Stolen items question

I have seen other threads on this issue in the past and have read them, but of course until it happens to you, you don't pay complete attention to it. A player was nice enough to point out to me that there is a club selling a collection of dances for $10 that includes nearly every dance that I sell, along with the work of several others. I did not give out copyable versions of the dances, nor did I give any permission to anyone to sell them. The collection contains the work of several other players as well that I know did not give permission to have their work distributed.

So my question is this - it is obvious that the permission system can be circumvented because of flaws in the programming. How have others who have had this happen to them handled it? I am sure Linden Lab is probably not very responsive to it - I have seen anecdotal evidence of an "oh well" attitude on their part in relation to this problem. I contacted the player distrubuting the collection and he removed it - he said he received them from someone else - so the cycle just continues. I am extremely pissed off about this, as it is obvious the permissions were circumvented at some point. Can anything be done at all?

Well I haven't had a lot of experience with it (none really) did you check to see if the cheap copies were mod/copy/transfer?

If they are you could check the UUID, I dont know for certain if these stay the same for sold copies or not, but if they are then you'd know for sure they're the same copy that you uploaded. (I'll check when I get online tonight.)

If not are any of the ones you sell originally from Renderosity or elsewhere? Lots of Poser stuff is available on newsgroups and the Kazaa-esque file swappers.

L8r,
UU

Sorry to hear about your work being distributed without your knowledge. A few months ago, I ran into someone who said they modified they're executable and was able to look at all scripts in the world, even though they were set to no mod/no copy (he found a bug in my no mod/no copy script). This is very disturbing (the individual has disappeared since). I really do hope the Lindens take action concerning these issues. It's not worth being part of the Second Life community if one's original creations are stolen.

The Lindens must realize that those who have invested their time and passion into creating original content are the ones who are going to help boost this game into the mainstream. I can tell you right know, I work in the game biz, and in no way is Second Life the talk of the town. If members of this community lose interest in building content, then SL will fade away; which would be a great shame, because SL is hitting the nail on the head, as far as new game innovations and industry direction are concerned. Second Life's top priority should be community support. In the future, it will be a standard unique selling point for an online game to boast how well it supports its community (real life big businesses always advertise about customer satisfaction) The Lindens should strike now, while the community is small, because if SL takes off, then us old school Second Lifers will simply follow the model shown to us by the Lindens to make new members experiences all the more memorable.

It should also be noted, that the game industry is still very young, and a small community in itself. I invited a programmer to join SL, and a month later, he left, spreading the news to our other programmers to pass on SL. And I wouldn't doubt, that they, in turn, spread the word to the programming community. If the industry doesn't like your game, then don't develop it.

I am speaking specifically of items with my name on the creator tag - every item has a creator tag on it.

cristiano im waitin for you...
maddy

Thanks Madiera - I resolved it with the person directly, so ignore my im

Cristiano,

Is any of my content in this box? Maybe you could list the people whose animations were in that box so we can look into it as well. Thanks!

~Ulrika~

I will check again, Ulrika - I did not see any - I contacted the other animators privately whose work was included.

awww man! Sorry this happened to you Cris!! I hate when this happens to anyone and I'm still puzzled as to how it happens so often.

Things like this are the reason I *never* give anyone copies of stuff I've gotten. Even if I know it was something I directly got from a "free to copy" box. For several reasons. 1) things such as what happened to you could be in that box I got free. At least I'm not helping to spread unkowningly 2) The person who put that box out free to copy probably did so to bring people to their land, and I don't want to take that opportunity away from them and 3) I never would know if someone would take a free thing that I gave them and turn around and try and sell it.

So if I did not make it myself, you won't see me giving things away. Too many bad things can happen otherwise.

Sorry to hear about that Cristiano. The thing that bugs me and that I wish people knew is HOW much time Clothing Designers, Animators, Builders etc put into the things we do. I don't know if that would make them feel less guilty for giving peoples work out for free. I mean if I decide to give things away for free I will do so, at least people should ask.

sometimes i wish i could figure out how to copy people's scripts rather than having to hack out my own version. but i would never never use them in an object i was selling, or for that matter, even giving away.

but, i've never figured out how to copy permed scripts anyway so no danger there. if ll discovers someone selling copies of permed scripts, embedded in objects that the creators are selling, they should seriously consider banishment.

evil bad evil bad evil bad arguments aside. the creator has a case for lost income, real us dollar income. the last thing ll need are to be implicated as as a negligent or complicitous party of such a scheme.

Um... so I was really watching this thread to see if it's true that somebody's found a way to steal stuff, but now it's gotten all hush-hush. Is there a problem? Should we be worried?

Given the affiant's propensity to post verbosely and vociferously when WRONGED and THE TRUTH needs to get out, my guess is that it was the allegation was false.

/me waits to be called a misogynist by someone on my mute list.

Welcome to club elite of being ripped off your name has now been added to a casscading linage of those profitable and notable developers that have been taken advantage of through "PROGRAM INDUCED" Permissions Malfunctions.

I hate it happend to you Cris, your not the first and with the little snake thieves out there that can circumvent the permissions system and rip us off its something we will all have to live with.

