Warning: Copycat !

Your "why" anecdote is missing an actual copy, made by the resident in question, of one of your objects.

Jesseaitui is actually not far off the truth!

I rent vendor stalls all over SL and view at least 4-6 new and old malls everyday. Copying is on the increase that's for sure.....I recently discovered a Naughty Design skin being sold at an obscure market, the reason i knew was because it was a carbon copy of the one i had been wearing for last 8 month and has a distinctive marking on it, which i won't reveal here.....also found a a Nominee skin being packaged within a complete cheapo AV pack at a Slavery mall yesterday and reported to creator too.

There are new players coming into the game with the sole purpose of making a fast buck, and they have no qualms on how they do....ashamedly being European, it' seems mostly from my continent!

I think its good practice for everyone who finds these items in shopping malls or commerical land to inform the creator via notecard. I don't have much faith in filing a dmca or informing Lindens.....they're swamped just keeping the grid working, so unlikely to resolve anything for you.

The creator in turn should report it to the Mall owners or SIM owner who can effectively remove that stall or shop off the premises. I think that's very effective as it sends out a message out.....if such actions occured right across the grid, a thief would have to think twice about selling stolen creations. Mall & Sim owners have to help in this crusade to stamp it out or minimise it.

What, so it is no longer Chinese Farmers, but now European Copycats? Wow, the world really moves forward after all. Not happy about this either.. maybe I should just stop telling anyone where I come from, unless I want a witch-hunt on me.

I don't get why someone would need to go into edit mode to study object to learn how to build it literally for days.
It would make more sense to go to edit mode and take photo of it and study item study item later if they really was fascinated with how it was constructed.
I know I have done that to understand how people make very complex sculptures or objects. It only took a matter of few seconds not days to do it that way.
But I had no interest in selling item, I was more fascinated with the design and how it was made.
Anyway I really sorry your guys items are being stolen.
I do know how hard it is to make things and even get them noticed for people to buy your items, and how frusterating it would be to know someone is making money off a item you've created.
Doing well here I can definitely see as double edge curse, because if you do come up with unique and interesting product people will try to steal it and resell it.
I sort of given up really trying to sell anything myself except few low priced items or freebies. I decided to stop renting, advertising and go back to camping or buying lindens then trying to make money selling content myself.

I've come across a couple of cases stolen X2 skins, reported the abuse and sent the information to the X2 skin designer. What's found out is pretty depressing. Linden Lab won't stop these thieves and recommend any complaints be filed with copyright courts. As you know you'll need to hire a lawyer and others to even think about going through court to protect yourself. Because this would cost far far too much for a builder so it gives the thieves all the power to do what they want knowing LL won't stop them. Eventually with hacks and tools making it easy to steal coming out it won't be too long before SL will be a wasteland of copies and all the real designers leaving. Even now I rarely see new things of quality showing up or maybe it's just getting harder to find them?

If the item is an original work by a resident they could file a DMCA claim with Linden Lab:
http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

And have you looked at that process to file?

How does Linden Lab determine who "wins" and "loses"?
Linden Lab does not ~adjudicate~ the substance of the copyright claim: we do not declare winners and losers. Your copyright in an item is determined in the real world, by real-world processes including the DMCA. The DMCA process allows users of an online service to resolve copyright disputes using the ~adjudication~ systems available in the real world.


~adjudication~ = Court of Law.

Ad·ju·di·ca·tion
n.

[L. adjudicatio: cf. F. adjudication.]

1. The act of adjudicating; the act or process of trying and determining judicially.

2. A deliberate determination by the judicial power; a judicial decision or sentence. «An adjudication in favor of natural rights.» Burke.

Whether or not the paperwork involved is overly complex it does provide a path to a possible resolution.

Well, I can say that copycat are everywhere in SL. in my point of view, Tryin to copy others people designs / style is still a kind of copy. & only the first creator/ designer of that items will know who trying to copy as the stuff they made is truely original design. But well in SL , itis very hard to prove that is your design. I read many cases that people try to resell full perms items , make a new one by following other designers' design & then sell it & claim that is their product (happen on me many times .. someone try to copy the design of my jewelries & place out for sell) .. BUt we can do nothing about that to be honest. For my case, some people admit it & telling me

"sorry! I use your jewelry as learning when I start crafting items & then I sell them... I will put it down. (as they don't know I never copy others/or real life design but all creat by my ownself)"

But some never admit & say that is their creations & we just have the same idea blah blah blah.. ok even they admit , what you can do? sue them? ban them ? report them?

