Knockoffs

I guess what I am really asking for is a step between doing nothing and hiring a copyright lawyer. What type of Linden solution would work? One that doesn't put them legally at risk.

Sapphire - I think I pretty much see this the same way as you. But I wanted to point out that IP enforcement in SL is a double-edged sword. There is an awful lot of content in SL which are "knock-offs" of RL content. If the Lindens do more to enforce player IP rights, they may risk being under more pressure to enforce the IP rights of Electronic Arts, Paramount, etc. Which doesn't mean they shouldn't do more, it's just something to consider.

Not "mostly", completely. There is nothing in copyright law preventing me from making an oil painting of the Coke logo. However, since it's what they use as a trademark, I am barred from using it.
There is no law preventing Linux from existing just because the UNIX operating system had already been invented.
Nothing prevents MySQL from existing, just because we had Oracle before that.
Nothing prevented Microsoft from "ripping off" the Apple interface which in turn had been "ripped off" from Xerox.
There are also tons of car brands all with incredibly similar cars, both on the inside and outside.
If you take a picture of a beautiful landscape, you own copyright on that picture.
If I take a picture of that beautiful landscape and it ends up looking exactly the same, sorry, nothing you can do about it.
If Nike makes a blue polo with white plastic buttons, so can Adidas, so can Tommy Hilfiger, no matter how similar they are.

I would be very interested in knowing who it is and if he's copying my work. Also, I'd like to know if his copies are exact, prim-for-prim duplicates or if they're rough approximations. I know you can't post names here... can you please IM me in-game?

The reason I ask is that I think many vehicle builders sell their vehicles without the mod right. As far as I know, the only way to produce an *exact* duplicate is to break that modify permission. Breaking permissions is a far more serious problem than making copycat designs.

After having assorted SLers copy my designs at various points, I've grown to feel that there's nothing wrong with producing a similar design, as long as it's not exact, and as long as it's not misrepresented as an original design. For example, if someone creates an ornithopter like mine, that's fine. If it's an exact dupe, it's only ok if it's just for personal use, and if it was done without breaking the permissions. If it's a dupe and sold as a "cubey terra" vehicle, that's definitely not ok.

Ok, here's your in-world solution.....

Kris posted a link a few posts up. I didn't click it, but I suspect it goes to that guy doing the radio commercials*. You should check that out. Have a public service announcement made and have it aired on the radio.

It will cost you less than $2000 lindens, depending on the length of the spot. And you'll even get the assistance of a proffesional radio producer (if I read it right, don't quote me there). Anyways, the quality of the guys stuff is on target, and you could attempt to accomplish what you want this way.

I plan to use his services myself in the near future.

* ok, I clicked the link, and that's not where it goes. It goes to something else you should check out. for the radio guy, look in the classified forums under services. best of luck.

And once again you completely missed the point of what I was trying to say.

copyright is for things like books, movies, complete stories, paintings, drawings, sculpture, songs, sound recordings, etc.

patent is for how-things-work, ways-of-doing-stuff, and sometimes actual physical products but usually they're going to fall under the first two (they're just a physical way-of-doing-stuff).

trademark is for names, titles, brands, characters and likenesses, etc.

Sapphire, can't you just tell the Lindens "hey someone is ripping me off"? i guess you should check the TOS first because if making knock offs isn't covered you might be plain old out of luck in sl or with irl copyright depending on what's getting knocked off.

Yup, Sapphire, you're right.
Duplicates of what you create are illegal. Independent recreations aren't.
Since SL has built-in DRM, duplicating objects is impossible unless explicitly allowed.
If someone has duplicated an object of yours, then they found a way to abuse the system.
In these cases, LL will act swiftly. In the other cases, LL will not. Guess why!
Gee, could it be because people have the explicit legal right to do that?
The shock! The horror!

Again I'm not any type of lawyer, but I guess that depends. Would your copy of 'Snow Crash.' duplicate passages found in 'Snow Crash'? Or would you be re-writing every passage from scratch and just very closely mimicing the story?

If you've got let's say a blue car with a custom script that looks like a Shelby Cobra, and somebody comes along and creates a blue car with it's own custom script that looks like a Shelby Cobra, is that what we're calling copyright infringement?

To clarify that, are we talking about a mimicing of industrial design (the usual retail sorta knockoff or an outright duplicate where you couldn't quite tell one from the other under inspection?

Personally from my standpoint I think if anyone steals my general idea, it's a pissoff but it's not anything I can action. If someone on the other hand recreates my work in completeness that's something different.

