A process for minimizing texture theft!

Yes its not 100% foolproof, I doubt any solution will ever be.
What it is though, is a step in the right direction at minimal cost to LL that can be up and running in a matter of days or weeks.
As I wrote in the letter this only needs to be persued when original files get submitted and if not, it follows the present system.

I don't see this as something that will make any difference to the majority of SL residents. This is meant as a solution for LL.

If people upload as jpegs with metadata attached then its upto the community to educate the content producers, not LL.



I think its not unreasonable in this case that content producers supply information as to where these textures came from.

"The dog poo texture on the front of my t-shirt design is a free to use texture from dogpoo.com, which I downloaded from this url - www.dogpoo.com/freetexture.gif"

Watermarks can be generalized in two to categories. Visible watermarks that partially destroy the image (not very useful for texturing surfaces in a virtual world), and invisible (or less visible) watermarking techniques that leave signatures in subliminal or unseen channels in the image. I'm going to throw out the first type as it's useless for anything beyond sample images. The second type is very sensitive to recompression. Few invisible watermarking techniques will survive a slight JPEG recompression, and of those that do none of them will survive through a screenshot or file format conversion. The only problem with these conversions is you can lose alpha transparency. So lets say you have a watermarking technique that makes subliminal changes in the alpha channel. Opening the image out of the cache file, opening it up in an image editor and applying a very slight noise filter to the alpha channel would destroy the watermark while still retaining the same image to the human eye, including the alpha transparency.

In non-technical speak: The watermark idea should never be mentioned again.

The obliterator of hope strykes again!

There's no mechanism by which a skin seller can specify whether they want you to mod the textures or not. Setting a skin "no mod" means something completely different... and most buyers are not going to be satisfied by a "no mod" skin.

Other people have set their stuff "no mod" because they think they need to do that to keep people from stealing their scripts. Or because they don't want people using tools to break the *copy* protection and "no mod" is all they can use. I've been given mod versions of normally "no mod" products, when I've explained why I want them and asked nicely, by creators who only set no-mod because they didn't trust "no copy" to mean "no copy".

The permissions system is far too crude to even begin to describe it as a description of the creator's intention.

When I say ban the IP I mean the usual banning that LL does when they ban. I know IPs change but they have their ways, banning by IDing parts in your machine & all sorts of stuf that they do so I have no worries about that.

As for the other stuff we discussed them in this thread.
Watermarking, adding a (C) to the texture, & how to identify an actual creator, of the texture. So you can see those if you want here.

Cool so ask them if they agree you mod it & if they say no don't do it. If they say 'ok sure rip my skin & go nuts' feel free.

Listen... There is only one way to stop theft completely. Use an ingame texture creator (Hey LL has.. what.. 11 fucking million more dollars to spend, ask photoshop to borrow some of their tec... use your wad!). Otherwise, for Every 4-5 hundred people you catch, you will probably catch about 5-10 innocent people that have done nothing (United States Justice System...) and destroy their online expierence. And you know what? Thats too many.

Ill admit I did'nt read the whole thread , but here is how I would do it.

Umm, also.. There are two kinds of watermarks. One is
the kind you can see, like a name or logo on the texture.
The other type is digital data, hidden in the image itself
and cannot be seen with the human eye.

So, on upload SL would apply a watermark(the data kind) that
contains the name of the uploader(AV name, for privacy reasons).

Then if someone rips it off and they try to upload it, It simply
wont let them, It will say its already been registered by another
user, and loged on the SL server for refrence.

What it would do is stop people from using "hacks" to
get the texture and just re-upload it. *note -- even if edited
the watermarked image can still contain the watermark,
It depends on the watermark technonogy, but some are
very tough. even survive crop/resize/recompressions, etc.


What it would not do: If 2 people downloaded the same
image and uploaded it (as someone was worried about)
both would be allowed -- seems like the right thing to me anyway.

It would provide basic protection, without any user involvement.


