Groups coordinated against content theft.

I've been a member of a few groups in the past that claim to be fighting in the war against content theft but I generally felt let down by their efforts as they were either innactive or the group was innefective due to a lack of coordination and effort.

Here is what I would expect from a group against content theft.

1. All members should publically report within the group the name of any one caught or suspected of content theft.
2. If anyone in the group is a victim of content theft then support should be offered by other members to help investigate the incident and to file a DMCA. Multiple people then back them up by also filing DMCA's and reporting the culprits.
3. Help offered to newer members in the most effective ways of reporting content theft, help filing DMCA's and advice on other steps that can be taken.
4. Regular discussion and activity within the group to discuss issues relating to content theft and intelectual property rights.

Can anyone recommend an active group like this?

Thanks.

A good "content theft" group would explain how "content theft" works (in the sense of what is and isn't possible, not a "how to" guide) and what is and isn't possible in terms of prevention.

A lot of people are very badly misinformed to the point where they don't really understand the basics (ie thinking copybot is a script), or they've been told to "do this and that and you're safe" and they eat it up while it's either completely untrue (ie copybot protectors) or offers minimal protection (ie alpha'ing a sculptmap).

It should talk sense into some creators that taking care of their customers trumps "theft prevention": making something no mod doesn't deter copying in any significant way but does have a significant impact on whether someone will buy it.

Finally, creators should look within their own ranks and start pointing fingers at themselves as well. When a well known creators organizes a "theft awareness campaign" but later turns out to have stolen her skins from renderosity that's really not acceptable.

Only the actual creator / copyright owner should be filing a DMCA and noone else, since they're the only one who have any claim to the content.

They can AR in cases where it's wide-spread copybot usage (dozens of items from dozens of different creators for instance) but that's about it.

By this I mean coordinating everyone who has been ripped off by a particular person to file a DMCA. Obviously someone who hasnt been ripped off cant file a DMCA. In my experience those people who are making a serious attempt to sell stolen content steal from multiple sources. I am obviously aware of my main comptetitors and their general style of product and i am constantly seeing other poeples work that has been stolen and resold along with my own. When I have been able to identify the original creators of stolen items and coordinated them to file DMCA's against the perpertraitor at the same time as me, I have found that action was taken faster by LL to issue a Ban. Problem is more often than not I cant identify the creators. I just recognise the work without being able to associate it with a brand or person. Get a group involved and there is a much better chance of identifying victims and coordinating them into action.

Also if a DMCA is not responded to by Linden Labs then I would hope a campaign of AR reporting from the group would help raise awareness of a particluar thief. I've no evidence to support this though so just an assumption.

This kind of pack mentlity is what had me attacked for weeks regarding an item i suposedly copied form another creator. It was far from the case, the items were similar, but certainlynot copied.

However this did not matter, instead i was hounded by around 20 avies who swore, yelled and ranted at me. I had bloggers attacked over blooging about my work.

It got me to the point that I almost quit creating.



If you see something which you believe to be a copy notify the original creator and sugget they file a DMCA. Anything else could lead to you being the instigator of harassment

it's putting people that may be suspected instead of actually caught on the list is where these groups break down from useful to useless..
because anyone can be a suspect and if you are in one of these groups that has any kind of power by having a big members list a lot of people get put on these list that don't belong..

i've never been banned for anything before until me and a business partner had a bad fallout over stupid drama and went our separate ways..i found out i was being put on black lists because someone was angry at me instead of actually doing anything wrong to deserve being on them.
there is always someone that will abuse their power..
the only way to play judge and jury is the hear both sides before flipping the switch..otherwise it's just witch hunting for some that abuse these groups..

See this is something I would never want to be part of. Nowadays I never confront thieves directly, in the past conversations were rarely civil so now I do not bother. I will report them and allow Linden labs to make the judgement. I am not looking to be part of a linch mob.

Wee, witch hunt time. Explains why my friends and I are getting hit with IM's from people accusing us of stealing animations that we bought full perm from the sources and do not release full perm. If you think someone stole something, do not IM them calling them a thief, do not tell their customers that they are thieves, try actually thinking for a stinking second that maybe, just maybe, they BOUGHT THE DAMN TEXTURES AND ANIMATIONS LEGALLY!!!!!!!

Idiots.

P.S. Can you tell that I'm a little pissed off? Gonna start AR'ing these people soon for harassment.

