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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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