retroengeneering and idea stealing

<< then used copyboot to unpack open and see how wored reproducing it full perm>> You seem to be saying they used Copybot to open a box, unpack it and then examine the product. The last I heard Copybot was not able to see or copy the contents of a box or object.

I may be wrong but I think Naiman created waves using specific textures, as opposed to clothing.

We bought some of his waves when they first came out. The wave action was much better than others on the market at the same time. I am wondering if the reverse engineering Naiman is describing is a combination of textures and scripts.

When it comes to intellectual property, copyright protects works from unauthorized copying. Copyright does not protect ideas. The closest thing to protecting your idea from others (besides simply not sharing it) is to go through the arduous process of procuring a patent.

Copybot may be used illegally (unauthorized copying). However, obtaining a product legally, then reverse engineering to figure out how it works, is not illegal. Producing an exact copy of your work after reverse engineering may be illegal; producing something close but different usually isn't.

If Linden Lab wants Second Life to be a real business platform, it needs to offer real business protections (such as helping residents protect their copyrights). However, protecting an idea only is not something that exists for real world business, and so there is no reason to blame Linden Lab for creating a magical way of protecting ideas (if that were even a desirable goal).

If you are concerned about protecting your content in Second Life, do some research. Start with the great resources that the U.S. Copyright Office provides you.

http://www.copyright.gov/

Odd.

If they were waves, wouldn't Naiman have been copying Ante Flan to begin with?

Ah. I looked at his profile and only noticed clothing. Waves certainly sounds more like what he's been saying happened to the products. Making other waves is fair enough, even if they are made to incoporate his newer ideas. Things move on and improve, and it's sounding like Naiman just needs to go with it and improve too, or be left behind - without complaint.

Lilith Heart's Palms are an interesting product to look at in regards to copycat products and the 'stealing of ideas' . Tall and leaning palms didn't exist before Lilith Heart made prim based palms, now there are dozens of copycat versions sold all over the grid. Maybe you should speak to Lilith Heart about how she feels about copycat products

I must admit I do see a certain amount of irony in this situation as Naiman himself might be considered as one of the many copycat palm makers.

But on a more serious note.
If someone has copybotted your product and textures, and even if they have created derivatives using your original artwork, you should definately file a full DMCA report against the thieves. As creating derivative using original copyrighted artwork is still a breach of Copyright.

And something else VERY important that I learned thanks to Jojogirl Bailey - MARKETING! Whether you have the original, the best, or the mediocre...no one is going to know it exists without you letting them know!

Well dangit. That just debunked my first post. But I still say it "rarely happens" - just sorry it happened to you.

It wasn't that big a deal, since I've had my stuff on sale for so long. And we could have come up with the idea independently.

I also had someone come up and spend a quarter hour berating me for "selling freebies" when the "freebie" in question was my Flight Feather. Which is freely redistributable once you buy it but I do prefer people actually buy it from me if they can afford the nominal price I charge.

the are possibly convergences of ideas , an this is ok , but sometimes its just annoying whe nyou spend so much time researchin and brainstorming to find new things , effects , feaures and ways of texturing and then someone comes after u made the "hard" work , sees it and thinks cool this will make me profit and in less than a eye blinck he grabs a copyboot opens sees hows all done and reproduce , may be dfferent , may be similar ,may be worst or may be better , the point is that its no more the creator to retain an "intellectual property" on an idea ....
I like to pioneer new things , innovations that could make SL better looking , I started with clothing by introducing when no one did stuff , but since when i did I was no one and no one knew me soon after it spread and it arrived to "other big names" and ppl think so that they introduced some "stuff" ( I try to stay on the generic couse I dont wnt to accuse or blame anyone) .... May be mine is justa hopeless rant ....
Its that I try all time to invent new stuff when I would have aneasier life by just copying others and make better .... just to copy ideas .... but then people do not care for who invents what or who copies who , or who introduces anything new or improves SL in a certain way ....

I guess is just amatter of time when the skin market will be full of rippers or just emulators that will take out perfect skins for 50 l.... what will all the big skin makers do ? low their prices? or make the all freebies?

I guess there is nothing that can prevent this from happening I guess its how the markt works , but I am just sad that this forces me to close 3 more sims .... apart from that I guess is no more time to try to improve sl for the sake of it ....

Seems most of the people that make things are here just to copy others ideas to make money , is only this whats SL is made for? No point into braintorming to make new stuff...

no support to help keeping 5 nice sims that all enjoy to go there watch take pics live and have fun and I sustained just with incomes of what I could get ...

I guess SL now is just for busynnessmen ....you can have your dream , if you can afford only ....

Naiman's surf and swirling sea foam were really the first realistic additions to the Second Life water. We've all seen them - and they are excellent. However, it's the way of the world for good ideas to be 'stolen' and unless the other person is using copy-botted prims and stolen textures there is nothing to be done.

I've no doubt that your lower sales have contributed to you closing those sims, but don't be too quick to put it down to other people emulating what you do. Sales are down all over SL now and it isn't because people are using other people's ideas.

