me to believe she was trying to deflect after getting caught. Like a cornered animal, she was lashing out with anything she thought might hurt my reputation.

She even left comments on the previous blog post which you can see, asking me to censor the Paypal receipt even further by also hiding her city and state, and to watermark the screenshot texture of her wings. I found that funny since at least one of the wing textures - she strangely layered mine on top of another texture like a cicada wing and she also displays the whole texture in her Marketplace listings - I went ahead and did those things, all while she continued to insult me and lie about the situation, publishing her comments and mine despite her assumptions that I would keep them hidden.

I have nothing to hide. Now that I’ve had to go through the whole process of putting together a legal claim and evidence & had to actually spend money to do so, I would like monetary compensation for infringement. With her defamatory statements in her group notice and my blog post comments, I can prove the infringement with intent to harm my business, and now I’d like to know just how much money she’s made off of my IP.

Checkout Error on Fairy Wings Listings is Now Fixed

No more having to type 3 periods to checkout!  

Screenshot of the Fancy Fairy Flash Sales page showing 6 sets of fairy wings with 2 sold out

Hey fairies! I've fixed an error in the checkout page that wasn't allowing a lot of payment methods such as Shop Pay, Apple Pay, etc. to be used.
This spring I was getting a lot of bot traffic on my checkout page, causing a ton of shipping calculations that was making me nearly max out on my Boxify shipping app subscription, so I implemented their suggested fix of requiring customers to put 3 periods into the optional 2nd address field.
BUT the pop up was telling people to put the periods 'above', which there was no field for, causing confusing and I'm sure for some causing them to give up on purchasing.
I also had no idea when I did this, that it would hamper any payment methods.

So I've now completely deleted that prompt for entering 3 periods and am using a different Shopify app to deal with bot traffic and scraping that won't interfere with anyone trying to make a purchase.

I'm sorry if you've encountered this, but the good news for you is that there are still 4 sets of wings from the recent drop available, as well as the cannabis fairy wings, on my Flash Sale page here: https://fancy-fairy-wings-things.myshopify.com/collections/flash-sales

New Fairy Wings and Summer Update

Fairies, I'm so sorry to keep you all waiting so long for new wings!
These wings are all ready to ship, and will list on Tuesday Aug. 25 at 8pm PDT.

Sorta long update ahead with sale info, and my statement about gen AI use in the wing making world.

Iridescent fairy wings in purple, pink, teal and black have wavy antennae & upward curving tips, worn on a dress form, front view

I'll have 2 painted sets this time, one is the Angeline wings in bold purples & blacks with touches of pink and teal laminated with the Diamond Fire film and black veins (above). They will be $459 plus shipping.

The other painted set is the Elora design again, below, this time with a sort of deep teal / blue as the main color with purple & fuchsia accents on the Ultraviolet film with black veins. They will be $449 plus shipping.

Transparent iridescent blue, fuchsia and violet fairy wings with black veins, 3 panels on each side, bottom panels have tails that curve inward at the bottom. Worn on a dress form, front view

Then there's the Verena design in clear Diamond Fire with black veins, which will be $235 plus shipping.

Transparent iridescent fairy wings with wavy tips and black veins, worn on a dress form, front view

I’ll also have the Elora in clear Opal with gold veins for $259 plus shipping (below).

Transparent iridescent blue fairy wings with gold veins, 3 panels on each side, bottom panels have tails that curve inward at the bottom. Worn on a dress form, front view

I might also have a repeat set of Lyra or Lilian designs as well.

They will be listing on Tuesday, August 25 at 8pm PDT, and as always will be on my Flash Sale page here: https://fancy-fairy-wings-things.myshopify.com/collections/flash-sales
Remember, they won't show up until the start time.

I've also finally found a way to record all my brush strokes in Photoshop in the background just like Procreate does! It's an extension called PixelRec Pro.
I usually forget to record any of my painting because I'm just focused on getting the work done, and with a screen record there's so much dead time in there while I'm sitting staring at the screen trying to decide where the next color goes or whether I like what I just put down.
This way I don't have to be so focused on recording and it only records actual activity.
I didn't find out about it until I had already gotten some painting done, but I wasn't totally happy with it so this video below shows where I started re-doing it all the way to finished.

