Ripped content....makes me angry.

This time no fancy picture, just this:



So, recently I have seen more and more and more people promoting and wearing armors and follower pets created by Manticore/Erebos. I admit, a bit ago I fell for the ruse myself and bought a cute little dog there, being rather unaware of the fact that the pets displayed are all ripped from games such as Final Fantasy as well...since I never played those.

And this is just ONE example out of all their stuff. I fear not a single item in that store is NOT stolen.

I myself became suspicious the moment the store began to release a ton of excellent mesharmors...that all seemed oddly familiar to me. :( I could bite my ass for wasting 450 Lindens on the small dog.

I made the experience that ever since mesh was introduced to SL, any random store that pops up with a TON of excellent stuff at once should be regarded with suspicion.

I for once am a huge supporters of original creators and I personally-hate- blowing money of peoples' ass when they sell stolen stuff. I am really sad to see just how few people seem to care about this and don't even feel a bit bad about buying stolen stuff. I guess a lot of people who aren't regular gamers aren't even aware of it, just like me when I bought the dog. FF is one of the few games I never touched.

I do not really think one can expect people to recognize every little piece of stolen stuff from other games, but I do think that a bit of common sense sometimes helps: Large amounts of excellent seeming stuff for low prices from a largely unknown store? = Likely ripped. Not always, but there's a good chance for it.

I personally do not even -mind- if people get stuff for themselves, but as soon as you profit from it, imho you are not only ripping off the creator, but also those who buy from you, letting them believe you buy legal stuff until one day they look into their inventory to find out it's been replaced with an ID from LindenLabs and an odd message in their IMs.

Food for thought.

Arica. :)

PS: I find some reactions, even from bigger bloggers, rather disappointing. Basically they go: It is LindenLabs responsibility to take them down.

Oh sure, it is. But do you really think that takes away -your- responsibility to not support thieves by throwing money at them or displaying their stuff knowling on blogs? I hardly will blame anyone who doesn't know it, but I will blame anyone who is being made aware and still says "Oh, that is LL's responsibility, not mine." Especially since the TOS clearly state that you, as the user of content, have a share of responsibility as well.

Modern Elfy Times!!! :)

Hello peeps,

so, I guess I owe an explanation (or not?) as to why I am have been sooo slow with everything lately. I keep telling myself that I'll have the time to blog more...but then I figure: NOpe, again no time. I am currently in a trainee programm for teachers and it basically eats up my time. I got my final exams in less than three weeks and well...I better not procrastinate. So until the 4th of March, I will probably not be blogging again after this post.

Today, I wanted to show you gyus an outfit I made for a casual OOC elf a s well as some of my favourite hairs that more or less recently have been released.

Here is my outfit. Forgive the not so cool picture, I tried to figure out how to get shadows to work properly. Oh well...skillfull me isn't all that skilled yet. :)


Hair: Exile (Kavar Cleanslate Mesh!!)
Shape: selfmade
Eyes: Mayfly (Arkesh baral, Mesh!!)
Ears: Illusions (Siyu Suen, Mesh!!)
Blouse: Tee*fy (Azure Electricteeth, Mesh!! Collabor 88!!)
Skirt: Götzsche (Goetzsche Resident, Mesh!!
Pumps: Elikatira (Elikapeda Tiramisu, not for sale anymore. :( )
Clutch: Milk Motion (Marie Lauridsen)
Belt: Tokidoki (Maya Levane)
Necklace: League (Nena Janus)

Here come my six current favourite hairstyles, in no particular order:


Both Magika hairs are just flawless. I love, love their system where you can buy the whole scale of natural colours (brunette, red, black, blondes) for only 250 Lindens. The textures and meshwork is awesome, and each hair comes in three sizes. Magika has improved so, so much over the years. Imho, Sabiny Gully is currently one of the best hairmakers out there. These hairs fall in a natural manner and are really long as they reach down to the lower back. I am in love with these. Also I think her haircolours look very nice and natural, even if I picked a not so natural red right now.

The LeLutka hair is very nice as well, the soft waves giving it a very innocent look. I love the fact that you can turn the hair accessory on or off. I have to unfortunately turn it off because it clips into my elven ears. :( But even without it, this hair looks really nice. Her haircolours and textures are very, very good as well. I really can rarely complain, unless she is making one of her strange hairstyles again for which you'd need a bottle of hairspray to have them stay that way. But oh well, this one is awesome! It also fits me quite perfectly, even without the alpha layer.



And here comes Eaters Coma. Kumii Yoshikawa always already amazed us with her really pretty styles that she made for SIXTYNINE. The style 'ME' was one of the favs I'd say, and I saw so, so many chicks with it. Guess what? Now she has redone it in mesh, and while I like Burley's remake of it as well, this one just made me SO happy. I am wearing it on the right. I do not think it is  a 100% exact replica of her old ME-style, and I wish teh bangs would be a bit lower on this one, but this is a thick, very wellmade and hot braid that goes over your boob. Truth has made a similar style, I believe it is called Froukje, but the way the braid just seems cut off at the bottom always bothered me. I love this. Eaters Coma in general makes very good mesh styles, even if not all of them are fitting my personal tastes. The style on the left is one of my current most worn styles as well. I think her textures are awesome, however I do wish she would add more colour-variety to her packages. Also, making hair, even meshhair, no mod is a bit sad. One should be abllowed to tint it a bit!

In the middle there is Exile, and I really, really do like it. Often enough, the shape of Exile's hairs doesn't go well with my headshape at all. In this case, I was SO hapy. Not only does it come with a bunch of cute, rigged meshflowers which you can obviously detach. :) The textures are nice and I really do like how it flows down over your boobs. I tinted the hair in this case. I bought the Naturals Package Exile offers and the tone 'Sunset' doesn't exactly strike me as a red tone, so I tinted it a bit,  e voilà, now I am happy. :)

I think that is something  creators of hairs should really keep in mind: Please, please add packages with one example of each natural colour! I know Exile, Eliaktira, LeLutka and Magika do this, but I really wish others would follow as well. Make it a little more expensive than  the usual packs, that justs eems fair. But nothing is worse than having to buy tons and tons of hairs in a new colour, just because youc hanged your colour after years. :D I know what I am talking about.

 

So, that's it for now and the next post will be more than liekly after the 4th of March. Unless I start procrastinating... :P

Arica