I have experienced the same harrassment even tho I knew the creator, had their full perm item to use in my work with their permission and had a sign in my store stating that. Not only did these witch hunts hit me, they also went to the item creators and harrassed them. Both of whom were perfectly fine with me sellign the items and said so. However, i stopped selling one set if items simply because the poor creator was getting beaten up so badly about it that I decided it was not worth the hassle.

Please, please if you think someone is doing something they should not be, let the creator know first and let them handle it. Vigilante do gooders are usually NOT correct in their assumptions and cause alot of trauma for both the creator and the reseller.

I totally agree and interesting you should mention this.

Last week I received a very polite notecard from someone who was thinking of purchasing one of my items but noticed that one part of it had a different creator name on it. (The item is in two pieces due to being able to open and close.)

The person said that this confused her as, in her words, "it is obvious you know how to create prims" and was asking if another creator *was* involved, did that creator get a percentage of the sales.

I was totally bewildered and couldn't figure out how that could happen. I immediately checked out the item and found the answer - there is a prim within this item that contains the open/close script. Because that prim had to be the root prim for the item to work properly, that part of the build had the name of that prim's creator. This particular item was one of my first builds and I didn't know to check things like that then as I had built the entire item.

I was still puzzled, however, as I had obtained that prim with the script from a class and there was nothing in the class materials stating the prim/script was to be only used for educational purposes and not for resale. I immediately sent a response to the person questioning the build, explaining the above. I said I would contact the creator immediately to see if I could gain permission for using it and would get back to her with his answer. If I could not gain an answer or received a negative one, I would certainly take that item off the market.

I sent a note card to the person whose name was on the prim in question but a couple of things still nagged at me - the school I took the class from is VERY good about getting permissions in writing when they use content from others and both the prim and the script were full perms PLUS the script had no author listed on it nor any other instructions I'm used to seeing.

On a hunch, I visited the Free Script Library. Lo and behold I found the script in question - free and open source. But not only that, it included the entire kit that together created the "hinge" prim - identical to the one used in class. The creator listed has been in SL a long time and from his profile one can tell he has been involved with scripting and scripting groups, etc. On the other hand, the person whose name was on the prim that had been given out in class - IDENTICAL to the one I had just found - has been in SL a much shorter time - nothing in his profile about scripting.

So, having found the exact kit in the Free Script Library I was assured that I was not in violation of anything and simply rebuilt the prim using the free items. But I was still puzzled how the other person's name came to be on an open source packet created by someone else.

The next day, I received a note card from who I thought was the original creator of the prim/script - giving me "permission" to use it in my builds and that he had "created" it to help those teaching.

I sent all info to the original questioner. She was most impressed I had gone to such lengths to make sure I was not inadvertently using stolen content.

I'm tempted, though, to recontact the person who gave me the permission to use "his" prim kit, and ask him to explain how the identical kit is found in the Free Script Library. (Incidentally, this person had changed the name of the original kit to his initials.)

So, in this case, content theft may have occurred, but I wasn't the one doing it. I'm not even sure what the guy did is theft...but it certainly smacks of misrepresentation.

Very good points Czari. When I was first starting my biz over a year ago, I was reselling furniture and decor. I went to yard sales and picked up things to use in the homes I was decorating and put some of the unused items in my shop. There were a number of things I had paid very little for that were full perm as well as some that I had bought just one of that was no copy. When I was resellign those and grabbing them out of my inventory, I knew I had paid for them and used them to resell without one thought.

Since that time I have learned what many freebies are. And I know alot of people get very twisted up and about people reselling previously free items. I often wonder if those people were like me and had purchased the items for lindens with no clue that they were originally free items. I know people who resell free items are looked down on and half the time they are probably thinking they just got a really good deal and now they want to resell it.

I wish the mentality in SL was more of "seek first to understand" rather than "shoot first and ask questions later."

A friend of mine was getting hit with accusing IM's just like this for a bunch of products she had made herself and was selling. The only thing that got these idiots to stop harrassing her was when she pointed out to them how peculiar it was that all of those who threatened her were officers in a competitors group, and that over half of them had her competitor (not the store) in their picks as a personal best friend. Beware of hidden motives.. crying foul is quite often just a cover for the true motivations.

OK, so enough of the woefull stories. I am looking to join a professional group that wouldn't obviously deal with people in the ways outlined by contributors in this thread. No harrasment, no victimisation, no witch hunts.

Does such a group exist or am I going to have to create it?

Is it all just bad experiences?

Not that I know, I guess you'll have to create it Porky.
But most people with ounce of common sense been around usually
can spot item and usually mention something to the creator first
unless it's that well known Freebie content creator who tells everyone who isn't already on their friend list that they will be muted if they im, to never contact the on their profile.

