A process for minimizing texture theft!

This topic is called: A process for minimizing texture theft!

With that in mind your post appears to be nothing more than trolling - ie, off topic and made to incite argument.
Not what I would expect of someone who is a forum moderator.

IT went from a topic to minimize texture theft to a cry for implementing a DMCA (or whatever) system.

That kind of system WOULD affect exactly what he described in his post. So it is not off topic nor trolling, as far as I'm concerned.

The cry was not for textures but to have a "general" way to have Linden protect (C) material from outside.

That would not only include textures one makes themselves (or as I referred to several times: ORIGINAL work) but ALSO licensed materials brought in (Starwars items? FedEx? LaserTag/Quest, StarTreak... referring to other "known" trademarks) that would be protected then too.

You cannot protect just part A of a complex A-Z system. It's all or nothing. And if Linden WOULD choose to actively start protect all (C) material, nothing would be left in SL -> empty game.

Canimal did not start this thread so she could be ripped apart . She thought out what she wanted to say.Canimal came up with wonderful suggestions on how to help keep a growing problem under control and asked for your input to help her work on helping Linden labs come up with plausible solutions.

It pisses me off that anyone would attack her . So many of you here are only intrested in a debate and not a solution . This thread was intended for people to join together and come up solutions to solve a growing problem . Not a problem for one person but a problem for many and many more to come .

Fine, if you dont agree with what canimals asking for . Fine if you dont agree with Wandas solutions . Come up with your own then , add some substance to this thread instead of a bunch of bullshit that no-one really wants weed through .

Its really easy to defend thieves when you have not been the victim of one. Its easy to have opinions when you have no real stake in the claim . Its even easier to start a thread where you can discuss why you think stealing is okay in SL ..or why you believe its not stealing . Id suggest somone start a thread of that nature that way you can all debate among yourselves whats okay to STEAL and whats not . One where you can throw morals to the wind and debate jagged laws and not wreck somone elses thread of good intentions.



Im very disappointed and suprised that most of the so called "Top" designers have not joined this discussion or atleast stepped in to give Cani a thumbs up and thankyou . She has gone out of her way to try and help us all .

TY cani !!<3

How about limiting screenshots like building or flying for people who want to show case their stuff without worring about it getting stolen.

Or how about this. If a screen shot is taken, the texture is rendered as blank for things that people want copyrighted...

As for selling it and some one else sells it for higher, it would require a much more complicated licensing structure that doesn't even always work in the real world to prevent that. Plus, if you bought something, and some one sells it for more, who would buy from them when they can get it cheaper from you.

As has been voluminously explained in great detail, this wouldn't provide any useful protection.

Thanks Canimal for taking such action to get the Lindens involved with this issue. I've already applied my votes to this proposal. Though I understand there is a lot of "grey area" to this issue, I still am all for some kind of action to at least help the problem, rather than do nothing at all...
I myself am a designer who has experienced the dark side of texture theft, it's a really shitty feeling after spending the time to create such skins/clothing/or whatever.


kinda off topic here but..
the whole issue with "photosourcing" - this has been brought up as an intension to frame the origional creator as a theif as well....well that is also complete bull (at least in some cases). I myself create things from purely from paint and/or use photosourced textures that are payed for, and have the permissions to create something out of these resources and resell them.. It's all the same, whether using paint or actual photo resources to create an item. Think of it as the material you're using to create a certain design.
...just like in RL - I'm sure most clothing designers don't create their clothing from a pile of cotton....they buy fabric to create a garment sew it into a shape to fit one's body.

Now this is different than purely stealing one's origional design (mapped onto a template) and selling it as their own without even having the permission to do so. :\

I also agree with what was stated earlier....about "ripping" the textures and modifying them to better satisfy their image of the perfect skin. I too have a problem with someone even veiwing textures I've taken the hours and weeks to create. Bought or not bought, you don't have the right to go through and modify things without the permission of the origional creator. Even if it's for only one's personal use. Do make a skin yourself if you're not completely satisfied with the ones you had purchased. This is entirely invading and it really makes me sick that people actually think this is "ok".

I too would like to see more feedback from actual designers. I'm pretty suprised by the lack of their responses. Many of them experiencing texture theft as well......

Well, I thought that people were getting the textures from screenshots. If people are getting them from memory, well then the problem becomes much tougher. I wonder if it also possible for them to steal other things (like scripts) from memory as well. As a side note, just because you are livid about someone stealing from you doesn't mean you have to be rude when I pose a solution that you don't like. My idea would help limit the theft to only the more savvy of players.

