A process for minimizing texture theft!

PLEASE Vote for this as a Feature!!!!!

I have an email signed by over 60 SL designers that something needs to be done about the rapidly declining texture theft issue in SL.

I thought we could also suggest some ideas for solutions in addition to our complaint.
So here's what I came up with:

1. A form that allows you to send PROOF of theft.
For example: a picture of the original, & the stolen textures. or showing watermarked textures being used by someone else.
You fill in who you are, who stole it, etc. all the details. & attach PROOF.

2. Banning upon proof!
People who steal need to be banned!
First there will be a warning to remove ALL stolen textures from sales & inventory.
(that way if anyone doesn't know their using stolen textures, they have a chance to remove it)
Then a follow-up that it was removed. If it was removed - great. If it wasn't - a ban!
If you ban IPs, please tell us. So we will know that people who stole textures can't just register again with the open registration system!

3. Public acknowledgement of the theft.
Linden Labs needs to show that it is taking texture theft seriously to deter future thefts.
As of now filing a DMCA isn't enough of a deterrent.
We feel that it should be known that thieves will get caught, & banned!
If you use stolen textures & don't remove them upon request, you can be banned & notice of your ban can be made public!

4. Watermarking
We are willing to watermark our textures, & eager for LL to have any sort of watermarking system! If you have any suggestions about how or where to embed a watermark, that's also good. For example make some sort of symbol ANYWHERE in the texture to identify it as yours.
There can be a watermark registration system!
LL will post a list of conditions for what is considered a valid watermark.
Then we submit it (& only tell LL our watermark) & any identical textures who have that symbol are known to be stolen!

PLEASE Vote for this as a Feature!!!!!

If you have a better idea please to post it!
If you see problems with this sytem point them out.

The biggest problem seems to be how to protect designers from theft and the more you think about it, the more this is a grey area. I don't even know how they steal from us but obviously they must be very cunning to be able to copy textures that they don't even have in inventory since we sell the garment and not the texture.

Would selling EVERYTHING no mod make a difference?

One thing I wanted to mention is active worlds, this is a 3d chat program that I used a little before I came to Second Life. It is very primitive in comparison but it does have one feature that I think that LL should consider introducing if they MUST have free registration which I feel is escalating our problems with theft. After all if you can be anonymous, it's a lot easier to be a thief because you can just go make another alt, no one will ever know.

Active worlds has a two tier system of usage. You can be a tourist or a citizen. Citizens pay for the rights to use everything and own land, much like a premium account. World/Sim owners get one or two free citizen accounts with their Sim (something I think LL should also introduce).

If you are a tourist in active worlds you can travel about, explore, check it out, see what it's all about but you have limits. You can't change avatar (clothes hair etc), you have a generic look that you can't modify, much like how you first arrive in SL. You can't go to mature areas, you have no friends list and you can't send whisper (IM).

I don't like the new system where anyone is allowed to join Second Life without giving details of a credit card. I think this increases the prospects for abuse and theft and entices those wanting an easy buck. I would propose that SL take a leaf out of active worlds book and restrict the accounts with no payment info on file so they can only wear the standard avatar, not able to edit appearance, change clothes etc. They can't enter mature areas, not allowed build tools or instant message. But they can explore and hopefully will like it and go on to put payment info on file to have the full experience.

At the end of the day if a person puts their payment info on file they are making an honest commitment of participation and if they do step out of line it is very easy for SL to step in and deal with them by suspention and banning without them just making another freebie with full usage and coming back to do it again. I know someone who has been seriously stalked in SL recently to the point of almost leaving because as fast she mutes this person they make another alt and start on her again. In the current anyone in climate, LL are helpless to protect her, even though they are 'working with her'. This new system is a bad judgement call on LL's part, let's revise it now.

Great. Ya done bolding your text? ok.
There's a difference between some brick texture & a skin. even if you both photosource the same nude woman for a skin it will NEVER EVER look alike.

If it's pixel for pixel the same skin texture, someone stole something.

If you both downloaded the same hair texture from the internet, just give them the link.

If it's some brick texture or a picture of the mona lisa, I guess LL should just dismiss your claim for theft.

