PERSON CHARGING $10 FOR SOFTWARE THAT STEALS SKINS CLOTHING & TEXTURES

full perm means full perm

almost read in that sig "Caution, ripping hazard" lmao

LOLOL @ sign interpretation

stealing skin textures is probably the biggie problem with this SL flaw. any other texture pretty much still requires one to build something to apply the texture to, so i don't imagine it's as big a market.

when i was first born and starting out, i paid $750 for a texture package for some large ad-farm-hiding walls, only to later find the same stuff on the net. my own fault for not researching. but even after saying that, it's easier for me to just buy something i really want, and it's all just SL money being recycled back into the game.

i do enjoy creating things, and the textures i use are not really made anywhere else (which doesn't really mean i am filling a niche.... but probably more that i make undesireable things LOL). if they are suddenly all over, i'll know why. but oh well, they cost me $10L to upload. if i sell just one item, i have my money back.

I have to agree with this. If I were a dishonest person I would have been jumping for joy to see this thread complete with urls's on where to go. Unfortunately getting the word out on something like this is a double edged sword as it can get useful info to thieves as well as warning others what is going on and who is doing it. It sux that there are thieves in SL but there are irl too and hopefully those who are creative enough to make their own things will continue to do so, so that honest people such as myself will be able to enjoy them.

I think LL should take a hard line approach on theft of textures and creations. If a DMCA is filed and proves to be successful......instead of LL just removing products from the grid, they should ban the account (IP address) and all relevant ALTS tied to that IP a/c.

The culture has to change and requires zero tolerance as regards to a succesful DMCA filing. A general message sent to all SL users ..." if you're caught stealing or replicating other people's work, you risk temination of your LL a/c and all related ALTS......a lifetime ban"

Now it won't stop theft fully, but i bet over a short period of time it would be reduced anywhere between 70-90%. The risk would be too high for most protagonists. Sure they could use another computer and create new email accounts etc etc......but the risk would remain the same.

Zero tolerance is the only way to make things get better within SL for content creators. Most will disagree with me......but pussy footing around will not achieve any meaningful long term results.

This has been around for ages. I'm sure the guy is just ripping people off by packaging the existing free software. What a sleezeball. He not only screws his customers, but sets them up to rip off creators in turn.

in RL, we call those copycat items "generic". i'm not certain you can or should stop someone from duplicating anothers' ideas, but you can certainly stop the ability of those sorts of theiving scripts from working.

It's now off SL Exchange too. Good job, everybody who reported it.

"Greedy Asshole" also means "Greedy Asshole"

oh i know, it`s just that with the influx of morally degraded persons, this knowladge is more hazardous now then what it was 1-2 years ago

if he shares it with others and they share with others etc, ripping SL will be a daily practice by alot of people instead of the few who are easily "found"

YAY!

And for those that moaned about " advertising for the thieves" The amount of ppl BUYING that software under the false illusion thats its "legal" as he advertised it is far more damaging than those that found this post and read the fact is ISNT legal and it ISNT acceptable ...maybe just maybe, they read these posts and thought " actually I see both sides now " or " oh shit! I didnt know ripping stuff from this "game" was illegal" " and NOT go buy it.

It would of FAR more damaging to NOT make this guy sales aware to the public and get some strength in numbers.

OF course theres always assholes BELOW *points down a few posts * that are blissfully ignorant and choose to assume logging into SL means all laws cease to exsist
And the LL Permission system suddenly defies all RL world laws...makes me laugh!
Ive heard every BS excuse and justification to stealing ignoring the EUAL we sell with our work and yet despite " Full perms means full perms" LL still go in and remove all and any of our work our customers report being resold by another person.

We are beginning legal proceedings on the creator of a box of textures that was made for a Full Perm store. That box is all over SL now so we cant do much about it but the person who created that box and put it out into the full perm store system will be the one who we are sueing because he has cost is the worth of those textures that we have had to remove from our store now.