Anyway my point (if I had one) would be that regardless of wether someone thinks someone else has infringed a copyright in SL, I doubt the offended is going to be able to get much action out of it unless it's a direct duplicate (as in hacked) and even then it may not be worth the trouble.

Except, Zuzi, that in the electronic world those three hard and fast definitions don't always stay black and white. They actually tend to get very muddy.

Programs, for example, are copyrighted, though strictly they should be patented (And in certain situations are, I believe, patented, though I'm not 100% on this) And products can fall under trademark and copyright at the same time just as a matter of course on the 'net.

We're talking about the latter, Simon.

Obviously anyone can create a blue car in SL, even styled after a RL car.

We're talking about a person sitting down, and by-the-numbers duplicating another's work so that short of checking the creator tags, the two are essentialy identical.

Zuzi,

I haven't been knocked off (well, that I know of). I was just trying to help out somebody else who had been. TOS doesn't cover this as far as I know. That's kinda where I'm going with this. Should knocking off products be against TOS? I know the main reason the Lindens dish this off the DMCA is that every grievance would have to be reviewed manually. That's a lot of time spent...

Cadroe,

I have just always perceived that as being inevitable. As SL creations become more complex and involve teams of creators, their value increases. At some point, the value will outweigh the cost of a lawyer. And, no, I won't be the first.

I just find it disheartening to see new users come online, get all excited about SL, build something none of has never seen, and then have 10 people dupe it. I met that game maker I mentioned. He had that SL spark I had when I first joined. Totally excited and full of imagination. 3 days later he is pissed and ready to leave.

So what was this special, precious point of yours?
There are no points here. There is no room for opinion.
This is a matter of facts. The facts are that in the real world everyone knows its perfectly alright to have different brands of identical items. The brand that wins the customer base is that which can offer more bang for the buck, or the best service, or the best marketing, even.
This is called competition. It is a good thing. It's what makes capitalism great.
In SL, the facts are that a subset of the player base thinks they are sooo special just because they can bang together a couple of pixels and have stupid noobs flock to buy it.
Sorry, but bigotry and inflated egos do not confer you special privileges in the eye of the law.

from talking to a friend who is a programmer he said the way programs do things is patentable like displaying a menu a certain way or something you would use the program for, but the actual code is copyrighted. dunno if that helps.

irl products can involve trademark and copyright or patent too all the time, not just online or in virtual worlds. i'm pretty sure each facet is handled individually tho.

ya know, maybe to make this simple they should just say no matter what you made in what virtual world or how it works, eventually it's all just 1's and 0's on a disk somewhere and 1's and 0's fall under copyright since they're written information. just half kiddin.

There is no rule in SL that says only so and so an build a car with 3 wheels. That only John Doe can build a pink sphere that floats.

This is where you build a better car and add on scripts that can't be seen or copied. Anyone can build an idential vehicle, but not everyone can build the script that runs it.

If someone pulls out a default prim, resizes it , and sells it for $500 everyone can duplicate the prim and no rule or laws have been broken. Building a better more complicated object is about the only thing you can do. Use scripting that is hidden and it'll make it even harder to copy its actions.

LOL Exactly

the real dispute here is not one of copyright but one of trademark... copyright protects *YOUR* actual asset from being duplicated, aka if you select no copy, the person who recieves it should not be able to via the system, make a copy. However they could build, from scratch, something just like it, and sell that and thats not actually problem with copyright, since the original was not dumplicated, it was re-engineered.

Trademark law is what would protect you against actual 'knock offs' but unlike copyright which is free, and assumed at the moment of creation, trademarks *DO* have to be actually registered and that does take both time and money RL. Aka coke has a trademark on the actual coca-cola logo, so not only can you not photocopy it for a promotion of your own.. but you cannot even create a 'similar' logo for 'kiko-cola' or what have you.

Currently i do not beleive there is any real way to trademark protect things in SL, the RL systems involved may not even want to deal with 'virtual' content much less anyone wanting to spend tens of thousands of dollars to actually apply.

Maybe none of you had ever seen this object before , but how do you know it was unique? It is naive to believe that no one had made this object before just because it hadn't been seen by you and a group of SL'ers. Does this mean that all objects you haven't seen are new to the world? It could be new , but who knows for sure unless they know every person and every object created since the beginning?

I see something in world and make it myself becuase I don't see the point in buying something that I can easily reproduce a copy of. I'm starting from scratch to make an identical looking object with the exact same tools you use. I'd tell you thanks for the idea and leave it at that. I don't see your side of "I made it first and you can't have anything looking like it without my permission" attitude. You should have made something harder to reproduce.

i don't think the trademark application is very expensive. it's paying lawyers to do all the research to see if someone beat you to it that's expensive.