The beginning shows the brush stroke re-play of my sketch for this wing design in Procreate on my iPad. I took video from my phone so I could also show you I don't have any hidden layers I'm tracing, since I know Procreate has that function in its brush stroke replay videos. Photoshop and PixelRec do not.

Process video showing the Angeline fairy wings being designed and painted

No part of my wings are gen AI!

I really want to make it crystal clear that I am not using gen AI for my work at all.
There's some wing makers who use it openly (at least in the Etsy listings they disclose it), like moon.moth.wings, and others who certainly seem to use it and have many people in the comments asking if gen AI was used or flat out accusing them of it with no replies disputing that from the artist, like Fairykill_Creations.
I've seen many also now printing either existing butterfly / insect wing photos, clipart stock, and what I'm pretty certain are gen AI designs on clear plastic with wires glued on the upper edge of the panels, such as thewingsua, who also was selling copies of my Titania wings without permission before I reported them on Etsy.
That's a common trajectory, to at first only fabricate wings using nature images, purchased images or stolen ones printed on either fabric or plastic, until gen AI came out and then all of a sudden their style completely changed, with super detailed 3D looking art on them after gen AI image tools such as MidJourney came out in 2022.

Then there's a whole other crop of wing makers now who are using cut files sold by ATP Textures, who was called out in the last couple years by other wing makers for allegedly copying their designs, which is why you may be seeing many different new wing shops selling the same looking wings. They also use gen AI for some of their digital products, so I'm assuming they might also be using it for their digital wing designs they sell too.
Though I experimented with gen AI early on it was only for fun before I knew about the extent of water usage & artist exploitation, to test it to see if it was reproducing my work for legal purposes, and to see for myself how it actually works as well as how to recognize it if I see it, since the AI detectors are sadly not accurate enough. They too often provide false positive results, which can be really damaging to legitimate human artists’ livelihood.
I wish it had stopped evolving before it got too good at creating photo realistic results, before companies started laying off workers in favor of using gen AI instead. If it had stayed weird & funky with obvious defects like extra fingers & hair merging with clothing, it wouldn’t be as problematic & disruptive to the market as it is now. Not to mention, the rapid expansion of AI data centers producing awful noise and pollution especially in marginalized communities
There’s a lot I could say, about areas of nuance and my criticisms of some of the staunchest anti-AI activists & the way they sometimes cause harm when publicly ‘witch hunting’ people they think are using AI without allowing for the possibility that they got it wrong, but this blog post would be miles long.

Bottom line, I've always taken pride in creating my own original, human made unique fairy wing designs since 2003 (I made my 1st set for myself in the 1990’s) and I plan to keep it that way. As far as I know I was the first to put iridescent wings with cut metal vein structures on the market as well as the first to come out with convertible versions of them.

One last thing, I'm so sorry I didn't post about the light up and crystal encrusted Titania wings I made recently for an order, I was stressing about other things going on in my life that I forgot. But I've posted a video of them on Insta and FB if you'd like to see:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db1bpUTSX_Y/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsi=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
I may make a separate post about those sometime.

BRAND. NEW. FAIRY WINGS! Dropping Monday, 6/29/26 at 8pm PDT

3 brand new designs from my 2025 registered collection are making their debut!

Transparent iridescent violet fairy wings with gold veins, 3 panels on each side, bottom panels have tails that curve inward at the bottom. Worn on a dress form, front view

I'd like you to meet Elora, Angeline, and Verena, the 3 new designs that will be debuting next week.
Elora (above) is one of my favorites of the new designs, and I decided to give her a simple & subtle paint job in stripey and freckled purples with just a touch of teal on the tips. Lots of clear areas allow the transparency & iridescence of the Ultraviolet film to show through.
I think this paint scheme with the UV film gives them an especially ethereal and delicate appearance that I really like, and I'm calling this colorway 'Shy Violet'.
The veins are metallic gold. Pricing these slightly lower than normal since they didn't use a ton of ink at $449 plus shipping.

Transparent & iridescent fairy wings with blue shine and gold veins have antennae & upward curving tips, worn on a dress form, front view

Then we have the Angeline, above, laminated in Opal film and gold veins for $249. She is an offshoot of my old classic Azarelle design that’s also incorporated in simpler form into my logo.