LL Perms gives content creators SOME help in protecting how they want their creations to be sold and used Perms do NOT mean you cannot sue someone for copying or claiming something is theirs just because they buy it

If you buy a book or a CD the artist or author owns the rights to that book. You bought a "copy" to use you dont own the intelectual rights to it and never would.
That means you cant make copies and sell them to other ppl
Its the same in SL and LL have made it perfectly clear content creators own the IP rights on anything they create , thats why they have a DMCA copyright dept to deal with pricks like Mr Full Perms in Full Perms below.

Ive had 4 yrs to listen to shite like that. Fortunatly, most go away and do a little research and remove our work but every now and again you get some-one with the mental capacity of a boiled potato who thinks he/she knows better and tries to beat the system by ignoring or refusing to see whats under their noses ( URL to LL DMCA Take Down Notice site page ) and we have to issue Take Down Orders.
The end result is we get a headache typing up bloody FAXs and they get pissed and angry and swear revenge!!!!

lol

yes I agree totally, I mean seriously a line at the log in page? And it would save THEM alot o work too sifting through all the DMCA files and going out on location to seek and destroy.
The LL DMCA office must be buzzing over the last 6 mths. SL has took a turn for the worst regards to morals and ethics and this attitude it breeding to new comers
LL DO get involved but they also kind of stay in the back ground only those that have to reoort a file or respond to one knows they exsist by and large

But trying to get LL to hear you ? I mean where do I go to get this suggestion out to them?
How do we make them see THEY benefit too by being more reactive and pro active by banning accts or at LEAST suspending accts that are found to be guilty in a DMCA case

Problem is, with textures its all quite easy to prove but skins and copybot stuff slghtly more complex and they would have to get involved on a level they dont want to such as looking at PSD layers and playing devils advocate and legally that job should be down to the lawers and courts not LL I guess

Well if your running a non english based OS you can`t use it.

It's up to LL to build a secure system and not give the vault keys away.

'Content theft' in SL is a two step process:
Step 1: rip the content from the client, circumventing the SL permissions system
Step 2: upload and distribute the content within SL


Step 1: ripping content

The SL permissions system is mostly comparable to DRM systems on music/media etc. With one exception. Those things that never leave the SL servers are 'safe'. (The reason script stealing is not possible.)

DRM works on the principle of 'security through obscurity'. Because any user of the media (textures/prims) needs to full info to display/use them, it's always possible to grab, copy and abuse them. In the music business, this realization has finally settled, and most music businesses are starting to sell their music DRM free.

The fact DRM doesn't 'work', is probably also the reason LL never went into an endless race with content rippers to try and protect them from ripping the work. And I actually agree with them as it would be a useless effort to do so.
Basically it will always be possible to grab somebody else's work, and copy it freely.


Step 2: uploading and distributing ripped content.

LL controls the complete serverside/distribution etc. of the content, even for those who ripped/copied theirs.
It means that besides DRM, there is another avenue LL could take to protect the content. Although it won't prevent people from actually ripping/copying and distributing content outside of SL.
Any piece of content uploaded to the SL asset servers could be checked against all previously uploaded content. And when identified as 'equal', the permission system could halt the upload, or at least signal a possible violation.
The issue here is that:
1. It would require hashing/id-ing millions of textures, sounds etc. and a very fast and reliable and robust checking system, which would also be able to identify slight modifications to textures, etc. etc. These systems are not yet available in a reliable format.
2. Any system introduced will have it's weaknesses. As soon as these are known, texture rippers can probably circumvent these systems too, by doing specific modifications to the content.
3. Making the system stricter, to prevent things slipping through, will cause a lot of 'false positives', which mean totally innocent people are being prevented to upload their textures/content.

In conclusion. Building a reliable secure system for content protection is (almost) impossible. The only option atm, is using DMCA claims, and i'm afraid that will not change anytime soon.

