Whats the point in creating content when....

Im curious, whats the point in creating content when there are dozens if not hundreds of people out there using methods of copying what you created, not by actually trying to rebuild it, but by using some kind of exploit or copyXXX.

Ive been making cars for Secondlife for over 2 years now and I no longer can create anything. I have a army of individuals with very watchful eyes aimed at putting my business, out of business. Exact copys of my creations with full permissions, being handed out like candy on halloween.

Sure I can spend all my time filling out DMCAs on all the accounts that come into play, and hope that the Linden employee assinged to my DMCA finds the discriminating evidence. But do I really want to spend all my Secondlife time filling out DMCAs on these individuals whom just turn around and do it all over again that same day? Or do I continue forward, spending hours apon hours trying to create meaningful content for anyone whom wishes to enjoy it, puchased or stolen?

Its a terrible contradiction.

Im not sure which road to take. Each time I find someone who has stolen my content, I feel like that person has stolen a piece of my passion from something of which I love.

Im not sure how much more I can take. The line between love and hate is starting to wear thin. If anyone has anything constuctive to say, please share your thoughts.

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
JR Breed

expand, make more intricate and better designs, use your own textures on your vehicles, they don't have to be cars do they? I would say make sure your permissions are correct, but after 2 years i guess you understand how these work.

when you can, make cars you have designed free, send them to every freebie site you can find and ask them to give them away.

but whatever, keep creating, don't let the bastards get you down.

this might not be the best advice, just somethings to think about.

None of what you said stops CopyBot.

What good does it do to make your own textures and more intricate designs when it can be copybot'd with no extra effort?

Totally agree with Dekka..but will add my nasty businessman advice now.. sorry.

Build your Brand.. if your brand is strong enough and has enough credibiity/respect, people will seek out your products rather than the "me too" and will also pay a premium.

Accept it as a reality of the market and increase your innovation rate.. not a popular perspective in SL I know, but a fact of life in RL for most of us. You can also design what is called an "appropriability regime" for your business, only part of which will rely on copyright of existing designs.

A long time ago I was taught about the "Window of Appropriability" (probably called something else now), basically it's the time period you get between bringing a new design to market and the emergence of competing (often cheaper) "me too" products.

As an example take the iPhone, still popular because of the Apple brand and still earning a premium, but look at all the cheaper similar phones now hitting the shops.

I know it sucks, but it's challenge and exciting, a bit like chess.. but for money (well to some of us nasty suits anyway..

My advice would be dont waste your time or mental energy worrying too much about it.
I know myself its not down to the losing of any potential money its somone taking something you put your heart and soul into and treating it like crap that really hurts.

People who steal content can make a few fast bucks but anyone who has an established brand knows its all about traffic, marketing and reputation.
If you are good at what you do these will see you in good stead and forget all the little fish taking bites karma will take care of them.
At the end of the day you have to weigh up wether or not your getting the rewards financially and creative fullfillment you seek out of all this wether or not people are taking from you.
Just remember you have the majority of the community behind you and your certainly not alone in having this happen. If everyone in SL was a thief things would be a lot lot worse it really only is a minority.

In a sense dont see it as damage to you thieves only damage themselves so head up show some pride and do what you love to do. ☺

hey

well i know how it feels to get pirated and it also drives me sad sometimes, ...
but its a problem for all content creators also for artists, digital data -> pirated by people who think all must come for free - and its not an sl problem only, however, not very helpful ...
dont stop creating stuff cos of others stealing your work.
creating, developing is a lot of fun too and a challenge maybe.

I am guessing that you don't have a lot of real world business experience. At the first snag you decide that following the proper and available legal channels are just too much work? That then is your responsability and your fault. Sorry but it just is.

The Lindens have been on a mission to take down illegal copies this past few months. If anything use that to your favor. File an infringement report, just read how you are supposed to do this. Taking pics and locations, writing up a detailed report to the best of your ability. Don't just give up without even trying, that's a cop out and you only have yourself to blame for that. If you feel hopeless, then get some damn power back to yourself. Simple as that.

Yes it sucks that people copy designs they like. Yes in a lot of cases this isn't even infringement. And yes I would be just as slapped in the face if I fould copies of my own work as well. But I would do something about it. This is a legal matter, if you own the original designs then use that power.

Add all sorts of scripted features and maybe make updates, and perhaps drop prices to undercut them as soon as you see the coppies hit the market, after all every one you can sell costs you nothing in materials after the first effort.

Dont let them grind you down........

Its about time this and similar loopholes was closed once and for all. Personally i think its lindens fault for allowing this to happen, *wonders if any compensation will be forthcoming......Then suddenly wakes up from my fantasy *grins.

sorry to hear you having these issues....keep at it......and dont let them win.

maybe if LL made a habit of deleting all items that have been proven to be stolen content (not plagarized but copybotted) and to keep deleting them on a regular basis, they wouldn't be attractive to buy even at lower prices. and it might make people feel like filing dmcas is worth it.