PS. If you like this idea, By all means, you can do this now - sorta.
You can use Digimarc (demo version come with photoshop). But the full thing costs money.
Anyone know of a better software package?

I doubt there is a technological solution to this problem. Luckily human nature is such that if someone successfully steals and resells one texture they probably are stealing a lot of others too.

Linden Labs should be able to correlate the complaints about the worst offenders to the new hardware hashes they are tracking. Armed with that info LL should task a Linden or two as a "Texture Theft Czar" and start proactively investigating / blocking accounts.

I do that too, WHEN I can get hold of the creator. There's a lot of busy folks who don't bother answering IMs or haven't logged on in months. One reason I started grabbing textures from stuff I'd bought was because I'd gotten no answer to IMs offering real world commision rates for custom versions.

Anyway...

The really big point that you're missing is that how polite (or impolite) I personally am about it is irrelevant. The relevant issue is that there's legitimate non-infringing use that doesn't hurt creators in any material way, and any scheme that leads to people getting permabanned over legal modifications because some artists had an itchy trigger finger is broken.

That I can get behind.

Boobytraps for innocents... no.

Take a look at my post in this thread on why watermarks should never be mentioned again. By the way, if anyone wants to defeat any invisible watermarking technology right now, just open the image in a photo editor and rotate it by half a degree, then save. Ironically enough, Digimarc watermarks can also be defeated by applying another Digimarc watermark to the image.

Eddy
If the alpha was defined in a seperate grayscale file, that no one had access to view (except the creator) or even be aware of, could it still be ripped with the same methods?

What? Think about what you're saying. A separate file that no one has access to view... What's the point? If no one can view it, it's the same as having never uploaded it at all. You've just found the perfect solution. Never upload any of your textures in to SL, and they won't get ripped off!

when i say no access to view - i mean the option isnt visible in edit, like where you see the current texture and tint.

And while they're at it, they should license Texture Maker for people who prefer that, and Genetica for people who prefer that, and 3D Studio for people who bake textures and...

That wouldn't help the problem at all. No one is taking screenshots of those tiny low resolution images in the edit view, they are using OGLE/glIntercept to pull the raw TGA files out of video memory, or dumping the SL cache and pulling the raw J2C files out. You can't "hide" data but also use it in the client, it doesn't work that way.

I think we should disallow the use of textures in SL... No more theft that way

I applaud Canimal's efforts and hope for a solution in this matter. Something ought to be done. However, I doubt this proposal will ever be seriously considered by Linden Labs.

The first problem is policing. Texture theft is not technically Linden Lab's problem. Of course, it's in their best interest to help content creators, but they are simply providing the platform. They are not likely to pay an employee to investigate copyright violations of the residents, except for complying with the DMCA or whatever laws dictate when and how they take action.

Second of all, there are way too many variables to ever constitute proof of a stolen texture. Oh, lots of things would surely be suspicious, but actual proof would be catching them in the act of ripping. And once we see it in world, we're too late for that.

Case in point: Say Designer A gives a texture to Designer B to use, free of charge, and then later gets upset with them and calls foul and makes a claim to Linden Labs that Designer B stole the textures. Well, Designer B is innocent until proven guilty. Designer B claims Designer A gave them the texture. End of story, unless Designer A can prove theft. You can't.

In addition, what if Designer B simply changes the color of the item, or moves a line? It's now their creation, or is it?

And even if LL can prove someone stole a texture, it would certainly not be in their best interest to announce them publicly.

I know--it's horrible. I hate it. What designer wants their textures to be easily accessible? There's just not much we can do to stop it. In RL, the consumer photo industry has had to address copyright issues, but they'll never go away.

Companies like Kmart and Kinko's have been sued (and lost) by the PPA (Professional Photographers of America) because they allowed customers to use their photo printers to duplicate professional portraits that are obviously copyrighted for a reason.

And so, all the photo copying places are very careful to not let anyone duplicate professional images without a copyright release. But that won't stop anyone at home scanning in an image and printing it out on their own.

