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RE: FED UP!
Showing pictures is a tiny fraction of the story. Someone made those images, created them and owns them. They are not free for use and no one is allowed to make a free profit of them. That is normal, mature business practice. If a third party wants to make a profit off another product, they get permission and/or pay to do so. This is simple business 101 and basic etiquette. It is like saying that anyone can take any picture from the internet, knowing it can be copywritten, and just use it to make money in some form. No one can do this and it is total disrespect for content creators. This is why there are licences in place for such things, DMCA and so forth. Failing that, one can always just be civil, and wait for permission before developing something. That is not the case here. This did not happen. No permission was waited for, no permission was ever given, and I think this message gets quite lost in amongst the emotion of the situation. NO permission was EVER given for images to be used. EVER. Quite the opposite, and to go ahead and just make a product without waiting for such permission is very bad judgement and very disrespectful, to say the least. There is no right to have ever used those pictures without permission. It is the most basic violation of copyright
As an example and one everyone, regardless of country would know... let's take Coca Cola. If I want to use a can or bottle of Coca Cola in my advertisement, my product or so forth... to help sell MY product or as part of it.... and especially if my product were to rely on some direct involvement of Coca Cola in order to make it marketable, can I really just go ahead and do it, without permission? I absolutely cannot. Furthermore if I used that name, "Coca Cola", in my product, can you imagine what would happen to me? To use a copywritten trade name without permission on my product? To say I would be facing a huge law suit, is a vast understatement and that is not just because it is a big brand. Coca Cola, or any brand is not crazy or unreasonable for doing that to me either... they have every right as it is their product and their trademarked name and so forth. Is Coca Cola being horrible and a hater of me to ask me to wait for them to say "yes"? To state that I should have waited for permission FIRST? To even ask me to pay for a commercial licence for use of their brand? Of course they are not... it is once again, basic good business that all these things are quite fair and reasonable. The world would be quite crazy, well, more than it already is... if one could just go around taking things that did not belong to us and do as we want with them, then go nuts when people tell us "no" and play the victim of our own circumstance
Put into context here... KittyCatS, like Coca Cola, is a trademarked name. The same applies with what I just said for Coca Cola. It is the same basic business rule regardless of whether it is Coca Cola, KittyCatS or whatever else. The name KittyCatS could not be used without one of two basic things or even both... 1. Permission from the creator and 2. Purchase of a licence for commercial use (IF the creator made that available). Likewise, one could not use images or any texture, or anything that belongs to another party and was created by them. That, in the most simple of terms, is copyright theft. Sure, we all have links we can see for our cats... we click the cat and then a pedigree link, for the KittyCatS website and see a picture. But is is a picture ON the KittyCatS website as part of their website. To take THAT link essentially, and put THAT resultant image and pedigree on a third party application is very much a different story and absolutely requires permission. It is not ok at all to just take it or profit off it... but that is exactly what has gone on here and is so very wrongful
Imagine you paint the most beautiful painting, someone comes along and snaps a picture of it and then puts it all over the place and makes money off your art and even uses the title you gave to the painting, when you have never given permission for any of this. Ontop of that, when you politely say "no you may not use it"... instead of being civilised and actually pretty grateful you didn't make a lawsuit against them, and accepting your "no"... they instead embark on a campaign, sometimes quite hateful, to try and force you to let them use the image. And just to add more... they go to the Coca Cola forums and throw a fit everytime something does not go their way, yet all the time they are HIDING from you that they never had permission from the START. That is the factual situation here, but as I say, it often gets quite lost in the sea of emotion going on
I used to run a well respected photography studio in SL and faced a similar issue, also involving images and copyright When photographers or myself were making SL photography or art, and logos, we of course wished to use a background, photoshop brushes, fonts etc... and even if we made our own backgrounds, which often happened, the resources for doing so came from somewhere. Someone had made that. Someone owned that and it could easily be copywritten. As with many types of product, there are 2 basic types of use... "free" which is for none profit and personal use, and "commercial" which means that you must pay for example for a commercial license, to the original creator in order to have the right to make money off their original work. That sounds pretty fair to me. It would not be fair to imagine one can take whatever one wants for free and use it regardless, with no respect for the original creator's wishes. Even if one has no awareness of these concepts, it is basic morality to understand that someone did not just make everything you can find as a free resource for you to benefit from and make money off. I feel that is nothing more nor less than simple mindfulness to say to oneself "I wonder who made this? I wonder if they are ok with me using this especially to make money off it?". It requires a certain mindset I will not even get into to bypass that and use it anyway and not care if you actually have permission, especially when money is being made off doing so
Now I was very clear and extensive at my studio about no one ever using a copywritten background. The rule was "if you are not sure if it is... do NOT use it. Err on the side of respect and caution for the original creator and artist". If no terms were stated, I would encourage a nice note to the creator asking for permission to use the background. Sometimes the answer was "yes no problem and I would love to see your finished work you make with it!"... sometimes it was "no thank you"... sometimes it was "sure, please buy the licence for commercial usage" (just to be clear what I mean here is... they were asking a third party to pay for the right to use and make money off their original work which is more than fair and respectful)... and sometimes they wished to consider it and think about it. All quite reasonable responses
However... I could not check every single thing all the time and the day came eventually, that a copywritten background was used. This photographer had NOT followed the basic rule of having permission to use an image. I loved the picture, the background looked great and I put in on display in our studio... I had no clue the background was under copyright and had trusted everyone would check as I asked they do and never use anything without clear permission. So I was quite stunned to find the original artist of this background contact me after a few weeks, and it was absolutely proven this was the artist, though I was dubious at first. They were very good about it, and asked me nicely to remove the image, and very politely asserted that I would face DMCA if I continued to use it, use it ever again or display the work. It was clear we did not have their permission. I was very grateful that they tried to speak to me so nicely and I had not just ended up with DMCA from go... I explained I had no idea it was copywritten, how sorry I was and would make extra effort in future to make sure it could not happen again, which I did and made sure they were well compensated. Now, to put in the context of this situation... can you imagine if instead of do that, I had said "no... I want to use this and will use it anyway... I am pressure you to let until you cave in and do whatever it takes that you do". Does that sound at all reasonable?
And would it sound reasonable if I embarked on a smear campaign against that artist and try to portray them as the bad guy? Try to turn people against them or act the victim they would not let me use copywritten materials? I don't believe that is reasonable at all. To try and say "omg look how horrible this person is... I tried to make something nice for you all and look how horrible they are"... BUT of course that only holds for as long as I hide the fact I never had permission, because if I told you that part you would see just how unreasonable I was
THAT is exactly what is going on here. A profiler can have been made that had NO images... from go... and there would have been no problems at all. It may not have been as pretty to look at it, but at least it did not involve copyright theft. Please consider this. One of the lures for me, originally, of this profiler type was that it showed a cute cat staring at you... a picture of a cute cat I THOUGHT it was approved to be showing. This was never true and the cute little smiling face of that cat on that product HID something huge behind it... it was the opposite to a real smile... it was never approved and always was quite honestly, stolen. So, when I think of it now, knowing facts I had zero idea of then, I have a totally different take on it... my assessment now would be.. yes it can look pretty but when that prettiness comes at a cost of theft from an original creator, well it's not really so "pretty" anymore now is it?
Also consider this... how likely really is it going to make it for someone to ever get permission when they are not terribly decent to the creator? Please understand that and the harassment that has gone on in order to try to force images to be used. You may read here the words of Callie yourself describing her experience...
https://kittycats.ws/forum/showthread.php?tid=28124&page=5
 "I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through" - Jules Verne
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Chin UP! 