Also, I read in the forum that the OS price increase is causing you to close the sims. That, together with the general downturn in sales throughout SL, is most likely the cause, and not just that some people liked your ideas and produced their own versions of them.

You can't copyright an idea as far as I know. Also, what you are describing occurs in rl business all the time. See something, make it better and sell it for a lower cost. Happens all the time in real life.

The behavior is to accept it as part of the business world.

And yup!

a cncomitance of factors yes .... indeed , but all sums up ..... and after 8 months of work , what pisses me more is to close all I worked for , I never made all the sims to tae money from them but to build an nice envirnment for all to share and dream in .... nowI have just to retire to make a shop's land .... will SL reduce just to this ? shops lands?

I wanted to find a way to be able to mantain but how? Or at least be able to backup all I did to keep hidden somewhere and be able o reupload when times become bettermay be ....

When I made the wves the first time I ddnt even want to sell cous eI just waned to make them for the place I wa building , then ppl saw , wanted and insisted to have sO I sold .... and wasn't a bad idea lol ... it allowed me to expand my dream land .... but now .... all is sunking I didnt even been able to make the opening wich should have been this january the five sims ....

I hope you will still enjoy them at least for those last days untill I ll hve to reprocess everyuthing and study a new more modest layout of all .....

Is it necessary to close all 5 sims? Could you keep 3 or 4 of them open, close 1 or 2 to save money, and continue with your dream?

They are lovely.

You have a big advantage going for you, which is that you "have" made it such an attractive place that it is on a lot of top 10 lists of popular places. Also, judging by the people I see there you seem to have good recognition in the spanish-speaking community. Can you use those to your advantage? Maybe you could make it even more of a destination and get some additional income by renting vendor space to sea life makers. Or add more features to your waves (more noise, phosphorescence?) and be back on top again. Or go into island building? Or (as much as I hate to say it), lower your prices to match your competitor?

Las Arenas is a beautiful sim and I really hope you can figure out a way to keep it going.

Well I took a quick view of 1 of the 2 islands, found by your classifieds I saw in your profile. Las Erenas Rosadas. Let me give you some observations and try to benefit from them. They are not positive but well meant.

Avatars: 10
Traffic: 8000 (about)
Sculpted items: many many many
Lag: Unbelievable

The why? This is all to be found on an open Sim. If I remember well, you had about 400 prims left of the 3750, but way too many sculpts, probably large textures as well. This is pretty well what Lindens meant by the abuse of open sims, to be quite honest, I was hardly able to move my ass around.

More important to you, it might be a cause of low sales. The prices I saw were pretty steep for the products, and add to that the fact that potential customers cannot be bothered to wait 15 minutes to rezz the surroundings, you might have a valid reason for low sales that had nothing at all to do with copying.

We all suffer from people copying, but I have not seen anyone say they have to close down 5 sims because of it. Biggest part of that closedown must be the fact that LL decided to make the tier 66% higher. Open sims are no longer interesting. Keep the full sim for your business, check your prices against the competition, and try to keep lag as low as possible.

Good luck, Marcel

Um...first, please type more carefully, I can't understand very much of what you're saying, OP.

Beyond that, there's an expression - "There is nothing new under the sun." In other words, no one ever really comes up with something unique, they're always inspired by something or someone else. And reverse engineering is perfectly legal, and is an acceptable way to learn how to do something. It would be a very bad idea to limit creations to just the first person that thought it up. Like the aforementioned poseballs, there are many concepts in SL that are shared by many creators. While individual products should not be directly copied, the idea of the product is fair game. It's part of competition, ideas are shared and improved upon.

And on the palm trees mentioned earlier - I think Lilith was copying God anyway.

I have filed 2 DMCA's with LL and both times the infringing item has been removed. But you have to file. LL cannot legally act on its own without a claim filed by the creator.

I understand the problem, but there isn't a lot you can do.

It's why I've gone off the "multiple gadgets" you see around. Essentially, they tend to grab the popular functions from SL at any given time and merge them all together so that no-one can compete by improving just one of them. Sure enough, those markets are stagnating like crazy, except for the people making weapons (which is basically just a matter of rezzing and typing random stuff until SL breaks, then selling the break)

Maya, English is not Naiman's first language, while a bit difficult at times we manage to figure it out - you should hear me (NOT!) trying to communicate with my French (store) landlady!

Naiman- I had not idea those were your waves! The swirling foam is amazing- I only just saw that at La Reve if that is yours, if not the concept then, nonetheless, gorgeous.

Really? I didn't think that was the case, considering the syntax was mostly correct. My only trouble was with spacing and punctuation. Well, kudos to Naiman for being able to fool a native speaker!

And now I'm curious, I'm going to have to track down these waves and see them for myself!

The swirling foam is clever, it's got a rotating sculpted prim with a contrarotating foam texture on it. I've seen similar things in the past in sculpted rivers and Ante Flan's volcanic lava, but not thrown together quite that way. It's not something that's really protectable by copyright, but you could try for a patent.