Maybe you want to give the guy who stole francis' chung textures (with her signatures on it) the benefit of the doubt. Ok. Call me up I wanna sell you some swamp land.

Anyway all we want is a system that gets attention from LL. When there's a clear cut case of theft (like when you put two different skins on & nothing changes but the lip color) that they do something. They can see the textures they can compare. You can see when something was stolen.

I guess it's my own fault for not including step 2.5:
Using common sence before banning someone.

For me the texture is just a part of the graphics - the fabric pattern if you wish, there is also the shading and the alpha.

The shading and the alpha are what noticably mark something as unique or not.

Its possible that 2 alphas can be identical, but the odds of this being the case are quite high on a pixel by pixel level. Add to that the shading and then the fabric pattern and it should be very easy to mark a texture as unique.

Of course this only applies to patterns with an alpha/shading.

yeah when I say texture I mean textures of skins or clothes or hair. processed textures.
Not like a picture of some burberry.

Voted, and you have my complete support Canimal. Even if it is nearly impossible to stop IP theft (and not just textures, clothing designs, and skin designs, but also something like Siggy's slide or Baron Grayson's hammock), I DO think LL should be willing to create a policy stating that theft will be punishable by permaban after an investigation in which both parties are allowed to respond. MAKE A COMMITMENT LL!!

There should be a Linden liaison who has access to the teen grid who conducts the investigation. Some of the theft is so blatant and obvious, it should just be a given that the stolen content is removed and the account banned. Some of the not-so-obvious offenses could be more complicated to investigate, that's where the 'response from both parties' section comes in, where the original designer or 'accuser' has a chance to respond, as does the 'accused'. Then it's up to LL to make a decision.

I think that makes it fair and gives the accused a chance to say where they got the texture. If it turns out both designers got it from the same website, fine, end of story, but probably in a case of blatant theft the thief doesn't know where the texture was obtained.

If I was one of the designers this has happened to, I would have removed all my content from the world by now or started giving my designs away free EVERYWHERE and to ANYONE to prevent someone else profiting from my work. I'm so glad the designers haven't done that, but I would completely understand if they did.

You're reaction clearly shows you are not ready to hear negative, (trying to be) constructive criticism.


Point by point analysis..
(1): some sort of personal attack? Care to explain why? Your original posting contained more "bolding" then my own.

(2): now are you differentioating between kinds of textures. So effectively, as you say "a brick is a brick" which means it should not be very bad if it got copied? Right? Or not right? Puzzles me what you are trying to say here. My guess is now, your stating that only "certain" textures should be protected. I wonder if people would agree to that. It's like protecting for example some pieces of music while others are to be considered trash and not worth of being protected.

(3) and (3a): No explanation needed. Still.. a remark... There is allways a small chance someone used some photoshop set of functions (as described on the internet for example) on the same texture (as the one claiming has been doing to)... Again: where does it end?

(4) That remark is pure BS and you know it. Original materials should be protected, no matter how/what. Point remains from my first post: when is it considered to be original? As it stands, it can only be guaranteed (and not even 100% safely) that content created *within* the SL client (without ability to paste, except for already made previous original content) could be considered original.

(5) You can keep your swamp lamp. And as for your accusations: I don't know the guy who you claim stole the texture designs nor do I know the designer. I first wonder how he did get the textures (copy/paste from screenshot or something? because in-game I don't think its possible to use/copy a texture if it's not set for copy/mod...) If the designer allowed it to be copy/mod -> Lesson learned. Yes a hard one, but nonetheless. But if he used a screendump to get the textures and edited them to bring them back in -> that I'd consider some kind of fraud. And leads me right back to point (4).

(6) Is that true? Hypothetical: you want purple-lips with white spots, and it seems you're not the only one... But the original developer doesn't want to spend (horrendous) time making that special skin. What is one to do? Happens RL too.. Look at online games and emulators... Remember what happened with the DVD-codec... To me, if customers would ask for it (and more then one) plain refusing to make the adjustment sounds like a bad business decision to me.

(7) You may apply that to yourself as well. You asked for feedback and comments. You got them , straight. I'm not witholding back my opinion and idea about your proposal.

Although I think our hard hard work and creativeness should be protected and awarded I did observe something that would be a very large inconvenience in regards to Watermarking.

