Texture ripoffs unlimited: lex Fitzcarraldo

Following on from my investigation at GamersBrand, I decided to look into the creator of the 10,000 textures box, now taken down from the GamersBrand Island.

I have been working through the boxes, checking who made the boxes and what is in them, but it is long hard work, because there are so many textures in many of the boxes that they take a long time to rez inside the contents. The main box itself was made by lex Fitzcarraldo, and so I decided to go see his shop. While waiting for the shop to rez, I checked his profile and saw that he is CEO of TNW, His profile says that “TNW is one of the largest and oldest mall/nightclub/corporate office sites in SL, taking up almost the full sim cochran on the mainland”. So once again, we aren’t talking some maverick individual who swoops in rips other people off and flies off into the sunset. This is an established resident with much to lose if he loses the confidence of the community.

Checking the texture vendors in his shop I immediately recognised Linden textures for sale $10. Drift Monde textures, whole sets, $10. Lillybeth Filth textures, $10 each. And textures from Kimsey Brodsky, Jack Belvedere, Pituca Chang, Crowcatcher Valen, Thili Playfair, Jonquille Noir…which should never be sold, and so on and so forth - and this was on *one* vendor! I could see the creators by clicking on the textures in the contents of the vendor, but I bought one of the Linden textures to make quite sure. Sure enough, itwas a Linden rock texture and Eric Linden was the creator.

I contacted Mr Fizcarraldo for a comment, and he said ” if you look at the textures I am the creator and someone ripped me off and put them out for free.” This man… THIS MAN thinks I am too stupid to check the creators on the textures instead of the boxes or the vendors they come I have contacted the creators whose textures I found in the vendor.

Even more worryingly, Mr Fitzcarraldo sells a texture shop in a box in the shop.onrez.com store, with a proviso clause that reads:

**please read before purchase. you have the right to sell the individual textures ONLY by purchasing this business in a box, you may not resell the textures in bundles. all items are to be sold on Second life only and not on sl exchange unless they are done individualy. if any bundles of these textures are sold on sl exchange, you will be in violation of the end user license agreement and lose all rights to resell the textures in any form
so please, play fair so we may all make some money

PLay fair? Any idea what that means Mr Fitzcarraldo? It means NOT selling Linden textures in your nasty little boxes or vendors. Not selling textures by Jonquille Noir or Thili Playfair or Gnubie which are meant to be free, and not ripping off the other texture makers in SL.

A little more digging in his profile … lex Fitzcarraldo is actually a member of the Second Life Exchange Commission… which says in it’s group mission statement that it is:

“Establishing private, voluntary, standards of performance, operations, and ethics for Second Life Stock Exchanges, corporations, stock brokers, traders, and holders. Enforcing said standards through market pressure and publicity. ”

Perhaps someone needs to take Mr Fitzcarraldo on one side and teach him what IP ownership means before anyone trusts him to enforce standards for anyone else.