I would hate to lose an item that I paid for from my inventory that I had paid for, but if it happened a few times I would learn to go to a legitimate source for my items.

I'm not even sure if that is possible, I'm not a programmer...but it's the only idea I could come up with.

If your brand is good enough then you can easily survive continuous content theft without seeing a hit to your revenue. And yes, you do need to invest time and money in tracking down the theives and threatening them and filing DMCA's. This year on average I have managed to get banned 2 thieves per month. These are people who open up commercial businesses to sell my products generally with full perms or reduced prices or both. I pay for people to scour the world looking for copies and then I deal with it. It's a part of doing business in SL and you need to accept that. Create template DMCA's that can be adapted slighty to suit the specific situation, this will reduce time filing DMCA's, but allways file a report, allways follow it through to completion and never settle for anything less than an account ban!

Say for example someone steals 50 of my designs to set up a shop. They are pretty much non existent in Search 'all' (at least in the prefab listings). They are theives and dont like spending money so they are unwilling to pay for noticable classifieds. So in my experience they may sell or give away a few designs but they have no real visibility in world and in the unlikely event they manage to build up a business that generates real trade then they have obviously found a way to increase their exposure, making it easier for me to find them. Generally they do it using camping bots so it's the 'places' search that is always a good place to start looking.

Also SLX and Onrez are an obvious place for these theives to sell their stolen content and in my experience both sites will remove stolen content after investigation and then you can move in for the kill.

Overall though, if you make 100 sales per day and they make 2 sales per day then there is no real damage being done to your revenue. Let them continue operating though and you will be in trouble.

If stuff ends up in freebie stores, get the stores closed down, the owners a warning or suspension.

You have to be ruthless in your persuit of these people.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!

The first time I saw a store in world selling all my prefabs, full perm at half the cost I was gutted.....ready to throw in the towel. But then I got angry and have been on a mission ever since to bring all these f*ckers down!.

And now I get a kick out of it. Just last week I got someone banned and he had his own region, which he lost! I got a nice bit of job satisfaction out of learning that news.

So my advice to the OP is DONT GIVE UP. We are at war with these people and if you back down now you will be no better than the French. (can I say that?)

Porky

*wonders why anyone thinks a "business person" should be compensated for not knowing anything about business*

I sympathise with the OP, but the idea that this situation is in some way strange and unusual and only exists in SL is.. well just wrong.

And before everyone jumps in an starts saying this isn't about business, it's about being a "creative" and having your heart ripped out, I'd say fine to that too.

But it's not, the OP is upset because his business and his bank balance is being undermined by cheap knock-offs. As straightforward as that and as ubiquitous in RL as in SL.

It's a business issue and the "suits" are you.. in case you hadn't noticed.

B

CopyBots can't copy scripts out of a product. If you can script (or get someone to help you script) lots of neat features into your cars then that can be a good hook to get people to go with the original items. Make sure you have good support in-place, I mean, why get a freebie rip-off if you can't get upgrades?

Exclusive content is another possibility. For example, if you had a race-track for customers to try out your cars, which boots people who don't have the genuine article (identified by the script inside it) then that's another bonus.

Basically you need to make your products /more/ than "just" a car, because if all that's appealing about your product is the design, then it's going to be hard to prevent copies becoming popular. But if what you offer is a full package; features, support, exclusive content/events, then there really is no competition with the original.

Thank you so much everyone for your feedback. I carfully read everyone's reply and I will definitely re-read them again after I post this reply.

I could sit here a pretend Im a legitiment business man, but Im not. Im just some guy who is trying. That is why it is a bit emotional for myself. My judgement has been clouded and its great I can ask for some guidance here and many of you came forward to help me take the appropriate steps and path cupuled with some very inspirational words.

Thank you, thank you so much.

Sincerely,
Jr Breed

Good luck JR

I think you are right to be concerned though.

Cases of content theft like this will become more common as SL ages, not less.

I would use llGetCreator() in your scripts, and if the creator is not you, then the script deletes itself, and whatever else you want. -- assuming that your scripts are copy/no mod for operation of the vehicle.

You know, though, it is not really about the hard-nosed business-people out there, who live and breath commerce and will spend hours sending out takedowns and legal threats and checking the market for ways to diversify. If one's nose is hard enough to go there, it is not much of a further step to aggressively protect one's property.

It is more the person who has imagination and talent and makes a few things which people like, and wants to expand to a nicer shop and perhaps pay the odd bill and, you know, maybe in the future they could think about being a big Content Creator. That's a dream. But they just can't get to that stage because, as soon as they start to be popular, people steal their designs and duplicate them (or there is the chance that they will) and they end up thinking "what the hell is the point? why am I wasting my time here?" They don't have the time and money and energy to start court cases or chase infringers across the grid.

SL is not in any way better with that happening.