Well I am one of the victim & we are going to make a forum for all designer in SL to share the informations about who is the copycats, where I see people resell whose full perm items... Well think this is the only thing right now we can do.. gather together & share informations , maybe linden lab will do something on that if they read our forum. We will annouce the forum regarding this in here once we set that. Wish you as a designer will join us

Don't be sad & just keep creating items as copycats can steal your items to make fast money but they can never steal your talent. Let's thanks the copycats in showing how creative, how talent & how awesome designer you are!!

Cheers all!

I'm not believing this. You can't copy AND transfer a commercial item like an X2 skin, nor can you extract the original bitmap. How exactly are you supposing this "theft" took place?

windows has a "maintenanc" tool its built into every single friggen windows system and people are twisting it to their own means enough said

the other issue is that it takes a very special kind of person to do this kind of thing because you also need to be able to use the client (which coincidentally is now open sourced) so yes it can be done and has been done

but the kind of person that is going to spend this long working on the client and whatnot lets just say i dont understand because it would be easier to make the skins. However such is life its like why people create trojan horses and other stuff they just do because "its their nature"

Having encountered a few individuals in this game who are not quite right in the head already it doesn't surprise me in fact its pretty much predictable. A lot of stuff happens that should not happen but it does

i haven't read every post here but am a concerned shopper..

i wouldn't go banning everyone clicking on all the vendor slots you have in your stores..when i get to a store or mall i start to click on anything gray to rez it faster..the edit beam is gonna show me clicking every item on that wall but i am not clicking pay..i click the thing for sale then click the wall to close the pie and the image loads for me so i can see the product..ban everyone clicking to rezz items and you may lose a customer about to spend 50 or 60 k like i do most times in the right store..i'm not a newb nor do i look like one but if i get banned for something stupid like rezzing images so i can buy something..well then so be it me and my money and alot of friends money would be elsewhere..
if a person is taking skins or whatever or has this ability to do whatever it would take them no time to change thier looks into something different everytime..
i'm not bashing anyone here but i just don't want to be questiond from this day forward everytime i go into a store rezzing a slow loading image because of a vague description and edit beam being a major first thing they look at

That's why I waited very long (two days) to undertake action Ceka. I understand your concern. Normally I am very positive minded and service oriented, but this simply went too far. Even bothering my real customers.

I hear all the comments made here. Also the reactions from people who still think this was normal behaviour for noobs. Thats fine by me. I know how hard I work to create and advertise my own ideas, how proud I am when I have a new creation placed in my shop and how glad I am every time when people think they are good enough to buy. And I also know what exactly happened those two days.

This was just a well meant warning for other creators. Do with it whatever you want.

OKay when this happens with people its a bit strange and the behaviour is odd. Firstly as a shopper myself I may go back several times to look at items but i dont stand in one spot for 48 hours non stop with the edit window open pearing insite the boxes etc.

If i want to buy something I may check the boxes to see if its got anything in it using edit but that takes about 60 seconds. I could understand if you are there even for a couple of hours but honestly would you leave your avatar logged into a store for 24 hours or 48 hours with your arm stretched out using the edit button to look at an item for that long because this is what was being described (well it was described better in the second post)

match to that the fact that they then went to an adjacent property to continue the behaviour lol leaves not a lot of doubt in most people's mind. I mean if by chance you did get banned from a store would you standon the neighbours lot still trying to get at the stuff?

Its usualy very strange and doesn't happen often to any single individual and when it does you usualy ask for other people's opinions and poke and prod the person every few hours


Like i said this happened to me once I have not seen anything copied on sale after it happened but then again I dont go looking mainly because if i did find my stuff out there i would probably quit SL due to depression hehe

Anyhow if you read his second post can you say as a shopper you would stand and do that like he is saying?

Not to mention the excuse kept changing ..

Please remember that all the textures you see in you client are streamed to and reside somewhere on your computer. There are programs that can capture that stream and save those textures.

If you used such a program while wearing an X2 skin, you could capture the original bitmap. Dishonest SL residents could then upload those bitmaps to sell their "own" skins. Such behaviour while utterly reprehensible does occur.

This happens all too often! I have reported to some creators when I've seen their stuff elsewhere, often priced lower.

I also have had one of my competitor edit/scan my things for a long time. He didn't even bother to change his group tag, so I know his store. Sure enough, I visited his sotre the next day, and there were twin items there!