Sheer green iridescent fairy wings with wavy tips and gold veins, worn on a dress form, front view

The Verena wings (above) will be $239 plus shipping and are laminated in the Patina Green iridescent film, also with gold veins.

I may have a couple repeat sets, and if I can fit them in they will be the Lyra wings in their original smaller than standard size in Opal with gold veins and the Lilian wings in Baby Blue with gold veins.

To confirm, the flash sale will be Monday June 29 at 8pm PDT at this link:
https://fancy-fairy-wings-things.myshopify.com/collections/flash-sales

If you’d like to support my art further while I try to figure out how to survive getting infringed on left & right and a bad economy due to Trump’s politics, you can subscribe to my Patreon where members get the earliest notice of new releases and wing sales:
https://www.patreon.com/c/faeryangela

My Titania Fairy Wings Infringed *Again* in Second Life by Full Perm Store

I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet, I have some big news that will explain some of my silence and some of it ties into this infringement which I’ll say more about at the end.

Photo from Second Life showing a sitting elf statue wearing sheer white fairy wings with white veins, pointed upper panels and lower panels with a tail, beside it are fairy wings of the same shape and design in pastel sheer buble colors.

Above, you can see the ‘Bad Katz Pixie Sitting’ mesh character wearing fairy wings that are very much the same as my own Titania Fairy Wings I have in SL which are placed right besides it to show the similarities. She curled the tips of the upper panel and the tails, and the tails have been very slightly warped but none of those tiny alterations are transformative enough to make any of this acceptable.
’Substantial Similarity’ is what courts look for, and whether the core or ‘heart’ of the design has been used. This fits the bill.

I didn’t get a chance to save screenshots of all the individual Marketplace listings before she started removing them. I guess the customer I initially approached about this must have let Katz know so she started removing - or maybe only hiding or archiving the listings, because I still got a notification from LL that they’d removed all the infringing mesh ‘pixie’ characters.

Above are the 2 DMCA reports I sent for Bad Katz items. There are 2 because I also reported some of the fairy mesh characters and textures she was selling since she’d bought my Bee Fairy Wings Stock in 2017, and it appears she used those overlays in her SL item and violated the terms of use that clearly state they must NOT be used in Second Life. Crediting me is also a requirement that appears to be violated.
The Terms of Use included with the older version she purchased is below, under the wings overlay graphic. The only difference with the current version is the newer one includes even more information.
You can also see those overlays on my site now here:
https://fancy-fairy-wings-things.myshopify.com/products/bee-fairy-wings-transparency-stock

Listing graphic for the Bee Fairy Wings showing different colored versions of the iridescent wings against a dark green background with text saying *Stock rules apply, NOT for redisribution!
Screenshot of the Terms of Use file included with the Bee Fairy Wings Transparency Stock that Bad Katz purchased, stating it's not to be distributed in any way in Second Life

I’m not sure if she realizes I have the receipt for her order from Paypal (above) showing her Bad Katz company name, but I did include that information in my report to LL. I’d assume they would send all that to her, but I’m not 100% sure.
She bought them through Etsy however, before I took them down from there to only sell from my website. This was when we’d get 2 receipts before Etsy started processing the funds from orders using Paypal themselves, so I got an order notice from Etsy with her real life name, address & phone number which matched her contact info on the Paypal receipt for that same purchase.

Paypal sale receipt from Bad Katz for Iridescent Bee Fairy Wings Transparencies PNG Files, with email, ph# and address censored except for the state and country

Unfortunately she started hiding or archiving some of these items before I could take more screenshots. Above are the Bad Katz Fairy Texture Christmas and the Bad Katz Fairy Texture Blue. The Christmas version probably showed the wing details with what looks like my iridescent highlights more clearly, but I didn’t get a chance to purchase those to view them up close. If she has proof that what’s in use was not my overlays I’d love to see that.
But knowing that my Titania wings were for certain copied, I’m pretty sure the overlays were used and either way it shows access to my designs from my own shop and awareness of my ownership of them.
While I obviously don’t own exclusive rights to bee wings, I DO own the rights to this version of them. The overlays are from a real life photo of the real life wings I made, and then further edited and painted on. I don’t understand why those overlays would be used instead of a texture that actually fit that wing shape correctly or just, you know, create the vein work entirely.

