The Worst Of ExitReality

Rory Hart, the Head of Development of ExitReality, has given an answer today in the comments of this article. They provide you two ways to prevent your objects and models to be incorporated to their search engine. Read this here.

As requested, I provide my feedback in the same article. ExitReality should not index anything without the prior consent of the builder. The builder should not do anything to prevent this.

Other software companies, like Vivaty or 3DXplorer, have their own object catalogs built by themselves, or rewarding the creators (that have previously given permission to use their objects and scenes).
ExitReality takes a great advantage over these other companies taking objects for their software without asking.

This is not how copyright works. You should ask first, and then use -- not the opposite: use first unless I forbid you to do it.

Just entered ExitReality, and discovered that the 3D worlds of some of the best worldbuilders had been linked from there. But then I saw that they were not named as authors, and that ExitReality had not even linked their websites...

I had warned about this in my previous review. This is a security flaw and a danger for the owner's copyright.

"...worlds have no editable usage rights. The author of worlds and avatars are unknown. They could add a floating tooltip or a text that said who is the creator of the worlds or avatars to prevent this."

Now, anyone (business or people) can take one of these builders' creations, and place them inside other worlds, or link them to their business or personal sites. Anyone can claim them as theirs, and use them for the purpose that they like, without asking for permission. In the minds of their visitors, those businesses or people may appear as the authors although they're not.

The only barrier is a simple question in a gray box, that is asked to everybody: "Is this your space? YES or NO".

This is not allowed in any 3D virtual community.

But ExitReality considered that everything that the worldbuilders did is free. Free and anonymous.
They talk about all these worlds, avatars and objects as "the repository". Even more, in an interview, they say that there's a lot of content "out there", as it was abandoned in a wasteland, and had no owner. They also add that the real owner will be very happy when their worlds receive "massive traffic" form ExitReality.

Oh, yes... Happy of seeing their worlds being used to promote any kind of business, without receiving any benefit of it. Happy of seeing that they are not credited anywhere as authors. And very happy when they see that they have no way to control if their place is shown or not, if it's public or not... Some will be even more happy when the bandwidth of the sites in which they host their files is annihilated by the "massive traffic" from ExitReality. And all that people that will visit their worlds will never know that they are the authors.


And.. Who Are These Builders?

There are some 3D worlds that are in the main page of ExitReality, and also in the main page of the search engine, that belong to well known VRML worldbuilders. I know them all, so here I will show you who are some of them, what are the real names of their worlds, and their websites.

They are all excellent builders, that have achieved a degree of mastery that is hard to achieve with any 3D technology for virtual worlds, even today.

If ExitReality has some problem identifying the author of something, I'm sure that the VRML community of users will identify it all in just some days. This article is just a start point for this work.


This is "Ancient Tree", the world of Argenzio. His world is hosted on http://www.dhyan.it/, which belongs to Paolo Bertucci. The URL of Ancient Tree, to visit it with Blaxxun Contact: http://www.dhyan.it/public/prova/contact.htm



These 3 worlds, that in ExitReality are named "the streets", "boat island" and "forest start" are in fact named: "Whitechapel 1890" (a world about Jack the Ripper), "Make and Break Harbour", and "Craig-Y-Ddinas" (based on Arthurian legends). They are done by Peter Griffith, also known as Griff. Griff's site is: http://www.3dworlds.ca/


This is Interneland, a series of worlds in VRML that worked with the Blaxxun platform. There's a lot of quality work here, and one can see this took them years to build all this, including the website. They wanted to build a community, maybe still want. They may be not too happy with not recognizing them as authors. Their site is: http://www.interneland.com/


This is from http://www.silondi.net/ Silondi is a laboratory of arts and new technologies, and has many works on VRML. The one of the photo is Virtual Palace Akropolis. You can see more many awesome pics here: http://www.silondi.net/infos_silondi/akropolis.htm You won't believe the pics, they reach a extreme quality.


This is called "forest" in ExitReality, but in fact, this is called "Rainforest discovery center" . This is done by Jeffrey K. Bedrick, a superb artist that has all kind of art skills, and VRML is one of them. You can read an interview about him and his works on Cybertown here, that is in his site.


This is "Hades", a world by Olivier Lunot, also known as Tidus. Tidus is one of the most skilled worldbuilders of VRML. His site: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/olivier.lunot/web3d.html


And this is "Cave Island", that was built by Bernd Ferdinand Heilenz, widely known as Erny. A rock inside the scenery says that he is the author, something that is a good idea, and many should do that. Unfortunately, visitors not always look all the rocks they find. Erny's site: http://www.ernys.de/


This is "Alien Planet", by Graham Perrett, also known as Thyme, the developer of Seamless3D, a program to model in VRML and X3D, specially good for effects, animation and avatars. Thyme is specially skilled at all this.


This world is done by Thyme's brother, known as Bumpy. Thyme's works and Bumpy's can be reached through Thyme's site: Seamless3D.


This is called "Jungle Head" in ExitReality, but in fact its name is "Jungle Nights", and is a world of cyworx.com. All there is built by Hermetic Cab.


Solutions

I encourage strongly the ExitReality staff to fix these problems as soon as possible. May not be a problem now, but will be in the future, for ExitReality and all the builders.
Many people will be upset if they see that their loved virtual cafe is the meeting point for a gambling or porn site, or if they see that their forest site is the business site of a timber industry.

It's just asking before adding models and worlds to the search engine. It's just adding some way to display the authors and their sites. This is how Vivaty, SceneCaster and others have done. Others, like 3DXplorer, just avoid this, and you get your own embed code.

The problem with ExitReality is that anyone can add a simple line and place your world as theirs in their sites, and even edit it.

For now, I encourage worldbuilders to add a sign saying they own the copyright, and their names inside their worlds, and also saying that any use for businesses or personal site must be authorized by the owner.

-Jordi R. Cardona-

© by Jordi R. Cardona. Link to this post without copying the text.

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