Some individuals have a lot of work done already and very large inventory...some people might feel it would be impossible to go back to all 2000 plus textures and add watermarks to them, reupload them (pay the small but after all those reuploads not THAT small fee of 10L for each item) and repackage them (and for some people who have items at several mall locations this will NOT be easy). So my point is, do these people not deserve protection anyway? Cause i think they do...and is there a way to secure that their textures will be protected as vigorously as if though there were no watermark applied? Any ideas?

Although the notecard with the comparitive pictures would be part of the evidence it might not be enough, someone can take a shirt you made and change it just enough to make the lines blurry (adding a bow, changing color), but still your work is being used as a foundation for their item..which is still unfair. And i think the authorities have proven to be terrible at grey areas.

Just thoughts,

Ariel.

*G*

Let me say one thing in reaction: do not allow upload. Use internal editor for textures. It would solve a lot of problems.

As long there is upload, there is no good way to guarantee it isnt stolen.

The points you mentioned will be overcome: people with huge load of existing textures can apply some watermark or something at their own pace (no extra cost involved). With vendor network systems updating texture packages wouldnt be so hard.

Redesigning something is part of RL. As such, I don't see a reason why one would try to ban it when someone uses that. It's something different if a 100% copy is being as being the original.

Think parody here... Take some logo texture, alter it to make a parody (which is often considered by the original creaters to be some positive activity)...

Sansarya Caligari - I agree with what you said 100%.

Ariel Black - Good question! Maybe watermarking is only an optional yet recommended policy to be made from now on to HELP determine when it's your texutre.

Marcuw Schnook - I understand from your remarks that your not even a little bit intrested in solving or help solving this issue. But here are some replies anyway.

(1): Can you actualy see your first post? The entire post is bold. Maybe you can't see it but you can't expect me to see a post full of bold text & think you're a reasonable calm person.

(2): This isn't a philosophical debate over what makes a texure. This is a practical attempt to make some sort of policy about stolen textures. See Sansarya's post? It makes a lot of sence. Some cases are so clear it should realy result in some sort of action. We mearly ask that when things like that happen we get some results. & this is so far the best Idea we have. If you have a better one please post it.

Since you like analogies so much, & you did say "innocent till proven guily", let me give you an analogy. Right now people come to LL with proof & there isn't even a trial.
What your asking for (by completely dismissing this feature) is that there won't even be a trial, because it's so hard to decide who's guilty. Let's let all the criminals run loose.

(3) Right ok & when does that happen? What "action" lets you take a piece of fabric & magicly makes an outfit out of it? If you have a valid point then ok but that's not one.

(4) ok now im confused. which of these statements you made do you believe in:
a. Original materials should be protected, no matter how/what.
b. personally dont see textures, as sounds (how many copyright infringments have YOU counted for those) and movies as end products but as parts.

So which is it? are all textures just "parts", or original materials that should be protected?
Anyway uploading a brick texture from google isn't an original texture so cut the BS.

(5) Oh i'm so glad your this angry over something you don't know much about.
Let me enlighten you, there are ways to extract textures from SL, (rip them steal them call it what you will) even though the perms are no copy/no mod. & you don't even have to edit them.

& funny that you said:
But if he used a screendump to get the textures and edited them to bring them back in -> that I'd consider some kind of fraud.
Because that's exactly what this thread is about.

(6) No it's not ok. If I made a skin & I don't want it to have purple lips it's my right. I made the skin. I didnt sell it as a templette for you to doodle on.
You want purple lips make your own skin.
But it doesn't matter cos you didn't understand what I said in that paragraph at all.
I said that if someone is reselling a skin, that someone else made, & only modified the lips, they should get a warning, then a ban.

(7) I'm more then eager to listen to any comments just like I said. Ariel Black made a good point & i accepted it. What I have trouble accepting is a completely bold post that looks for theoretical & impractical reasons to not use a system that is meant to just make things more fair for people who's work gets stolen. If you don't know what I'm talking about then just ask!

Do you even know what this is about at all?? How is someone ripping my skins out of the game & reselling them without changing a single pixel "evolution of art"?
& who said their allowed to if it's something I made?

I'm ignoring your posts from now on & leaving space for people who don't think stealing someone's hard work is "a parody".

