Questionable, or not?

One thing that causes some controversy among Second Life content creators is the issue of freebie resellers; people who take items that were released with full permissions, sell them, and profit from someone else's work. This is almost universally frowned upon; but there's another issue--what of someone who takes part of a full-perms item, and incorporates it into a work of their own?

My friend Morrigan Repine alerted me to a shop owned by one Chigadee London, called 'Couture Chapeau', which seems to be...well, I don't want to say 'ripping off', so let's say 'inspired by' Megg Demina's justly praised Chapeau Tres Mignon. Ms London has a variety of hats for sale here, some that are rather striking...but if you do what we did and inspect the objects on display, you'll see that most of the striking detail work is not Ms London's, but was sourced from full-perms items by other content creators. For instance, the feather detail on the 'Faerie Feathers' hat, priced at L$400, turns out, on closer inspection, to be the work of Mistress Midnight, from her 'Lace Wings' .


Inspecting the prims of the other hats on display (you'll have to be quick, as they're all on a temp-rez cycle) reveals that the butterfly on the 'Secret Garden' hat is the work of Saajuk Bogomil; the feather on the 'Petite Caponita' hat is by Natalia Zelmanov; the tassels on the shoes on sale in the shop are by Siggy Romulus; part of the detail on the 'Callas Chapeau' is the work of Billie Sunchaser; and the rose on the 'Black Rose Chapeau' is by Logan Bauer.

Personally, I see no problem with incorporating full-perms items into something one creates for oneself...but it seems to me that when one incorporates them into something intended for resale, it skirts the line of questionable ethics...if it doesn't step right over it.