And therein lies our problem. We can't police what people do with the textures that are loaded in their computers at their homes. There's no kmart or kinko's where we can catch them in the act of copying in our case.

I think it's great that you are trying to find a way to deter texture theft, or to even just make the thieves think twice before they commit the act, but in the end, it's just not enforceable.

We're just gonna have to face up to the fact that texture theft is gonna happen, whether we like it or not. It's not much different than people who take freebie items and sell them. There are two types of content creators in SL. Those who have had their creations stolen and those who haven't yet.

Probably the best thing we can do is educate our customers and maybe form some sort of content creator group that is committed to good business ethics in SL, maybe like a RL BBB.

Like I said, I applaud your efforts. Whatever happens, I do think LL should at least make an effort to do what they can in helping content creators regulate distribution of their creations, but it's an uphill battle. And thankfully, the vast majority of SL residents aren't crooks and aren't out to make a buck from someone else's hard work.

I've already commited one vote to this, because i have a fair amount of my own personal textures. I've thought of selling them, but found the thought that a texture i sell for 10L could be resold for 50L by whomever bought it.

Now I'm willing to commit more votes to this, but I have questions first.

I've gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to get permission from online external sources to use their texture art as my own in SL. I've gone to all the expense to get it there. Why shouldn't I be protected by this bill as well just because I didn't break out photoshop and handcraft the damn things myself?

This bothers me beyond words. My textures are completely new and unique. I've not seen anything like them anywhere. But yes, I'm keeping them to myself because I think it's unfair that people can steal them if i sell them, and now after reading some of these posts, apparently if i even sell them as a part of an item.

I'm all for protecting the person that's listed as CREATOR if you check the properties of the texture.

And that brings about another question. Every time you upload a texture it slaps your name on it and the date it was uploaded. Isn't that alone enough proof to take to LL, provided of course they actually decide this is really a problem and to do something about it?

I couldnt help myself but take a look at this thread again, seeing it's still alive..

/bow to you, finally someone understands, especially after reading the last part. That, combined with the unchangeable UUID (timestamp?) should do the trick.

Asn for your first: if you sell for 10 and another for 50 there are several things you can do:

- raise your prise
- disallow that person from buying frm your vendor(s)
- or, more important, advertise that YOUR textures are cheaper then his -> bringing in more customers who likely might buy even more.

That last one is called Economics 101.
You can't expect to have people not to try to make advantage over cheap/sharp priced items.

We can all count the number of people asking L$1 for freebies (who are given out at other places for L$0) or even higher prices. It's again, Economics 101.

Yes, every time you rip an image out of a stock photo library or off someone's website and upload it to SL, it slaps your name on it and soon the date as well. That is plenty of proof that a particular avatar uploaded a particular sequence of bits at a certain time. Proving that you actually made that content or have a license to redistribute/resell it is an exercise for the legal system, not LL. At best you could prove that you were the first person to infringe someones copyright off of a website.

I think you're confused about the technology and what's actually possible.

If someone's going to *steal* them, they can do it just by walking past an object that's using them and copying them from their own computer's memory. Whether you sell them or not is beside the point. When I talk about buying items and modifying them, I'm buying them because that's a legal and moral obligation, not because it's an essential step in the process. If I was just interested in getting free textures I wouldn't have bothered buying them in the first place.

So by refusing to sell them, you're not really protecting yourself from theft... you're giving up some income and only locking the honest people out.

I was out exploring the islands yesterday and came across Celestial City; where I found a Mooby franchise. The only explination I could come up with for why Canimal would build such a thing is if she created it first; thus I'm wondering if she will be sueing the Jay & Sillent Bob franchise for copyright infringement.

Celestial City (98, 174)

Moral of the story, don't advocate anything you wouldn't want shoved down your own throat. I cannot imagine you want to be banned.

Oh... Classic one... the pot blames the kettle.... (or something like it... )

But; you don't know; maybe she is paying US$ to Jay & Silent Bob to make use of the franchise....