Back to the topic, I have been following the problem of crimes within virtual worlds for a little while now and most places have been aiming towards the virtual communities to police themselves. LL cannot handle every possible issue that comes up. I mean the US has tons of people working in the court system, and the Lindens are more of engineers and designers then court workers. So that means we have form a court system amongst the residents of SL, who can take a look at accusations and make determinations of guilt or innocence. Then of course there has to be a consensus on the punishment by the whole community because victims cannot be the only ones making those kind of decisions. (ie. impartial juries...).

Having said that, then maybe it would be good if Linden could put in a hidden layer in the texture format so that it would be easier to tell if someone has copied something within SL. Of course, then how do we know that they didn't steal it from someone else on the web? I guess that would have to be left up to the RL court, which is something everyone who's had something stolen could do already. File a grievance with the court and subpeona SL for the actual identity for the person that stole your item.

I'd like to understand this better, perhaps you can IM me and give me a bit more insight into this viewpoint. I have software I spent months and years in creating, and I'm usually more distressed if people can't see it than if they can. There's some stuff I've done for hire that I think is pretty neat but I don't have the rights to, and it bothers me that nobody else can get hold of it. When you're talking about something that's completely visual, how is it an invasion to look at it?

Actually, you do have that right. Whether it's "OK" or not, it's explicitly protected by constitutional law in the USA, and Second Life is in the USA. Now there's a lot of stuff that's constitutionally protected that I personally don't think is "OK", or that is the exact opposite of OK, but I'm not going to try and argue that it's not real, or stand there and argue with a mall cop over a mall policy because the mall owner is a corporation and corporations "shouldn't" have free speech rights because they're not people... you gotta deal with what's real even if you don't like it. Whether it's fair use or corporate personhood.

Okay, Argent ..here is the skinny . We pay almost 300 a month to Linden Labs . We as creators do not want the Second Life population viewing or changing our textures in any way .We expect that Linden Labs will do their best to protect us . Linden labs has given creators of anything 3 options on how they want their object to be used .If you take a 3rd party program into second life and do it ayways you are not following the rules for Second Life and like any cheater of any game most likley other people will not want you to play. So basically i dont give a flying F**k or a rolling donut what US laws say about this situation.

I dont know a whole lot about software developement, but many of us who create skins/clothing textures to wrap around the mesh (our avatars) are sold for this purpose only - to be veiwed only on our avatars. You can tell A LOT by how a person works just by looking at the actual textures... Some of us have a problem with people using 3rd party programs to "rip" or "snatch" these textures behind the creator's back, and modified to one's liking.

Much like veiwing one's script. If they sell a script no mod, what right do you have to hack into the game and change these permissions in order to veiw the script?
If I wanted people to see the textures and the work done to create a skin/clothing I'd sell and/or give out the textures themselves.

It's an invasion to look at what anyone's created when they specifically didn't give you the permission to do so

And you can be assured that I will respect your wishes and won't even consider touching yours. I've made this point good and hard already, by the way, and I'm being very careful to distinguish "this is what the law says" from "this is what's reasonable behaviour".

After all, in Second Life "the law" says that it's perfectly legal for a landowner to steal or destroy my airplane if I happen to fly over his property. This is of course _unreasonable_ behaviour, but it's legal, and if you fly in SL you have to know what the law in SL is, and know whan you can expect protection from what you consider unreasonable behaviour and when you can't.

You're in the same situation.

And, by the way, the expression is "a flying f--- at a rolling donut".

Well, you can tell a lot about how a person works by looking at the actual code.

In the course of my job over the past 20 years I have frequently had to reverse-engineer and decompile code that was distributed in a form that's traditionally not considered "modifiable". It's necessary, sometimes, and on occasion people's personal security and health have depended on it (no, I'm not exaggerating, I work in the real-time control systems industry... a bug in my code or in code that I'm working with could have lead to a train derailing or an oilfield fire).

The exact equivalent mechanisms don't exist in second life, but if I buy an aircraft and it's got a bug in it that keeps it from going non-physical if I fall off in a sim crossing, or keeps it from clearing my animation when I get off it, that's a bug that I'll fix if I can figure out how.

Now if the creator indicates that they actually don't want me doing that, I won't, but the Linden permisisons system is far too crude to read as a declaration of intent.

Well, that's just it. Copyright law basically states that when you sell someone a copy of a product, in that sale you *are* granting them certain rights. You can't *not* grant those rights except by not selling the product.

