Limiting theft by limiting creation

I haven't had any abusive customers. I've had some unsatisfied customers. I gave them their money back. I guess that's why they didn't get abusive.

Case in point. The other day, I found a shop selling Bits&Bobs anims full perm, and reported the matter to the creator. He said he'd already had problems with this same avatar, at the same shop, selling the same anims, back in June or July and LL had taken them down -- and here she was selling them again.

As it happens, she's NPIOF -- I've just checked -- and has been since she joined a year or so ago. But it's not her payment status that's causing the problem, to my mind; it's LL's unwillingness to impose proper sanctions on this sort of behaviour.

There's no froth in my mouth.

You're making the assumption that only real currency is of value, and that the only way we can offer value for value received is by making payments in real currency. This is a false assumption, and undermines your argument.

Nor have I, though I've had some irritating, demanding "customers" for items I give out FOR FREE. Too bad I couldn't give them their money back!

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this thread. I find no correlation between payment status and how annoying people are.

But I don't know why we're even discussing payment here. It has nothing to do with content theft. Accountability does, but payment doesn't. I started a separate thread for the payment issue:

Here are the best suggestions I can come up with.

1) Require accountability for new signups. I.e., require at least PIOF for all new avatars. This is a relatively nontechnical solution.

I see 3 counterarguments to this:
1a) Anonymity is important and should be preserved
1b) In some cases, it's not feasible (in some countries, perhaps)
1c) It may go against LL's business model, which seems to be to grow the grid as fast as possible with as few limits on membership as possible.

2) Disallow EDIT completely, for NPIOF. (It's not helpful to simply disallow creating, because a copybot could copy and edit existing full-perms content and create anything that's been ripped.) [Edit: this would also require disabling scripts in objects owned by the avatar, because a scripted object could do the editing and replicate the appearance of ripped objects.]

3) Disallow copy/mod for NPIOF. Copy/mod content would become no-copy, or no-mod. [Edit: If it becomes no-copy, MLP won't work. If it becomes no-mod, worn attachments couldn't be adjusted. Ick!] One wonders whether it should become transferrable. Created content would be what ... no-xfer?

4) Disallow xfer/mod for NPIOF. Xfer/mod content would become no-xfer. One wonders whether it should become copiable. Created content would be no-xfer.

For 2, 3, and 4, it's not clear whether it should apply to existing accounts and content, or just new accounts. I believe any of these would be a nightmare for content creators, trying to explain the permissions to two classes of customers.

Is there another possibility that I've overlooked?

None of these suggestions (other than #1) is sufficiently detailed to know how they'd actually work. I suspect more issues would arise.

As it turns out, the B&B content that's running around full-perms has the correct (original) creator. These were not "ripped content", they were failure to follow license agreements.

Copybot isn't the problem here, but unaccountability supports the thieves.

So, disallowing accounts without RL identities, or restricting them so they can't effectively sell things, would still help to address the problem.

But do we really have any solutions that would fly?

Wouldn't it just simplify to say no transfer and no sell function on non-verified accounts? They could still create all day long.

People clearly value $1 more than they do their access to SL. If they didn't then they simply wouldn't be arguing against parting with it when what they get in exchange is access to SL.

You can argue that there are other things of value but none of those are present in the general case either. Does the average free account invest their time in making SL a better place for everyone else to compensating their desperate hold on wanting to hold on to that $1? Do all of them create free content for everyone to enjoy?

If someone goes to a club and makes the experience more fun simply by being there that's a selfish rather than a selfless act. Any benefits are coincidental because they wanted to go there in the first place.

Same with content: most of what's for sale in SL is there to benefit the seller; not to improve life for everyone else.

I volunteered to be a Live Helper and usually spent all of my SL time on that for months, I answer forum questions if I know the answers, I help friends and random people I come across in-world, I JIRA bugs when I find them and attach a viewer patch if I can and think it's something LL might accept, I end up writing or helping out with scripts for friend, etc etc etc. I could put myself on a pedestal and claim that since I do so much good that I shouldn't have to pay because I'm such a net benefit that I deserve it all for free. Except of course that's big nonsense. I do the things I do because I *like* doing them, I'm not giving up anything of value by doing *any* of the above - if anything I gain the positive feeling of "time well spent" - so I do not get to claim that I'm entitled to a single thing.