In fact I'm interested in solving or helping to reduce the problem.

(1) For clarification: this is BOLD, this is NOT. You're stating my post is full off BOLDness, it is NOT. I don't know if it is either ones browers, but to me it shows normal (using Mozilla firefox).

(2) As I said, just plain copying/pasting and reselling is fraud. But care must be taken, that's what I'm saying. I (going to use bold now) ASSUME that with that copying/pasting you are talking about ORIGINAL work: ie, as in created by yourself: being artistic in paing, photoshop or whatever program you use.

Textures and things that can be uploaded after downloads, capturing from applications (grey area, I know, just don't get me started) should never be able to be copyrighted. And herein lies the core of the problem: assertaining if something is ORIGINAL work or a plain copy (weather illegal,or from a legal source as another website).

As for not going after the thieves I'm sorry. It should be. but because of my reasoning explained several times now, I can understand why LL is reluctant.

(3) An example for you, since you missed the point. Please remember, I'm not into texture making myself. Using eye-textures... Taking steps from photographed eyes from people and even animals, special forms. Then to use some programmed script in photoshop for imaging functions. These functions are publically available. 2 people make 2 photos of a person with blue eyes; they both use the same set of script... I bet that results with be nearly identical... Still both have original work.

(4) Unclear?
Question: you make a living from pure and mainly making/selling textures? Or do you use them in other products?
I'd say the final product is an original product. But that's my personal opinion (as stated!) So why you fall over this is beyond me. To me it was clear, you consider your textures to be an endproduct...

(5) Angry?? What makes you say that? Just not interested in a piece of swamp, that's all Take it a bit lighter please.. It almost looks like you have made it your personal vendetta.

So what's the problem here? I agree with you and you still are trying to do what? For the record: I don't know how to rip textures from no mod/no copy because I have no reason why I would want to use that know how. If at all, have the LLs fix that EXPLOIT/BUG.
And as for the uploading... I mentioned several times already why that in is a cause of the problem.

(6) Ok. I understand your point. If I were the person who would be interested in a pair of purple-with-white-spots lips, I'd only seek out MODdable skins in the first place. With no copy/no tranfer I wouldnt be able to resell anyway. As for uploading again... I'll leave that. Other then that: even if a skin builder made a skin MOD+TRANS, it would be a pain and a lot of work to make those lips and resell

(7) And again, a complete BOLD post ???? Not on my screen. My apologies if that offends you... If you want I'm more then happy to show you printscreens of these conversations showing the text to be completely normal to me.

I will not be voting for this at all.
I'm not a lawyer though I do like to study law.

Textures can be easily stolen, there are 4 distinct areas. Network, cache, OpenGL, & screenshots. Trusted computing, secure video paths & encrypted networking would make doing so increadibly difficult; all of these things are a *bad* thing for consumers; they eliminate any chance of Fair Use. Of the modes of theft, the first 3 can capture the image at 100% quality and all four are entirely out of the control of LL. As long as images can be edited watermarks can be removed; no matter how good the watermarking sceme. Any watermarking sceme that LL defined, that definition could then be used to strip the watermark.

The DMCA is a method for which you can go after those who infringe your copyrights. But it is not the end of the legal road a creator can take. You can sue for damages; and after a successful DMCA takedown it should not be difficult to win if LL turns over the appropriate usage records (how many people use/have the texture). These suits would be governed by Section 1203 of the DMCA. Not to mention crimial charges (Section 1204 of the DMCA).

Banning upon first submital of a DMCA takedown notice, would not allow the other party to respond to it. It would deny them thier right to submit a responce notice, it would be a denial of due process, further more it would void LL's DMCA safe harbor status (which as a content owner would be preferential as it would open LL to lawsuits).

Helpful links:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_19981020_pl105-304.html

God... You're so close minded.
Please reread what I've said,numerous times now...
Just plain copy/pasting/reselling is not good in my book either.
What is it that I need to do to get that in your head?

Maybe underline my statements where I say that everytime?

i see this
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c275/canimal2/bold.jpg

but its beside the point.

Thank you for rewording my feelings about this

Can you enlighten us, would not a more drastic way to allow texture creation to take place within SL only? Much like character modification must done inside as well.