And, well, the only thing I can get out of that in the way of an explanation is that you're concerned about industrial espionage. A lot of people are, but you can't use copyright law to protect you from that... that's a matter for trade secret law. And that simply doesn't apply to stuff you're distributing. Doens't matter whether it's a texture or an OS kernel.

Marcuw's post has two opening bold and no closing bold. MSIE correctly shows the bold, as specified by the HTML while Firefox doesn't show it properly.

As a user and buyer of textures, I'd really prefer to have full permissions on a texture, instead of partial permissions and not be told about it until after I'd spent the money. This would only encourage people to steal textures.

Cool.


Ok. You're totally right. I didn't know 'stealing' a texture using some kind of hack or program was "necessary" and on occasion vital to one's "personal security and health".
Thanks! Got it.


....

You can check the permissions before you purchase a product by veiwing the content of the ad/vender, right-clicking the item being sold and choosing "properties." There is a place in there that states the next owner's permissions.

You can also do this before accepting a purchase of a product (only if they are set as "buy" rather than "pay" Just right-click > properties, next owner permissions.

QFE. I've said this too. It's not USA only that has this constitutional right. Europe countries have it too (consumer rights).

Why do you think xboxes and such get modified and there is nothing M$ can do about it? Once you BUY it, you OWE it. You can spray it blue-with-white-stips, replace processor, add ram...

No difference when you buy a virtual skin/texture and adjust it too feed your PERSONAL needs.

Again, I'm sorry... I'm just quoting/replying...
(working in Firefox only myself)....

But to stay on topic... Myabe someone know how to fix this in Firefoxm which fortunately is open source

I didn't say it was. The law doesn't require that... you have the right to modify a product you've bought for any reason at all. What I was talking about was the situation where as a network security admin I not only had that right, but I was legally required to exercise it.

Moving on...

Setting permissions on an object doesn't tell me much about your intentions, and nothing at all about your motivations. You should ALWAYS include a document with your product describing your intentions. For example, my open source scripts are all distributed with the BSD license, which explains the terms under which you're entitled to redistribute them. Without an explicit statement, all the buyer has to go on is the law and precedent.

Actually, Firefox is correct and IE is incorrect. A browser is supposed to ignore syntactically incorrect or unknown tags, like an unclosed bold.

The products i sell are clothes - what you buy from me is an sl generated clothing item - shirt, pants, undershirt etc.

You never buy a texture from me.

You are free to adjust the shirt etc as much as you like - unfortunately the alpha that is embedded wont let you.

You are not free to adjust the texture, which is not given to you or sold to you - in fact it isn't distributed in any way. You have no rights on this item unless I put it in the box.

I've now implemented a ban list in my vendor server and I think everyone should do the same.

Modifying consoles is illegal - why do you think it isnt something done by high street shops or MS themselves? Why is it almost always done in a dodgy back-street shops or someones living room and they wont guarantee the work - and why do you also think the moment the box is open you void any waranty you had.

Sorry but thats the dumbest argument I've ever heard

Sorry Wanda, but he's right. If you buy it you are allowed to modify it. What has happened with some of those situations is that those "dodgy" back-alley shops put illegally copied content. Warranty has nothing to do with legal use, but whether the company will be liable for anything if you DO modify it. The exception to this is if it is a DMCA protected content. Now if you recieved a licensed copy, but in SL you are selling copies, not licenses, if you include the texture with the object.

As I said before, this is not a problem that LL is really responsible for. They have given us the ability to protect our content. The fact that someone is using third part stuff to grab your textures is not their responsibility, though I'm sure they will do whatever they can. If someone violates your license agreement by using your product in a way that you did not intend, and then makes money off of it, then you would have to take them to a legal authority (whether its a SL court or RL court) to seek restitution. What would you do if some person hacked into your own personal computer and stole your textures that hadn't even done anything with?

...

In the UK, the selling of mod chips was ruled illegal in 2004.

...

In other countries, the selling of mod chips is banned. In the UK, both Microsoft and Sony have used the EU Copyright Directive to clamp down on mod chips. Under that directive, it is illegal to circumvent copy protection systems.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4315172.stm

Well that statement shows you are talking about something you don't know nothing about.

In fact, where I live, companies (legit) with shops advertise that they will modify xboxes on request (and similar) but that the guarantee will be lost (since they can no longer go back to the original manuf. either).

So it's not at all the dumbest ARGUMENT. It is the dumbest RESPONSE.