Walton Wainwright

Are you making what I think you're making

VCO's account may have been hacked. I've contacted the managers of the rental to mitigate the damages, so the VCO mainstore, at the moment, is locked. All prims giving away their store inventory have been removed, but I can't say the same for other places. This is catastrophic.

I will see to it after FF makes their statement.

I am not involved in any of FF's decisions. I mind my own business, build my sims, make my donations & enjoy the festivities. If I did, much of this would have gone far differently-I would not have put DRD (a friend of mien) in the position they were in. No one deserves that.

My information is directly from the FFOwner & Jaimy themselves. I am not involving people who are not involved with this, however-I have no hand in any of this aside from giving advice to both parties as a friend. FF leadership needs to make a statement, I agree.

There isn't & we will never know. But having witnessed a previous incident & having to advise a friend who did get swept up into a mass ban, it is the most likely case. I do think LL does become compliant & sweeps when a big company complains. The mouse is terrifying.

To clarify my stance: I am staunchly against AI on a personal level, but I keep it to my own spaces and promote non-AI works through a positive light, rather than a negative one. I prefer promotion, over stomping.

DMCAs do not give time to change. When a company or IP holder sends it, you have to take it down, or LL does it for you. From there, you have to work on changes after with LL and the IP holder, or take it to court. It can be very unforgiving.

I have denounced FF leadership for how they handled the situation many times in previous strings. I do absolutely agree they have mishandled DRD to lead to this situation, & it is why I'm still talking to DRD directly for a better picture of the situation.

As a result, several stores dedicated to Star Wars fandom roleplay had been taken down by DMCA. Their mesh is still there, still fine, it just simply cannot be sold as-is. Others just renamed their things away from trademarks like 'lightsaber', as to not be taken down again.

No, LL only nukes inventory with copybotting incidents. DMCAs only take down the offending items from being publicly sold. Example: the starwars incident came in after my friend made (original mesh) content for starwars RP. Years passed, and Disney finally noticed SL.

My point was, even the court of law recognises that AI art is problematic and does require theft to function. FF recognises the problematic nature of AI art, and thusly, decided to ban it. This however, does not mean I agree with it-I do think they should have said nothing.

As for FP stores that were banned, I have heard about this- It's a theory, but the stores that were banned had a lot of stolen content from games. They were likely DMCA'd by a company. It reminds me of when Disney nuked any store that did star wars content a few years ago.

AI art has its own issues due to the derivative nature of how it works without consent. Artists have recently won in court that AI art can not be copyrighted for this reason. FP stores give permission to usage on their products, so it is legal, and consensual.

I agree. I think, if the Faire has to commit to this rule, it should only involve the items being sold. If I had it my way, I'd be less strict. But I was also taken by surprise the Faire even mentioned AI at all, they could have said nothing & stayed neutral like most events.

To accusations: I've noticed designers not involved are accused of using AI in bad faith. These seem to be going through an echochamber where none can see/prove otherwise. I'm not threatened by this. I keep all source files and record of everything I make & can show it.

I spoke to Jaimy directly on this, bc everyone but the FFOwner, & DRD are just noise. According to DRD: The FFOwner took the boxes down the first time, but the staff member responsible for the boxes placed them back up. I don't know what happened there-possibly miscomm.

Red prims are markers from one staff member, who is also a designer as far as I know. Unless she got a friend to help place them out. I do agree that when the prims were taken down, they should not have went up again.

I did further clarification on what the red boxes were, since I did ask about them while building when talks rose among the faire backstage group, & witnessed this going down live at the time: teapawt.net/gogolita/status/204833…

The only 'vandalism' are the red boxes, which were markers set down by staff, based on reports from merchants, bloggers, & volunteers. Just in case: I was informed people thought those 'NO AI' posters depicted in the poster were real. They were in fact, not-that is an AI visual