As many furs know, IMVU takes a cut on the sale of visual art by third parties (including those who're less-than-honest about its origin). What hasn't been widely talked-about in furry fandom is the audio for sale in their marketplace. Apparently they got into a real mess back in 2008 by:
stopping new audio samples offered for sale for being longer than 20 seconds, but
keeping the old samples available for sale and previewing them at their full length, until,
two and a half years later, they cut down previously "purchased" music to 20 seconds.
It didn't help that they said "you own this" when looking at purchased items. The plaintiffs claimed this affected sums of $3.3-4.5 million and 432,000-875,000 people. Now they'll get their samples back - unless they're taken down for copyright infringement (said to be one reason for the 20 second limit, though never officially admitted). There are credits on offer, but the hard cash is almost all for the lawyers.
Or 2016? Aside from the recent snafu regarding FA's developer and last year's account data/password hash breach, I just read that IMVU paid over US$1.1 million to settle a class action lawsuit which had been rumbling on since 2011.
As many furs know, IMVU takes a cut on the sale of visual art by third parties (including those who're less-than-honest about its origin). What hasn't been widely talked-about in furry fandom is the audio for sale in their marketplace. Apparently they got into a real mess back in 2008 by:
It didn't help that they said "you own this" when looking at purchased items. The plaintiffs claimed this affected sums of $3.3-4.5 million and 432,000-875,000 people. Now they'll get their samples back - unless they're taken down for copyright infringement (said to be one reason for the 20 second limit, though never officially admitted). There are credits on offer, but the hard cash is almost all for the lawyers.