While I agree with the sentiment, the mechanics won't work. DMCA would be the mechanism to enforce removal of an illegal copy that one obtained innocently. For example, someone sells you--full perm, no EULA--a texture that they ripped, and then leaves the game; you modify that texture and use it in a build; a DMCA notice against your content will be successful* although a suit by the creator to recover damages probably wouldn't succeed. Success of a DMCA notice is by no means a criterion to establish content theft.

Also to the point of "perms is perms." This isn't that simple either, unless there's a valid EULA in place, in which case the EULA rules. But otherwise, setting perms creates a license. You still own the copyright, but once you've set permissions (or, god help us, a bug in SL has done it), that copyright has been licensed according to the permissions as set. End of story. And that's why the permissions bug is so dangerous, except to those requiring assent to an EULA. From the originator's viewpoint, this may seem unfair, but really, if granting permissions didn't constitute a license to use accordingly, then nothing in-game would have any value at all.

________
*and probably should be, unless the modification created a derivative work for which the role of the original image could be considered fair use. That's a very complicated subject which it is far too easy to treat simply, wrongly, and to "chilling effect."

No, nor should you. But you can resell the copy you have, or give it away. Outright thievery is one thing and it's good to see people busted when they do it, but some of the difficulty in SL does lie in the fact that differernt people want different permissions for items. For example, I like clothes that I can modify, and transfer. I don't care if it is copiable or not. I trashed quite a few outfits last night that I can't use, and it would have been nice to give them to a new person maybe. It's a complicated balance, protecting the things people work hard to make and allowing those that buy them a reasonably fair use.

I'm far from an expert when it comes to computers, programming and scripting/textures but I'll throw this out anyways. Most likely most of you are aware of it but just incase your not here goes... Back a LONG time ago when I was in college a couple girlfriends and I did some modeling for a photographer who was going to bundle and sell our pictures to soft core adult web site owners. To prevent illegal copy and distribution (part of our compensation was from sales) of the bundles of photos he imbedded an invisible code into each GIF that identified it as his property. I'm sorry I don't know more about the technology he used but if it would be possible to do that to SL textures I'm sure one of you talented people could find out how it was done. If it could be done, it would offer a positive and perhaps easy way for a creator to find and identify their textures? This might be nothing more than a waste of band width but if it could be of help I want to throw it out there. Sorry if its a stupid or impractical idea...

Yes, this is called "digital watermarking." It's not 100% successful after a copier has in some way transformed the image, and the higher the reliability under such conditions, the more compute-intensive is the detection process. But especially for confirmation of suspected theft, it's definitely a tool image creators use--and do so already, in-world, I think. (LillyBeth? Is that right?)

See this thread in the texturing forum

/109/7f/214811/1.html

.

Thanks, Sally. I thought I'd read something about (invisible) digital watermarks being used in-world now, so it's good to know that wasn't a synapse misfiring. That thread is a pretty interesting read, too.

i still think a hard line approach is required, and the general culture towards texture theft needs changing.
If the creator spots a possible breach, he/she can approach culprit (even the ones unaware of texture theft) and first explain the implications. If the culprit refuses to remove content, then the creator should file the DMCA. The culprit should be made aware that if they are found gulity, they risk having there SL a/c terminated. My guess that most of them would remove their content before the DMCA stage.

The threat needs to be there,.... its the only way to keep most would-be thieves in check. By being too soft we arrive at the situation we have today.

you missed an issue. 2-2000 people try to upload the exact same texture lifted from google images. wut then?

you could upload 2 images of the same texture... 1 is used as a sample and has "sample" or "demo" on it. the 2nd is used inside the content box as the real deal..... except for skins and clothes and furniture (etc) that people have already purchased and placed in their homes... you can't stop that ripping.

Even more than the texture thieves that are obviously by definition thieves, I dislike the plethora of Texture sellers that claim the work as all their own, when any person that has a very good working knowledge of textures, and where to obtain them for use outside of SL can easily obtain the exact same textures.
Funny that these self same Texture sellers are then often the ones that scream loudest about texture theft.