A day or so ago I got a notice showing I’d been ejected from the Bad Katz Textures group in SL. I find it funny how those who’ve infringed on my copyright tend to be the ones to somehow block me, when I should be the one doing the blocking and they should probably be doing some apologizing or explaining but it’s so common that I’ve gotten used to that behavior.
But today, I friend showed me this notecard from her group, shown below.

Screenshot of a text notecard from Bad Katz Republic in SL filled with lies and misrepresentation of my efforts to address the infringements spawned by her products.

This kind of response is sadly pretty typical when I catch someone infringing on my work. Over-the-top false accusations against me that I’m ‘harassing’ them or others, insulting my character, although accusing me also of being drunk or having paranoid delusions due to drugs is a pretty unhinged thing to say in response to a DMCA notice.

She falsely claims I’ve harassed her customers, when what actually happened was that I sent a fairly polite message and notecard to the person asking them to remove the items infringing on my Titania fairy wings. I even told them I understand if they came across my design from a third party since this design has been so frequently stolen and redistributed online. I usually don’t even do this, I started going straight to DMCA reports a while back because of the aggressive responses some infringers gave me but I thought I’d try this time in case they did indeed get it from a source who distributed it illegally & represented it as their own.
I also noticed the 2 customers were both selling the same ‘pixie’ and ‘fairy’ meshes so I figured there was a common source.
One of them was kind enough to let me know who they bought it from.

The other was Xanthe Firehawk of Enchanted Fantasy. I wasn’t going to call them out initially since I assumed they didn’t know at first. But after they responded almost as badly as Katz did in messages, ejected me from their group, then banned me from their main store, they start to seem suspicious of hiding things from me. They did remove some of the items, as LL mentioned a few that they couldn’t locate, which I even thanked them for, but getting banned or blocked is always a red flag - I had not even banned them from my store like I probably will now. So since I’m experiencing defamation of character by Katz and she seems to be commiserating with Enchanted Fantasy about this, I’d like to head off any potential slander or libel that may be coming from them as well and show you exactly how our conversation actually went, below. And I do consider that notice from Katz to be actual libel. Notifying someone of infringement isn’t harassment, I’m not under drug induced paranoid delusions, and she did in fact infringe on my Titania Fairy Wings as well as violated my license terms if she used those Bee Fairy Wings textures in SL which it appears she has.

This is what I was met with the next time I tried to visit their main store - ban lines.

Screenshot showing my SL avatar in a 'ban box' with yellow ban lines. The SLurl shows 'DO NOT RETURN BOX, Enchanted Wood, which is where Enchanted Fantasy is located.

So fairies, this kind of thing is why I’m going right back to simply reporting infringements rather than try to be nice and give them a heads up to fix it on their own. It’s usually not worth the vitriol I get when I do try to communicate directly.

Ironically, Katz is complaining that I never mentioned the infringements to her directly but she had every chance to reach out to me as well after her customer let her know about the issue. I had not banned or blocked her yet but I will now.

Katz says she’s going to counter the removals with a counter notice.
Well if she does so she’ll need to provide all her real life contact information when she does so. Providing false contact information is a violation of DMCA law and they would not need legal escalation from me to get in trouble for that.
It would also force me to escalate to a legal claim, which I’m more than happy to file if it comes down to it. I’m willing to look at her argument that she didn’t use my Bee Fairy overlays if she can prove that, but the Titania wings are 100% my original design and I will not allow those to go back up under any circumstances.

I’ve had several legal copyright settlements, filed several CCB lawsuits, a couple federal ones, and in fact just won my first lawsuit a month ago for the same Titania Fairy Wings design although I still haven’t gotten paid and have no idea if I ever will, due to the infringers being overseas.
That’s the big news I’ve been sitting on, and still processing, while I get ready to release new wing designs (possibly next week!) and try to develop different items that may sell better in this tough economy.

If you’re curious about the details of that, I’ve written about it in my Patreon and you can read it for free without a subscription. I have no energy left now to make another blog post about it here tonight:
https://www.patreon.com/faeryangela/posts/i-won-my-first-161112980