Screen-Shot Pirates

How do you all feel about using screen shots and reverse engineering to recreate another person's hard work in SL. Whether it's Nephalaine's one-of-a-kind outfits, Cubey Terra's vehicles, or Kendra Bancroft's breathtaking structures, I have always felt that these individuals deserve to have their hard work protected from screen-shot pirates.

What do you think?

~Ulrika~

I think it sucks. But I don't want to lose my ability to take screenshots for myself.

I think, as I always have, that it's a shitty thing to do, but I also think, Ulrika, that you are playing this one up a bit too much. I believe that the point has been made.

I'm making no point. Instead, I have come to question whether screen-shot piracy is still considered a bad thing in SL anymore. I recall great battles over it in the years past but recently not so much. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to see what individuals think without brining up that other thing.

~Ulrika~

I think you need to let it go already. We all know what this is really about.

Come off it, we know you're are making a point about the actions of various citizens of N'berg. I'm quite well aware of this tactic in forums.

Personally speaking I think there's been some disgraceful dealing there, but you're in danger of annoying people about it and losing sympathy, so I'm just saying it might be an idea to step back. There are already quite enough posts and threads on the topic.

I just put the following idea in the Suggestions Forum. What do you think? Does it sound like something that most the "lawful" users here would want?

People can steal textures from any source illegally, and the same goes for models. Perhaps a web-page publish database log should write some snap shots of your texture and or model (with a wetmark) to an official page to allow for a content copyright method that dates your creation whenever a product is "finalized" or imported. If it is stolen from another source, anyone can look at the web-page and complain to the thief and enter a grief with that person and prove that they created it before or somewhere outside SL. This way SL can't be in anyway accountable(not that they could be anyway for that individuals theft - see Marvel vs NCSoft, where users were making Marvel characters with the open-ended tools available in-game and texture importing) SL should make sure that the amount of times something gets sold is kept tallied (can be used for re-imbursement).

It's not "fine" to use screen shots to reproduce Nephilaine's outfits, but that's not what this poll is about.

I hate having to break out an alt to do what I should be able to do in the General forums without justifying myself. However, since you're pressuring me for an honest answer, I will state that I created this thread because there are many folks in the other threads who seem to think screen-shot texture piracy is fine. I wanted to create this poll to verify that opinions haven't changed and to use it as evidence in an upcoming trial.

Further, I'm interested in seeing screen-shot piracy become a violation of the LL ToS. I think we've all suffered from it long enough.

~Ulrika~

Frankly on the Grand Scale of piracy efforts, screenshots are the least of our worries. Just having a picture of something doesn't mean you'll be able to recreate it. "Reverse engineering" is much more complicated than that. In my mind, the GLIntercept exploit is much more worrisome.

But in any of these cases, policing and enforcement is so difficult that you're ultimately faced with removing legitimate features to protect a few content creators. I'm not in favor of that, either.

One of the great features in SL is the ability to take pictures of ourselves, our builds, our friends, and even upload them to Snapzilla. Anyone who wants to take that away or try to limit it deserves a book written about them that will be on the store shelves next to "The Grinch".

You can't legislate morality, but residents can be made aware of the issues. Yet at some point, enthusiasm and concern does cross the line over into zealotry. That's counter-productive, too.

How can you prove that something is an original? We're allowed to take a photo of an item in 1st life and then rebuild it in 2nd life. But we're not allowed to take a photo of a 2nd Life item and rebuild it in 2nd Life?



That's far too much thinking for one day. I'm going to bed.

I've never heard of this before. Unlike the low-quality screen-capture method, are you stating that this would allow someone to pull out perfect textures and even building dimensions? I know screen-capture piracy occurs in SL but has this GLIntercept exploit been actually seen before in SL?

~Ulrika~

Of course it wrong.. what a silly question.. theft is wrong full stop..

Yes. I've played with it, as I do any exploit, to see how bad it is.

The method is to use a changed OpenGL linked library in the stead of the one your computer currently uses, this critter then takes the image and other information being sent to your graphics card and stores it to your hard drive. This means every image/texture, every shape and vertex.

To snatch the latest and greatest skin, fabuous texture, or clothes you just need to be able to see it on screen.

Screenshotting is a pale ghost of this one.

I'm not sure if this little trick is available for Linux of Mac OS X (there is nothing about either platform that would prevent this), but it is available for Windows.

Yes.

it's wrong, but i think it's easier to say than ACTUALLY doing it. who ever does, must have alot of time in their hands...

I thought you made a big announcement about quitting SL some time ago.

It's, of course, wrong!

Unless someone's pirating a texture/building by a creator who's name starts with 'U' and ends with 'lrika'.

In that case, it's fine

I'm back from the grave temporarily to take care of some unfinished business.

~Ulrika~

I thought something smelled like it went bad.

ZugZug... a year or so ago, when I first became aware of this, I managed to grab pretty much everything. There's more than one way to skin a cat, too, and you can grab more than just textures... sounds, animations... I won't go into details but the truth is out there.

If you really want to absolutely protect your textures from theft, there's only one thing you can do: stop making them. Barring some kind of quantum computer that uses entaglement to actually duplicate your synaptic patterns in real-time, that's the only way to protect your textures from someone stealing them.

The next best thing is to copyright them, stick them on the web to show prior art, and dutifully prosecute anyone found infringing on your intellectual property.

Ulrika:


And one suspects that each time you finish ONE business, you'll find another. I truly hope you resolve it soon.

Agreed.


If your work is original, fine. Copyright it. Follow the legal actions to do so as well. Comming out and crying "I put my work out for everyone and got ripped off." is going to get you nowhere fast.

I agree that people doing this are rude and immoral. Same as those who sell freebies. Heck, I've seen someone selling the default plywood texture!

But illegal? No. Not unless it's your own copyrighted work, and then you need to follow the legal system to seek justice.

Best of luck,
~Jessy

I would like to ask all those who say it's wrong a question:

How many of you have mp3's or even videos on your computer that you dowloaded for free in some manner?