developerGuidelines media/submission_guidelines_title.gif Submission Guidelines As a Developer, you are playing a very significant part in making There an exciting and interesting place to be. There is a world that is constantly growing and evolving, thanks to the contributions of your designs for the clothes, vehicles and objects that make up our world. This is the kind of personalization we have always imagined for There and we are glad to see it happening. In an effort to continue to encourage this kind of exploration and to make sure that you make the best use of your time while creating material, we thought it would help if we put together a clearer statement of our submission guidelines to help you develop content that meets our current requirements. Your submission will not be approved if your submission fits into one of the following categories:

1. Inappropriate: The custom content is deemed inappropriate or offensive.
2. Copyrighted: The custom content contains copyrighted material.
3. Technical: Your material does not conform to technical requirements.

Today, There is a world where every place is open to every member and there are no restrictions to movement. We have not created areas that are for adults only, for example. Until we create restricted areas that people enter of their own volition and with appropriate warning, we have to maintain a level of standards that recognizes that we have a broad-based and diverse membership. This means:

• The female and male avatar bodies must wear clothing that conforms to the Minimum Coverage Requirements described below.
• Female and male forms depicted on artwork must also comply with the Minimum Coverage Requirements.
• No sexually offensive or overly suggestive material.
• No material generally considered to be disgusting or offensive.
• No personal attacks.
• No inappropriate language.

In addition, the following material has been deemed inappropriate by There and by our community, and is, therefore, not permitted:

• Depictions of blood and gore, particularly on clothing items and vehicles.
• References to illegal narcotics, particularly marijuana.
• Objects that can be used to "grief" other members.

While there is plenty of room to express your creativity while designing clothing for There, certain restrictions are in effect that might result in your clothing submissions being rejected. Among these restrictions are the Minimum Coverage Requirements that define which areas of the male and female avatars must be covered with opaque (i.e. non-skin colored) material. Until recently, assessing just how much coverage was "enough" was purely subjective, and this usually resulted in inconsistencies in approvals. But now, thanks to a lot of work from our friends on the Developer Advisory Board (DAB), we have minimum coverage templates that define the limits for each of the clothing product types affected by the minimum coverage requirements. These requirements have been adopted by There and are now the standard used when reviewing clothing submissions. The DAB minimum coverage templates are available for download at the following link: Minimum Coverage Templates In addition, Developers can also download and install an application called Fig Leaf. This allows Developers to preview their textures quickly with minimum coverage templates applied and verify whether or not they are compliant. This is the same tool used by There's Approvers when reviewing clothing submissions, so it is the ideal tool to use to ensure that your submissions will be approved. The latest version of Fig Leaf can be downloaded at the following link: Fig Leaf Application Submitted material should not contain a brand name, a logo (including the There, Inc. logo), a celebrity name, a slogan or other copyrighted material, due to the protection offered by the copyright laws. In particular, we do not allow re-use, in whole or in part, of any of the textures or models that are contained in digital form within the product. This is, we do not allow Developers to reuse any of the texture (graphic) or model files that are cached in the ThereClient sub-folders. This applies to textures/models created by There, Inc. or our member Developers. There is one exception to the use of copyrighted material. We do allow developers to use screen grabs in the products that they create and submit. While the copyright in the product that is submitted by the developer is retained by the developer, these screen grabs are our copyright (and possibly other members'), but we will allow developers to use those grabs in the content that they submit. However, developers may not use the avatar of another member in their screen grab or the copyrighted items created by another member without the explicit permission of that member. In addition, the developer may not use the brand names, logos, celebrity names, slogans or other property of third parties. This is comparable to not being able to put someone's face on television without their permission. That is why when someone walks on TV in a basketball jersey, the broadcasting station blurs out the logo of the team. Occasionally, there may be particular areas within There where screen grabs are prohibited, but those areas will be specially designated. You can search the Internet (www.google.com) or the US Patent Office (www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm/) for any name or image you want to use. If you find someone using a copyrighted image without permission that does not mean that it is all right for you to use this image, too. The single biggest factor that impacts our ability to review and process submissions expediently is the time needed to research submissions for copyright infringement. We make our best effort to prohibit and/or remove unauthorized products in our world, and we will continue to explore and implement policies toward this effort. Copyright infringement is when a Developer submits an item that incorporates copyrighted material and does not have authorization from the copyright holder to use that material. Most often, said material will be in the form of a graphical image that is incorporated into the Developer's design. Approvers will reject copyright infringing submissions when they are reviewed, and the actions taken will be as follows: 1st Offense: Developer will receive an educational warning. 2nd Offense: Developer will receive a 50% refund of the submission fee and a warning that continued violations will result in further remedial action, which may include suspension from the There Developer Program. 3rd Offense: Developer will not receive a refund of the submission fee. The third offense will result in further remedial action, up to and including permanent suspension from There. A suspension from the Developer Program means that a Developer will not be allowed to make submissions for at least thirty (30) days. If during this period a suspended Developer attempts to make a submission, the submission will be rejected, the Developer will be notified and no refund of the submission fee will be granted. An assessment of the Developer's case will be made after the suspension period. Because of the potential confusion this could cause, we do not allow "official-looking" clothing or products that could be mistaken as official "There" products. While we do allow the use of the word "there" on submissions, we will not allow it if the word is presented using the branding conventions of There, Inc., such as "There" captioning rendered in a font similar to the one we use. We do not allow the use of the There logo on Developer created products. The relationship we have with our partners is very important to us and we want to be respectful and responsible towards them. As a result, we cannot allow advertisements for companies that are not currently our partners. However, we are always exploring new partnership ideas so if you have them, let us know. We also do not allow 1-800 numbers or Company website addresses other than There fansites. NOTE: In the past, we had approved items containing the logos and branding of Internet radio stations. These accommodations were made because the radio stations were considered "fansites" and authorizations were granted by the stations to use their logos and branding. However, frequent personnel changes within some radio stations resulted in disputes over the Developer rights to these items. Because these situations were difficult to manage and resolve, we no longer accept submissions containing radio station logos and branding. The technical reasons for rejecting an item are covered in the Painter and Builder Kit documentation. In general, submissions will be rejected if:

• Any of the submitted textures are smaller or larger than what is required by the product type.
• Any of the submitted textures are in the wrong file format (i.e. textures must be in the JPEG or PNG file format).
• Incomplete submission data (i.e. one or more missing textures).
• Any of the submitted textures are not correctly bound to the model they are submitted with.
• The submitted model's root node (a.k.a. dummy object) is not within the bounding box.
• The submitted model exceeds budget requirements (i.e. too many polygons) or is incomplete.
• The submitted model causes a predefined in-world behavior (i.e. animation) to stop working.
• The submitted model contains elements not permitted within the properties of the product type it was submitted as.

Fortunately, newer versions of the There Previewer and Stylemaker check for many of these technical problems when you attempt to make a submission, so in most cases the tools will prevent you from making submissions with problems like these. When your submission is rejected by an Approver, you are generally given a full or partial refund of your submission fee. The exception to this rule is when the item is rejected due to copyright infringement or texture theft. If your submission was rejected due to inappropriate content or copyright violations, you will be refunded 50% of your submission fee. For rejections due to other violations of the submission guidelines (insufficient clothing coverage, for example), you will be refunded 75% of your submission fee. However, if it is deemed that the rejection was due to an understandable error in submission (such as submitting your item under the wrong product type), an unexpected failure in our submissions system, a member requested rejection or you are a first time Developer and still unfamiliar with the There submission guidelines and policies, you will typically receive a full refund of your submission fee. When submitting products to There, please make sure what you submit is exactly what you want to have in-world. Once your item has been approved, it is very difficult and labor intensive to remove it from our Production servers, so we will not accommodate requests to do so, and refunds will not be granted in these situations. Thanks for all your creative contributions, and we look forward to seeing more of your designs in There!