Ripping Content from SL and using in other Worlds?

http://blog.crystalstudio.ca/2007/12/planet-builders-re-orientation-island.html

The guy seems to think copyrights are not valid outside SL and careless.... Do you think Linden Lab and others have the legal ability to sue if someone ripped their island and put it in their own virtual world?

Do you think Linden Lab should try to squash this outfit and any other that rip content from SL?

Very intersting found jaydee.　I wonder if if more stable then what we have now.
Does this VR exist?!

No, no specific VR. They made a demo with the ripped orientation island and turned it into a FPS game based on NeoAxis Engine. However it sounds like they are offering the service of downloading SL content and transferring it into other games and worlds.

Here is a screen shot I just took from their demo.

Strange how they would use SL are a base for their future builds. Since the Basic structure of the SL is so outdated. You think they try to pattern theirselves after some newer platform then sl. But still very good find of info!

The build I saw in the video is CSI orientation in SL.
Interesting he doesn't mention that. The buildings and island was exactly
was what was shown in CSI. Which really was sort of private group and nothing
to do with SL, they may have connected to Electric Sheep company though.
No clue who owns rights to that or if it still around any more.
Tried to visit bit a week after I first went and couldn't get in.
Is this guy connected at all with Electric Sheep or CSI orientation group?

Interesting. I met the proprietor of Crystal Studios years ago. We didn't exactly get on too well but this current project of his looks interesting. I can see a *vast* use for this for existing SL content creators who want to export their content to other platforms. In my case I would be interested in packaging up my treehouses and prefabs to export to the HiPiHi platform and any other platform that they could be imported to.

This will end badly. Very badly.

@FD: So... are you going to call CBS and tell them their copyrights have been infringed? I would kinda like to see them bitch slap some sense into this guy.

shouldn't this thread be locked for attacking named individuals?

I am not sure if its exactly the CSI build but it looks very similar even the island lay out.
I don't know if CBS would take my call or even how to call. I feel weird about doing a report personally. The people who should be checking this design out should be the builders who built CSI Island. though.
I looked at the site, it looks like they are building their own platform but I wouldn't know.
I don't know anything about the people involved or their intent.
Looks like alternative to open sims but I wouldn't know for sure.

Its the newer orientation island.

volcano in one corner, a few buildings in another....the second video shows the person starting to go up to the volcano when a helicopter flys overhead.

what's the problem guys ? Second Life is open source, means you are allowed to use the code for everything you could think of. Even China used it for their noobish new Sl Version. The builds on the Islands are not copyrighted tho. You can rebuilt em anytime the only thing that might be copyrighted are the textures but since those are freebies from google and libary ones you might get a cookie some valium and celebrate xmas

Nope, it's news. They brought it upon themselves. This is going to be a fiasco of copybot proportions. I could stamp it out but that doesn't serve the community so I allow for a news exception to the Private Discussion & Off Topic rules; to qualify you have to provide a source for the article, it has to be about SL and it has to be credible & news worthy. Course there is not reposting, cross posting, or similar thread exception for news. The exception is subjective, if it is just libelous trash I won't hesitate to squash it.

Really? Can you point me to where that is written? In the USA at the moment of creation work product comes under copyright automatically. Generally speaking LL doesn't make content themselves, they use contractors for content (though they transfer ownership of the copyrights to LL). Unless it is explicitly stated as being in public domain, you cannot assume it is anything other than copyrighted.

I wondered about that thanks Strife.
I don't know whole lot about Islands other then friend had suggested I learn how because he told me if I can draw, I can make islands raw files to sell.
So I gathered from what he was telling me in general way that the raw images can be
created just like a drawing of anything else.
None of my drawings are copyrighted, I couldn't afford to do this within the official means so I figure anything I create can be stolen...not that I think yet any of it is worth stealing yet but I wouldn't know if someone did.
I didn't know about the new orientation island, it just reminded me of CSI Orientation island.

The biggest concern is that they've made a tool to make the ripping of content easy.