I don't know of a practical solution at the moment. I don't personally worry about duplication as I am primarily a scripter, but if I were not, I certainly would worry and it might well put me off the whole idea. I do make my primary income from SL now, but I do that purely on a contract basis where it is the responsibility of the client to chase down infringement, and to be fair they are much better at it than I would ever be.

watermarks. put watermarks on your textures. if you think someone is stealing your stuff, file a DMCA and note that the watermarks match yours.

LL ca ntrack an alt to the original via IP's. will they? i don't know. i suppose if enough people AR someone, they might.

If your experience is like mine it won't matter what you create really to anyone else except yourself, very few people will really take much notice unless its absolutely remarkable. evem then they may not notice because it won't load properly on their computers or their is hundreds of other things to do and be at they will never hear about you.
Why bother creating?
Because you can.
Yeah there are people who copy other people's work and resell it.
But if you're creative you will always be creating new things and eventually those people who are copying and reselling your work will become bored, be found out or just not making enough sales and will move on to something else to do.
What I have learned from the friends who do run successful business here is it takes a lot of dedication, focus, persistence, when they repetitively faced pirating for long periods of time they do what they need to do to deal with it but in long run they have to focus on the good things they enjoy in what they are doing or it becomes to miserable to continue be here.

Spoken like a true artist

Do what you do for the love of it, if money comes from it great, otherwise you still have the enjoyment and the satisfaction of creation.

If you created/sold subscriptions to a site someone would come along, use a crawler and copy it.

If you created/sold music the MP3s would be available on P2P proggies.

Same with movies, software, e-books, digital photography, and pretty much anything you can think of that exists in digital form.

It's perplexing that people naively believe that SL is (or can) somehow not subject to a problem that every other digital content creator all over the world faces.

(Edited to add that the moral of the story is that if all you're doing is selling digital goods then there's no difference between your oriignal and a copy. Services or experiences on the other hand can't be copied without loosing the "soul" of what makes people enjoy it, or draws them to it.

Someone can copybot all of Caledon and compete with Desmond but it would be entirely pointless, the atmosphere and community isn't something that can be copied)

Yes there was lot of better artist then myself even before the internet who never noticed and rarely made a dime for anything they created.
Why did they do it? I think it was because they could and were called to do it.
That only reason why I keep making digital or game content the last ten years.
There is lot I don't know how to do, lot of people make better things then me and yes I get very discouraged sometimes but I keep doing it only because I can.
Some days its harder then others times, yes people may steal and use my content change it but most likely it just won't be noticed.
Majority of content out there in Second Life I doubt gets noticed except to handful of people.
There is probably only 10000 residents who actually buy content on regular basis and I doubt they notice everything out there and buy it.
Create because you can and hope LL doesn't decide to remove this feature only permit it to some individuals.
It doesn't matter where you go some always go to copy or outright steal someone else's ideas or creations, some do better job at stealing then others, and then some do it to be better artist as way of understanding and learning because they know that person wouldn't have the time to help them anyway.
Some steal and cheat in same way people create things because they can and it serves them well but that shouldn't stop you from doing what you want because of some people who will copy and steal from you because they have no ability to be unique or creative.

I don't know what you are doing to protect your content but I have never spent hours dealing with a thief. Takes a few minutes to file a DMCA with LL. I never bother with legal threats. I never personally send takedown orders. As for taking people to court that has only ever happened a few times in SL to my knowledge and would never be on the agenda for the average content creator. Occasionally if I am in the mood I will IM an offender and indulge in a bit of verbal interchange but no contact with the theif is necessary IMO. I pay 2 people I trust to search the world for copies. They get L$1000 per week plus free content and are required to work about an hour per day. Thats's about $4 USD a week. They enjoy it, gives them a purpose in SL as they are not content creator themselves and gives them reason to travel and explore the world. If your content is directly copy-botted or simply copied then LL will remove the offending articals and most probably ban the offender. There is little doubt when copybot has been used so LL are swift to react in my experience, few days at the most. Protecting your content isn't a chore if you are organised and i think remarks like yours only serve to deter the smaller business owner from taking steps to protect their content.

If your content is textured based and its required to be sold as full permissions i.e textures, paintings, clothes, sculpties you can file numerous take down orders and no they won't remove the content that was sold or taken.
You can file all the dcma's you want the content won't be removed from data base.
I have a friend who makes lot of money here with his own original content was battling a situation for over six months, with texture theft ring.
It was overwhelming to watch him go through it, it made him very unhappy, situations kept seeming to get worse and worse.
Eventually he had to find a way of coping with it new way and focus on what he enjoyed more then the constant emotional focus on filing take down notices because if he hadn't he have to leave because he was getting to miserable.
It didn't mean he wasn't fighting back but emotionally he had to remove his constant focus on fighting the theft and focus more on what he enjoyed doing.
Focus on making what you want, if what you make does extremely well you can always hire someone like Porky has to track down others who are and filing if you want too.