Ofcourse, the less upload of textures would cause the cease of the L$ sink.

But if there is indeed an exploit/big as the OP wrote later, that allows to get textures out an item even with no mod (and it doesnt resolve to screen capture methods as you described above) it should be fixed.

Another thought just crossed my mind.. same thing goes for sounds in a way... An application can be run that acts as a driver to re-record audio data... And not far from that, same for video's...

So I think, in effect texture traders are in the same boat as creators of sounds and movies. Teh only things protected more are builds and scripts...

You must be using Internet Explorer, It seems to be having some problems rendering the page. I use both FireFox & IE, and I only see that bold effect in IE (in FireFox it renders normaly).

No it's not, since you judge me on how the posts look (all bold)...

Unfortunately I can't upload an image from my work office (will do in about half an hour)

And as for the image... I'm truely sorry you see it like that. It looks horrendeous. But beyond my control

I didn't just judge you on that I judged you on calling texture theft "evolving art".

& The DMCA would be great if LL actualy cared when one was filed.

Its ok i won't have your vote Strife, as I already have 281 others.

I'm tired of arguing. so This is all I'll say for now.

Canimal...this is along the lines of what Ariel posted...

Say today (as in before your system is in place), Person A uploads a completely original, designed-from-scratch texture that she then uses in an item she sells. Person B lifts the texture and begins using it in something he sells. A few months from now, your system is put in place. What's to prevent Person B from going through the watermarking registration process before Person A can, hence becoming the "rightful" IP owner for that texture?

Good question!
Watermarking doens't realy sound very realistic but I guess it's up to LL If they want to use it or not.

I don't know how many people would do that, But since both yours & ariel's points are so good, & since its so impossible to watermark textures, I don't see LL using watermarks.

Actually similer things have happened already. Someone ripped off someone else's design, both using registered trademarks. The rip-of reported the original & he was banned. So the rip off got more buisness.

I guess one would hope that these kinds of things, if people use them, would do a lot more good then bad.

& Marcuw Schnook -
Two things: 1. It's not that easy to just find something on the internet & accidently make the same thing. You say you don't have experience with textures so ok. I do. & I'm telling you there's no way to accidently replicate something like clothes skins & hair textures.
You can make two SIMILER outfits, but not exact. Right now the main focus is on exact thefts as these happened, DMCAs reported, & nothing happened.

2. ok if we agree then great. Take these "end results textures", & say they were stolen.
What do you suggest we do? You don't like my idea & your so eager to post here so I'd love to hear any Idea you may have about what to do.

That's where the plan falls apart.

Restricting Image creation to only within SL, like building objects, would not fly for a number of reasons. Mostly people won't want to use it, and it could just as easily be gamed (so you build a script to feed keystrokes to the client to recreate the texture).


The flaws that exist are not ones that LL can fix themselves. These issues are not specific to SL. A good analogy is how milk use to be delivered. Up until recently, milk use to be delivered door to door in bottles, on a daily basis. There was nothing that would stop some one from walking up and stealing the bottles of milk off the curb. The theft of bottles of milk isn't something that is the fault of the delivery service (though they have marginal control over it), but really it is a flaw in the delivery method of milk. In recent years, milk is not delivered door to door but purchased at the store; a secure trusted distributer.

LL is alot like the delivery service, and the content creators, the dairy producing the milk. While LL can limit the attack surface on SL assets; they cannot provide protection beyond thier servers. It is only a matter of time before LL loses control of the client side entirely.

To step back to the milk analogy, the houses that LL deleivers to are all the same, built by LL. But in the future, someone could build a fake client that pretends to be a real client. This fake client could really be an outlet that takes those bottles of milk, duplicates them and distributes them as if they created them. Again LL has little control over this. How are they to know it is not legitimate milk when they come to pick it up and deliver it?

Everything comes down to this:
Who do you trust?

Who is LL to beleive? The plaintif or the defenant? Lets step back a second and look at what the US system of law is based on:
Innocent until proven guilty.
If LL is to uphold this ideal, they must give the defenant a chance to defend themselves.

Instant action is the wrong action.

It's bold on my screen as well.

For the record, Canimal, I had 10 votes available and applied all of them to this proposal.

P2