If they fail to provide a "service" then they may decide to sell their tool instead. This means that anybody will be able to extract content and upload it back into Second Life with full permissions.

eek!


IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!

You don't need to do anything to have your work copyrighted. It's free, enforcing your copyrights aren't but fortunately that is entirely up to you and you don't have to do it. Course if you go to the effort of registering your copyright, you get a bit of additional protection (in court a registered copyright trumps an unregistered copyright).

Technically anyone who has a working knowledge of how SL's cache works can steal textures or anything texture related not that I know how to do this.
And anyone with working knowledge of scripting, modeling and prims can rebuild anything they see in SL.
In fact reason why most of the content out there is similar is because their is only so many
things most think of and it usually similar. Soon as someone comes up with unique idea that sells well, a bunch come in and see it and copy the idea.
The need for program to do this would only be only needed for those who don't know how to do either.

/me nods
There are many ways to steal textures, you don't have to hack the cache but we need not discuss them.

Yeah at this point I am living month by month personally and its isn't required because I am doing things for fun and education purposes.
Luckily I haven't come across a situation similar except once personally but whenever I see a copyright violation I do try to tell the creators of the item.
Though I am not always sure if this is right thing to do because I am not always sure because
issue is there so many similar things out there its hard sometimes to tell who really owns what sometimes.
Example I am making a sewing machine when done will have unique textures and hopefully animations.
After I started doing this I noticed someone on slexchange has one for sell except their sewing machine is more prims, shape and plainer textures then I would use.
Could they say I was copying them? I hope not. Either way its being made for my own use not for sell so it shouldn't be a issue.

I'd be a bit peeved if someone copied my stuff but I'd soon get over it. Most of the things I've made would be fairly easy to copy using the normal building and texturing tools. Probably some of the things we've all made resemble other peoples' products, purely by coincidence, given the amount of stuff there is about!

The difference is that when you build it purely by coincidence, it's still a lot of effort on your part. And it will BE different in the details. What this is doing is pretty much saying, "We can make exact copies... and put them in worlds that you don't know exist."

Responsible use and this could be a great tool, but how many people can actually be trusted to behave responsibly?

I'm a scripter. Most of my code gets released under GPL, LGPL or CC-BY. I know most people ignore the license on the code but it's fun every now and then on a piece of GPL code to request the source (and then hit them repeatedly with the GPL until they do it). Or harass them if they didn't include my name in the credits (a requirement of GPL, LGPL and CC). Sometime you have to use thumbscrews to get people to do the right thing. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure.

This is exactly what the Berne Convention made illegal but with countries instead of virtual worlds. Governments don't want to seed power to a virtual country (world), as long as they are not recognized them as legal states onto them selves the Berne Convention applies via the host country. I doubt they will be allowed to become separate or recognized as seperate without ratifying TRIPS, WCT or Berne.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works

In the UK it's referred to as "Intellectual Copyright". This basically covers ideas, designs, illustrations, paintings etc.

Hmm, this is a horrible thing, but ultimately it's just a larger-scale copybot provided as a service as far as I can tell. With the release of the source-code it's now very easy to extract textures, animations, prim-settings, sounds and probably some things I've forgotten, and do whatever you like with them. When it comes down to it it's no different from any game-engine with an editor, as there's going to be some way to use that to extract copyrighted components and use them illegally.

Scripts are still safe for now as they don't get sent to the client, unless as part of their service they will attempt to replicate functionality (which on other platforms may be easier, I don't know).

I'm learning to make sculpties as part of one of my projects, but the only trouble with that is that it means that the product I make (which I intend to make look really good) will be almost trivial to steal by grabbing the sculpt-map(s) and texture(s), but I'm going to do it anyway, for myself and in the hopes that the scripts I put into the object will be of sufficient quality that customers will not be satisfied with a cheap knock-off or unscripted copy.

I know LL has some way of getting DMCA requests I think through, I don't know if those apply to in-world objects that someone has copied against my wishes or not, but I'd like to think they'd at least help me keep people trying to sell copies of my products on SL without me having to pull out lawyers (which I don't make enough money to afford really to warrant it).