Digital Watermaking and Trust System

First off, I would like to state that I do not have much experience with Second Life theft issues as others may have. But I tried my best to come across about this matter with Damian (developer of GLIntercept) about the issue. I am an artist myself and I have a lot of sympathy for the amount of time and effort people put into their creative content. The conversation was mainly in regards to texture theft.

Originally I was going to post the e-mail discussion between him and I but in the end the conclusion is about the same as what others have mentioned which is Digital Watermarking. It seems to be the only possibility in this virtual world of digital content creation along with a few other mentioned ideas. The thing is that it's "digital" and basically there is always a way around something. Although, if Linden Labs created something server side it could make it a lot more difficult because the end users would require the "source" to break around it. Still possible to break but a lot more difficult.

This is where I think establishing some kind of "trust" system on the server side would be helpful. I have seen other software/online-resources which use some kind of authorized "developer" program.

Initially, I was thinking that Linden Labs needs to bring back credit card verification in order to track people down in the case of theft so one has contact information. Ok, so Credit Cards are not 100% fool-proof approach but a lot better than what there is now. Then, I was wondering how this could work out on the Teen Grid where I assume there isn't a CC type system. So, here is my proposal...

Anyone who wants to sell items "MUST" sign up into a complete verification program where you agree onto specific terms and such under this program. Once you are qualified you are allowed to sell as you like. In this case, you do not have to be verified to just upload content for fun stuff or whatever BUT if you plan on selling it you MUST be verified.

For teens, this means the parents have to approve (or much like co-sign) for this so if in the event this occurred there's going to be one angry/careless parent who will be held co-responsible for legal matters.

This "trust" does not prevent the actual theft but it could help reduce the temptation to steal others work quite a bit. In addition, if a good, functional digital watermark system was in place as well this could help in the process.

This way Linden Labs keeps their open system while content creators have a trust system to follow on.

The only other thing I am not sure about is legality of the issue in other countries. If there are legal differences in other countries should trusted members be informed of this before accepting into a program and accept the facts of this particular legal mater? I think so.

This is a shot in the dark of an idea and others may have mentioned something similar. What do you think about something like this? Please provide your feedback.

Apologies, I just noticed this existing topic by Canimal Zephyr. I like ideas mentioned there. Perhaps my additional thoughts could be played in with her suggestions as well.

Linden Labs has NO WAY of telling if you're selling stuff or not, there's no connection between llGiveInventory() and the money() event, and you can't nerf llGiveInventory() because there's too much stuff that depends on it (they already went through that once), and you can't nerf money() because it's used for services (tipjars, etc).

I was thinking about it a little more. In the case where someone asked for money in person before handing an item over (like via drag-n-drop, not item sale) it would very difficult to acquire any kind of trust relationship cause it's different than buying an item via Buy/Pay object Sale option. I'm already leaning back to EVERYONE just needing to be identified with credit cards. That's been brought many times before though so I will just end it there.

In regards to your response, they do keep a limited transaction history so there are records being kept. You can't LSL request the info though.

The problem is that texture theft requires no purchasing at all. If everything is being downloaded into your computer, there are ways to break into the system and take what you want.

As an artist in RL/SL, I make sure to add a watermark with my name that's on all my artwork/photography that I show in game. I try to make it subtle (but recently noticed that although it's very subtle on my PC where my monitor has been calibrated properly), my laptop monitor shows the watermarks as if they were standing out with a little sign saying "Hey look at me! I'm a watermark!"

I know adding this watermark won't prevent someone from stealing it, but at least it's a deterant, and a way to prove that it was originally mine.

E

Understandable. The reason I mention a trust system is mainly for the purpose of being able "track" people down that are caught taking someones original work. Cause with the no verification system there is no way to track people down to file suit.

They can't keep a record of information they don't have.

When you buy something from a vendor there is no connection at all between the "Pay..." and the object transfer. The transfer can be done by a separate object, and if they're using something like a networked vendor they could even have the object transfer done as a completely separate user.

Perhaps you're talking about something else? Cause if I had some avatar for sell and someone bought it, it would show in my transaction records if I were to go to My Account -> Transactions.

I think a solid system of marking when an asset was uploaded is all that's really needed, and is the best solution?
What we then need is an easy way to report the theft, ie right-click an object and choose report abuse will send a 'snapshot' of that object (or rather tell the sim to) along with the abuse report, so LL can clearly see the object and its contents as it was when you reported it. Then just throw in the name of your texture in your inventory and let LL compare dates and decide for themselves.

Because really there's no perfect way to prevent texture theft. Even if you couldn't rip a 100% accurate texture via other means, you can always resort to taking a carefully positioned snapshot at high size and scaling down to get the image at good quality anyway. Texture theft isn't going to be all that easy to prevent, I think the issue really is making it easy to prove and report.

If they do "buy" it'd show that they bought the avatar. If they do "pay" it'll only show that they paid money into an object... and as a separate transction, that your vendor gave an object to someone.

You can have an anonymous alt own the object that accepts money, and another one own the separate object that gives them the product. LL would have to track *every* llSay, llHTTPRequest, llEmail, and XMLRPC transaction to catch the communication between the two operations.