They say it's a more of flattery... I say, I don't need no flattery ;p!

Um wow..ok


I guess i didnt understand the OPs post. My posts were not referring to people who copy a design on their own, rather people who STEAL the actual product.. (Eg skins, clothing , cloning of prims, etc) and resell for a profit.

That is just unacceptable.

I agree with you.

When a designer has their things literally stolen (not simply copied in the looks deperatment but their actual work STOLEN AND RESOLD) it makes it VERY VERY hard to continue on.


Many of us spend hours making things..even months to make a good quality skin..and logging in to IMs of people showing you your ripped off items being sold kills a "i love to design and release things" life. It can only happen so many times before people just start releasing less and less and eventually quit.

Ive been here only over a year, but Im not an idiot when it comes to this...The problem has literally gone from "not so bad" to "very bad" over night.

There are LARGE "Full perms items!" groups packed with people who are in it to resell, a few of these ppl are members of the 'fash con' group (A group where designers notify of their new releases)..and i cant help but believe they are in the group for the sole purpose of trying to find new items to steal and distribute in their little 'resale' packs.

Its a shame..especially given SL is built by its users, so if the theives chase all the content creators away whats going to be left? a world of theives where the same products are cycled around and nothing new ever coming because all the designers quit. So i totally agree with your statement: "Eventually with hacks and tools making it easy to steal coming out it won't be too long before SL will be a wasteland of copies and all the real designers leaving. "

The scary thing is is if the theivery does not lessen i can see this very thing happenign in the near future. Many of us designers/consumers can spot which products are by who and are able to notify the designer, but even so this does not seem to be putting an end to the problem, I still see stolen skins everywhere I go.

From personal experience i have been a big target over the past few weeks. It is NOT fun and it is NOT a compliment to have your items stolen and resold. All it makes me think is, hey i can only take this so much, if it happens a few more times i think im just going to cave in and quit. Im not going to spend hours of my time designing so some theif can wreap my harvest

You are absolutely right Jesseaitui. Most people don't know how much time goes into a good design. I don't make skins (the hardest things to make in sl i think), but even my items take at least some weeks to get them perfectly right. And then I'm not even talking about textures. I made one leather texture that took me 3 weeks to make and get it to work with the design. Just one texture! This is not something you rip of some google search.

Linden Lab should open up there eyes and realize this could have a huge snowball effect someday. If more and more stolen copies go around, designers will be unable to afford their land, quit and leave SL. Then there will be fewer new things to buy which will lead to the consumers leaving SL, etc etc.

It's really difficult when someone steals something and it only takes them a night to do it perhaps when something like say a skin can take over a month to design.

Give it up, Once the Charge has been made everything you say in response just digs you a Deeper hole. Best not to even go there in the first place.

Angel.

Its very disheartening when stuff like this happens. I had a guy threaten to "copy" me because he said it only takes a few minutes to make things. I was like wow the items you are threatening to copy took me like 2 months. Its very upsetting and not much you can do. He was being an idiot and all and never did carry on in his threat but he obviously didn't like me and so decided he would try to ruin my business by making a copy that would take two minutes. Either that or he tried and when it took him more then 2 minutes he gave up.

Anyhow I dont think that people realize just how much effort is put into stuff. Especially if your trying to ad a new skill to it and learn more new tricks etc. In any event there are times when I wonder why I bother really. Why not just have a free account and noland and just make things for myself and my friends and leave it at that. I mean really the fun is in the making and when someone is all strange and does things like this I kinda wonder why I bother.

I am actually looking at other things to do recently as I am getting tired of looking over my shoulder and worrying what is going on at some poorly monitored 3rd party selling site etc its a lot of work and takes the fun out of it

we all know and accept that email scams are popular amongst nigerians. why ripping textures or whatever is so different is beyond me.
it is worth noting that the two resller shops that come first to my mind are located in brazilian sims.

LOL! Be quiet, im not trying to win a battle.

I couldn`t care less if im labeled as a stereotypist (If thats even a word). I was simply stating that I do not label all foreigners as theives, if you don`t want to believe that it does not really matter. Its not like I brought it up again- You did. Nor was there any type of an argument going on between me and anyone else in here. So please don`t start one.

Definitely.

Unfortunately for us, I truly believe Linden Lab is a company who sits back UNTIL disaster strikes.






Edit- Happy?