Oh, so Pleze, YOU'RE the uncreative bum? I see.
What's being discussed here isn't making a similar product, but copies that try to fool people into thinking they're the same thing.

Have you ever heard the expression "Riding on your coat tails"?

I have yet to see any mention of the distinction between copyright and patent laws. I first want to point out that I am not necessarily standing up for those who engage in this practice. However, if I see a product, and for some reason cannot afford it or it is not made available to me, I believe I am entitled to attempt to create that product on my own, for my own personal use.

If I intend to sell that item, and I package it differently, improve upon it, or add additional fucntionalaity, I am probably not violating any copyright laws (given that the work is my own).

Herein lies the difference between RL and SL. SL does not have a patent office or patent process. In RL, a patent protects the inventor from being exploited by copy artists for a period of time, even if I do repackage it.

Without patent protection in SL, it is something that we have to live with I'm afraid.

Patrick Playfair

Yeah. You really got to the heart of the issue there, huh?

Lemme use a personal example; one that was brought up already in fact but is close to home for me . I shall try and choose my words carefully so that the point isnt lost in semantics of the wording.

I released the first ever commercial 'dance machine' in Second Life. I really don't know if synchronised dancing had been done before. I hadn't seen it if it had, it was an independent idea and I thought it would be cool. So I made one.

I spent weeks working with various ideas and methods of implementation, doing things in different ways, testing and retesting to see how it affected and was affected by various things like lag, sim performance and the like. I got user feedback and reworked and rewrote it several times from scratch as I discovered new things that would tweak the performance just a little. While it may have been relatively simple, I designed the interface, functionality and style of the piece. In short, I worked hard on it.

Within a few days of it's release, there were clones. I don't mean there were other dance machines based on the idea. I mean they had all the functions mine had, implemented in the same way, in the same design housing with the same colorschemes, text, commands, messages - the works. But all without having to put any of the thought into it that I did. I'd done that for them.

They were generally less expensive than mine, probably because 'well it wasnt that hard to do!'. No. And if I studied most objects in SL I'm sure I could work out what is being done and how and clone the script. But does that mean its ok for me to copy it lock, stock and barrel?

For me, the proof of the pudding came with the advent of 1.4 and custom animations. I could have released a simple patch to the DoM to enable custom animations but I didnt. Because it was SO poorly suited to it. The implementation of the DoM just wasnt realistically compatible with the implementation of custom animations in any way that I wouldn't have been ashamed to release.

And yet people were suddenly releasing 'new' dance machines that were still a clone of that same pre 1.4 implementation with that ugly hack that made it work with custom anims... as long as you had one copy for each dancer!!! No need for it at all. But no one stopped to think about that, because they were blindly copying.

For a very long time no one thought to take the concept and do it right. So the first custom anim dance machines were beyond a joke.

The same happened again when someone finally did get round to doing a good, proper dance machine for 1.4, all neatly wrapped up in a single prim, a complete new concept from the ground up. It was copied almost overnight, to the last detail, outwardly. But do you really believe that the copy was just as good as the original?

That is one saving grace, I think, at least for scripted objects. It soon becomes obvious which is the inferior product when you use them, so at least sometimes when you're undercut by a copycat, it doesnt hurt you too much.

I'm not even talking about what rl laws may or may not cover it. I don't want to sue anyone in SL for anything. It's a game for gods sake. But really, is it right or fair? (Yeah. I know. FUCK right or fair. This is business)

We're not talking about Pepsi or Coke. No one is saying 'oh he built a plane so you cant'. We're talking about letting someone else do all the R&D and then blindly copying it to the letter by simply looking at its outward appearance and how it behaves.

There is one hell of a difference between coming up with an idea, concept, design and implementation and putting a price on your work and looking at someone elses finished product and saying 'I can do that. So I will' to make a fast buck. If you can't see the difference between the two I guess I can't help you.

I just think it you're going to do something thats been done before, do it to improve on an idea. To better what is out there. To push the envelope a bit. Just like some of the fantastic and original dance machines that have been produced since I did mine *looks at CrystalShard*.

Of course, this is just my personal feelings and opinion on the subject. And if that means I am a bigot with an inflated ego, Eggy, then so be it

Then maybe you should read the whole thread?

Unnecessary Lance. Yes, there were posts that made mention of the word Patent (WHILE I was typing mine). But only the word, and I still wanted to give my opinion.