Well I still say you need some legal eagle to rewrite your rules because as they stand now they're too all encompasing regarding source files.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Albert Einstein

You scare me .... you are treading a VERY FINE LINE.

I for one will not go this direction. This is courting disaster and for me has SCAM written ALL over it! Been there! Done that! Got the burns to prove it!

well we are a new company, learning as we go.  Trying our best.  If you have suggestions for improvement, and constructive criticism, let us know.  Otherwise please keep your slanderous claims to yourself.

Regarding copyrights:

Our primary focus is on stimulating interest in 3D characters, and creating a venue for artists to show off their works, and form relations with our favorite artists, and providing prizes as incentives to participate.

Hi Sarah,

I'm not a lawyer and I certainly do not wish to be contentious in any way. I'm curious about what these avatars actually consist of. From what I gather from this site, it sells customised avatars to people for their own websites.

 I'm assuming these avatars are 2D image sequences placed into some type of shell (flash, etc.).

This sounds perfectly legitimate according to my understanding of the Daz licensing of their characters.

If they are distributing the 3d geometry of the characters in a format that would allow someone to extract the geometry without purchasing the base character, then this would be against the license agreement.

I would hope that the artists here would ask some questions to find out what is happening before they pushed the panic button.

Nobody has written anything that could be construed as Libelous. Yet. Insinuations are not libel and written accusations are not slander. You'll need to know the difference between the two. Also, you still have not addressed the language you used in your rules. Doesn't matter what you say to us here in the forums. Your written rules still can not be construed as legal with the current wording used. Change that wording and be more specific and folks will be less likely to make accusations against you.

Just a little history lesson here. There have been many attempts to steal content in the 3D and Poser community. Folks are going to be very wary of anyone who doesn't present a squeaky clean set of legal rules for any contests where rights of proprietary ownership of materials and content is concerned. Learn that fast and learn it well and you'll succeed in your endeavor. Ignore it at your own risk.  When someone points out the vagueness of your rules, it's not slander (Or libel to be precise) it's merely our attempt at getting you to update your rules so they don't leave wiggle room for theft.

Hopefully i can help clear up some questions. 

First and foremost, the main goal for this contest is to make contact with skilled 3D artists.  We will be creating many characters for our company over the next year or two.  We have already paid about $20K to artists to create about 30 characters for us. I have personally spent about $2000 of our company's money to purchase a wide variety of the base character meshes, textures, clothing, hair, props, etc.  We have a much larger future budget to continue to create many more characters and enrich the artistic community.

We want to make contact with new artists and pay them to create characters for us.  The contest is one way we are doing this.  this is the first time Sarah and i have set up a contest like this, and we're doing the best we can.

If you visit our website www.humanityonline.com, you can see that we provide 3D hosts for websites (as our first phase of services).  So we are looking pay for 3D characters to animate for our customers.

With respect to copyrights, for each winner, we will talk with every related content provider to ensure their rights and IP are protected and compensated.  If anyone has specific, constructive suggestions about how to best do this, let me know!

For example, what specific edits to the rules would make them more clear?  We didn't want to make the rules too lengthy and lawyeristic, but if there is something important missing i will edit them.  i've already made two edits, based on feedback from the community. :)

I'm a 3D artist myself (not very good, but i'm learning ;-), so i totally understand and insist that our company observes all copyright interests.  One of the things i really like about our founder is that he does things right, and builds companies to last. you can see my awful, amateurish attempts here:  http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=165576

cheers,
glenn

Glenn,

           I've already pointed out the particular text of your contest that calls it into question regarding legalities. I've also said you should consult someone in the legal profession regarding the wording changes you should make. As it stands now the words "including all source files and textures needed to create the character, hair, and clothing. The winning 3d characters, as well as source and texture files become the property of Humanity Online LLC and the artist conveys all rights to Humanity Online LLC;" are where you're tripping up. You can't claim ownership of "All Source Files". You can claim ownership of "All Source Files Created by the Contestant" but not the souce files they used that belong to someone else. If that isn't clear enough for you then I'm done trying to explain it!