Only Solution is make em new make em better and make the old ones look like chit so that they slowly become obsolete.

Otherwise this will be a continual thing you have to face.

I have said it before and will say it again. If you have gotten something for free leave it free. If you got a copy illegally and your caught selling it ...be adult enough to realize and remove the offending product from the line up.

Sincerly, Shadow Weaver

Malachi,

I do not for the life of me know what your problem is or why you need to interject yourself into this or any other thread just to snipe at me, but it is getting really old. Dislike me, fine, I think you are an idiot too, but if your work were being freely copied without your permission, I would not post something i a thread against you just to troll. It shows how much class and consideration you have.

See Shadow's post - I have no idea exactly how it is done, I just know that it has occured to a wide variety of vendors in the past, as Shadow has pointed out.

Yeah, you are right, Malachi, I made the whole thing up. Thanks as always for your insightful posts. Give my love to Kate.

This happened to my clothing line *preen*. I talked to the Lindens (at length) and the final answer was pretty close to "oh well". On top of this, the Lindens are also unwilling to intervene in cases where theft is clearly happening. They are also unwilling to pay reparations.

So Aimee says "Oh Well" too. I am rarely on SL these days and this is exactly the reason why. I am sure the Lindens don't miss me (or even noticed I wasn't around much). I have other friends that are taking interest in other games because of this issue. SL has become big enough where individual contribution is less critical than it used to be, so I guess that's how it is.

-aimee

Not being the forebringer of bad news but yes Aestival , you need to be worried.

Let me start with a prime example and then a few subsequent ones.

#1 the biggest Permissions Killer to date and harbringer of the "FREE" 1L$ sales boutiques in SL.

When Version 1.0 announced that changes to the permissions were going to happen we were all like woooo hooo ..oh yeah kewl. Problem was the day it was inacted if you owned something someone else created it automaticly said...NO Creator...thus the linage of lost clothing and lost scripts and lost just about every damn thing.

When some found out that they had an Item they bought but it said NO Creator they decided to start putting them in Free to Copy Boxes. Along with that "Certain" infamous figures in SL thought they were helping newbs prior to this and were taking advantage of thier friends that had give them modify rights to "Move things around" instead they got free copies of those peoples clothing article and started passing them out.

Soooo when the advent of 1.2 ensued there were all these newbs that had NO Creator stuff tagged in inventory.

#2 Each update several Items get lost in the shuffle and are either purged from the system the permissions are lost on them. Problem is some dont know it right away.

In my case alone I have over 800 Items in world and to go through 800 Items to check permissions is time consuming. Not only to say there is no way to check how those permissions are in a persons inventory. Even if there were I have THOUSANDs of sales over the past two years so kinda hard to keep track of who bought what and then to ask can I see your inventory of my Items.

9 times out of 10 if an Item gets purged out of the system and an active avatar still has a copy since the orginal texture and such has been purged it automatically becomes NO Creator at least that has been the notes so far to date on my behalf.

There are other horrid storys I could tell you but to say the least know this if your a developer dont expect your stuff to stay proprietary as eventually it will either get stolen or lost in the shuffle of upgrades. Welcome to SL and have a Nice day...mean while visit me at one of my store locations for new content cause if your gonna play gotta stay on top of the ball to stay ahead.

Shadow

PS as far as circumventing the permissions systems I have been told how it is done once but I have never been able to duplicate it to send in a bug report todate however there are some other methods on Textures that I know of but will refrain from mentioning as there is no need to help the little thieves make money off peoples hard work.

This makes me sad. And very disappointed, if this is what is happening to the rights of content creators to actively protect their art.

This was a rampant problem when I was building for GNU. I was told by a Linden to file an abuse report every time. My abuse reports were then answered with "This is not abuse." The solution I chose completely ended the problem, since the Lindens don't really care if we're ripped off. I stopped building anything I couldn't reign in permissions on.

Torely in essence it doesnt exist, with faliable permissions systems there is no way to prevent it being circumvented.

On textures I had an Idea once where basicaly LL sets up a key to Identify the orginal texture uploaded to create a Item such as clothes. Meaning every article of clothing that used that texture would have to reference that 1 UUID. Benifit would be this. If the owner found out that the Item in question had been stolen and being sold in appropriately they could petition LL and say KILL that texture and it would be removed from every object in world it was ever used on.

What would this do...piss off a couple thousand players of course and punish those that were innocent however, an effective way to discourage thievery.

Anyway I digress as this particular topic makes my blood boil.

Sincerely, Shadow

But you didn't deny it, you clever guy. That last bit was really uncalled for and kinda scummy.

I don't need to deny anything, Malachi, your post was ridiculous so I just replied in kind. You interjected yourself into this thread, as you do so many others. I don't know why you come at me, I don't even really care. Hell, you even attracted Phillip Linden's attention with how constantly negative you are.

As far as scummy and uncalled for, look in the mirror. I am actually very fond of Kate, it was a genuine statement.

Malachi,

How is telling you to give my love to someone I am quite fond of uncalled for and scummy? I'm sorry, I should have expressed solely my disgust for you. I didn't deny anything because your original post was ridiculous, so I responded in kind.