I employ someone part time to scour the world looking for copies and then to follow up on incidents of theft with my confirmation. We both have a lot of common sense and have both been around a lot but that doesn’t help us that much when it comes to identifying the original creator of all the content we know is stolen. We see thousands of legit items in world and on external websites but when we come across duplicates of these items in world we cannot afford to spend time working out who the original creator was and informing them. We are but 2 people and SL is vast. Sometimes we know who the creator is and that is great, we can drop them a note, get them to investigate themselves and take their own independent action. We are especially good when it comes to the creators of prefabs as that is our business.

3 days ago we came across a store that sold trees, no prefabs. One of the trees was a copy of one I have bought in world. I recognised the original creator’s work so I IM'd her and reported what I had found. I didn’t recognise the creator of any of the other content that the thief was selling. So later that day the tree creator checked out the thief’s shop, identified 7 of her designs and filled DMCA's. As she knows the 'tree industry' she was able to identify the work of 3 of her competitors that had also been stolen. So she informed them. From what I am told they all filed DMCA's and the place was shut down 24 hours later. This all worked wonderfully. Took only a few minutes of my time to contact the original tree creator I recognised and it snow balled from there. Now if I had not have recognised the creator of that first tree then I would not have been able to start this whole process. I would have simply filed an AR and the shop would probably be still trading today. More often than not we recognise stuff that is stolen but cannot identify the creator so do nothing about it

So I thought how great it would be to be in a group with the top content creators. You find a copy-botted item you post it in the group. If it's a boat then the 'boat experts' go check it out, try and identify the original creator and alert them to the theft. The whole point of the group would be to match up stolen objects with their creators and then report that fact to the creator. Then get the DMCA’s filled and await the verdict. .

That is why I feel the need for a good coordinated group and I am sorry that none of you seem interested due to your negative experiences of the past.

I will maybe start this group in world among people I know and see if it works on a small scale without de-evolving into mob mentality.

The example you gave is a very good one, but it breaks down in a group/crowd of people since mass-hysteria will just take over.

The only time I ever came across something for sale that looked like it was copied, I contacted - what I thought was - the original creator and she came over for a look and she said that while it looks practically identicial she'd already examined the sculptmaps and they were different enough to make it an "inspired recreation" rather than "theft" or in other words, the seller turned to be guilty of nothing more than being unoriginal.

Now what if I hadn't know the creator's name but I was in a group like you describe? I'd know I'd seen those boots before in a high-profile creator's store so I could take a snapshot and send it as a notice and people would help! A whole crowd of people would have recognised those boots and then stormed the store "helpfully" filing ARs on that *bleep-bleep* thief.

In order to prevent anything like that everyone in that group would need to be extraordinarily tightlipped to only pass the location on to the suspected creator so that no one can jump to any conclusions and I just don't think that's realistic. You will always end up a group full of zealots eager to cry "thief!".

I recently had issue with creator bug with one of my alts so sometimes
certain things can be strange. I didn't catch on until few months
later that my content creator name had changed to someone who didn't know me.
I have no clue what happen. If I had tried to sell the product people thought
I was selling this other person's texture hair and had no right to do so even
though I spent months trying to figure out how to do the hair myself.
So sometimes their is glitches and it isn't a cut dry thing.
Like example I saw product of a friend, Cel Edman, someone was selling his
sculptymap island kit.
I wrote him sent him a photo and location of product because I as I understand
we as indivual residents non-creators of product just file a AR.
It is job of the creator of product to AR.
Not the Resident who sees it. He wrote me back and said the product was part
of the vendor system he uses and shares commissions from sales.
I would have had no clue it was part of vendor system just looking at the item so
I would assume some one was trying to rip off Cel.
It would totally inappropriate for me to AR the seller of product or store owner without talking to Cel about first and letting him decide if its DCMA violation.
Doing anything other then contacting the creator of product would lack common sense
and could border on harassment and accusing people of theft in my opinion.
Also I have a life, not much of one and I want to focus on the things I enjoy making and
not spending all my free time going on hunt for products and looking up every creator
of the product and playing Private Detective personally.
The thing is I would be concerned any group like that would be encouraging people
to do witch hunts personally instead of politely informing the DCMA violations to creators.
I would encourage people to spend their money wisely, to be informed consumers while
having fun and making friends, yet respecting the creator's ip rights and politely informing
those who own ip rights letting them decide what to do with THEIR ip rights then encouraging others report anyone who is violating when not THEIR right to do so they don't own the ip rights of the product.