Fret not, IMVU doesn't even have that right to use your work without permission. Hence why we've quashed that rumor twice now. Anything you upload to FA can *ONLY* be used on FA.

Copyrighting and you!

Any work enjoys the basic protections of copyright the moment it is fixed into a tangible medium of expression. For most of us, that means when we hit the 'save' button. So yes, the artist owns the copyright as soon as they create the work. However, the person who commissions the work initially own nothing, unless the artist transfers that ownership to them or just doesn't really care enough to muckle with it, which is functionally the same. You are free to issue DMCA takedown notices, cease and desist notices, and demand licencing in these cases.

However, in order to pursue legal action in court (which you alluded to doing), the work in question actually needs to be registered. So no, you cannot sue or file countersuit for existing non-registered work.

However however, IMVU can sidestep this obstacle with relative ease by issuing a compulsory new ToS that you must agree to before continuing to use the site. If you agree to it, then rights to future work created by you is owned by IMVU and possible retroactively stripping copyrights to previous works, depending on the language. Don't agree to it? Then you cannot continue to use the site and trying to force access as the same user will be illegal on your part afterwards. They are under no obligation to continue granting you access to FA. Most ToS documents have clauses that if you have seen it but haven't clicked agree OR decline, then you have so many days until it takes effect as if you had clicked 'agree' anyway.

Will this happen? Probably not. But, depending upon the contractual sale of FA, they are likely legally within their rights to do it. Though, at that point, they could expect a portion of users to purge their galleries, pack up, and move elsewhere. I'm doubtful they would be willing to force such action lightly if they enjoy actually having the userbase they supposedly just bought. My outlook on this remains positive.

Source: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/ (the first section of topics)

Edit: spelling and grammar, derp.

Hmm, seems like that was changed as registration was not required to actually have a court enforce a cease and desist. But yeah many people forget that a TOS tends to be legally binding. Granted there are certain provisions they cannot just throw in and it be legal; people try this all the time thinking because it's in writing it overrides any and all legal protections on the particular matter.

But yes, it's quite common for a TOS to include limited distribution rights to be granted to the site operator(s) as it's necessary to prevent some smart asses that would use it as a legal loophole to sue a website owner/operator for displaying their work without their consent. Agreement with the TOS is that consent. Section 2 of FA's TOS is the part that covers their asses that they can change the terms at whim without guaranteeing notice. Standard clause in just about every service someone uses. Seems shady but when you have over 1 million registered users it gets a bit tedious to place the burden on yourself to ensure everyone has been notified and accepts the TOS.

Even I joined this site without reading the TOS. I do not review it periodically nor do I know many people that would bother. But when shit happens then I can resort to it and see whether I am in the right or wrong and just take it from there. I've had my share of screw ups because I didn't read the terms (usually on a website I buy something at) and just chalk it up as a loss. No big deal.

People do steal images online for...whatever purpose they do. China's government does not recognize international copyrights but only those of their citizens thus why suing them over knock offs generally doesn't pan out for the copyright/trademark holders. My mentality is if I'm so worried about something getting used I just won't post it online. Policing a copyright, let alone when you have many works to keep track of gets time consuming and expensive to actually enforce. As you pointed out, registration is in fact required to go to court over it and I don't think that many people bother to register furry works, let alone furry porn, in the public record. Plus paying the registration fee required which would be put on the artist unless they transfer copyright to the commissioner; which is never really done in the furry world especially.

Oh no, that's not what I was saying: you can certainly enforce a cease and desist or DMCA order with just the copyright, you can even defend it in court if you're willing to pay the court fees. You just can't actively seek damages or other court ordered fines through suit without a registration.

The registration fees are like 35-55 dollars per article. Like hell if anyone is going to pay that to register each piece of artwork X3

Spot on about China's disregard for international copyright law. Ever watched "The Legend of Lucky Pie"? :P

Aaah yeah I couldn't find anything in the circulars on copyright.gov that said registration wasn't required to enforce a take down so figured it had changed. Well good then because registration shouldn't be required to actually enforce copyright. But yeah with the price of commissions already being an area of complaint for many it's unlikely an artist is going to chew up that much just for registration.

As for "Legend of Lucky Pie" I haven't seen that, nupe. In my previous job however part of it included handling copyright violation claims for Kindle content and we learned very quickly from our legal team that China is an asshat when it comes to copyright. lol

"Lucky Pie" is basically an extremely obvious Adventure Time knock-off. Some Chinese network CO probably told a Korean animation farm to "make it Adventure Time but not".

Which is kind of sad, the studio itself has some talent and might be able to make something special if given the chance to develop its own thing but hey, it's hard to resist jumping on all the immediate recognition for a local (and exclusive) audience.

Ah. Heh yeah plus the problem with knock offs when you see them is that it's usually so obvious and even feels fake. So it's not even as if it's an improvement over the original either. This behavior is definitely counterproductive to the expanded creativity this world actually needs; especially when the same stories keep getting rehashed over and over...and over.

This was copied from another person who posted this, so Keep in mind, this was a copied post as well, But like I said, it was just put up as a thing to be safe just to be safe, No other reason, As I am not -directly- worried it would happen, but I wanted to have it here just in case.