If you insist that every free account is giving up something valuable to them up in order to be on SL then it shouldn't be hard to come up with an all-encompassing answer that fits everyone that isn't about just being a social and positive being since mostly everyone fits that and it's simply the norm and hardly anything special or of intrinsic value.

Enforce TOS provisions against content theft.

Solution 1 (require PIOF) has two problems. 1. It puts more of a speed bump in the registration process than LL wants. 2. As long as IP rights are not protected, content thieves don't have to go make up armies of anonymous alts. They can just put payment information on file and go along their merry way.

Solutions 2,3 and 4 break Second Life for NIOF users, which kind of makes them unworkable. Sure, they can put PIOF, but so can content thieves. All these solutions do is make SL more complex for no benefit.

Don't allow running scripts.

A script can rez a prim, a script can move/reposition/link prims, a script can apply textures, a script can change prim parameters.

Combine all those together and you have all the basic operations you need to reconstitute copied content.

Don't allow physical avatars for NPIOF, force them to be a special robot avatar that can't push people around, IM them, or even chat unless they're first clicked on by a real user.

I realise that the perms were correct and that the seller was failing to follow the terms of the licence agreement.

My point was that, at least according to the creator and I have no reason to disbelieve him, he'd already caught her selling the self-same anims from the self-same store (belonging to her) six months ago, reported it to LL and all they'd done was make her take the stuff down, and here she was, using the self-same avatar selling the same anims all over again from the same shop.

As it happens, she was NPIOF, but I see no reason to suppose that LL would have treated her any less leniently -- which is the problem -- were she a paying customer.

YAY!!!!

Or better still . . . make 'em all FERRETS!!!!

Nah, ferret food.

LOL!!!

Yeah, a much better plan. This way, they're smaller, and won't get underfoot so much . . .

It's a trust issue. Somebody asked "why do people pay $50 for the next Call of Duty and won't even pay $5 for an indie game?". The answer is, trust. Why do you think that sequels are so popular in the games market? Because most consumers want to know in advance what they're getting with a product that's priced so high, and having played the previous game does that very well.

"But it's only $5!" Yes, but _anyone_ can claim "come buy this thing you don't know, it's great!". If that's worth your $5, then you're going to be giving out an awful lot of $5s.



Those are just issues that can't be looked at though. They're society breakers. Creeping in the darkness behind them are the monsters of "content theft is OK because the creators already got rewarded by the enjoyment of making the product", and "somebody did a show which entertained 10 people but displaced 20 others who had wanted to be the one to do the show, let's stop them".

You're projecting.

Yes, I have been in that position.

That does not invalidate my argument.

And I do know, for a fact, that I am far from the only one.

In fact, I once found that somebody had set themselves up as a "leader" of a particular activity and had invited those interested to attend a meeting. A few grumblings at the meeting quickly turned into a conference IM where it turned out that _all_ of the people at the meeting were angry at being displaced by the inviter.

I then did something very naughty.. I flew by another similar meeting and, hiding outside, IMed people at it to find out what their position was. Just under half expressed resentment, and many of the ones who didn't just didn't respond to my IM hello (I didn't spam, bother or spin them).

No, you're projecting. Of course everyone wants to be the one who wins ANY contest, whether it's an election or a beauty contest... otherwise they wouldn't enter. But most people manage to figure out that everyone can't be the winner and go on to do something else. A few turn into Queen Grimhilde and start tossing poison apples.

But content theft is already justified in a "everything should be free because it might lead to more sales" mentality.

The notecard exploit didn't change the creator name so everyone should actually be rejoicing about it, no? Anyone who picks up a free copy is wearing something with the original creator's name intact. Those people got it for free but that's ok because it'll result in more sales when it gets exposed to those avies with L$ who'll tp over to buy a copy and other things you have for sale that weren't exploited.
After all, that's the justification for having not charging for access to SL: everything free means more profit for everyone.

And if that sounds rather unbelievable, it's exactly how the argument for free accounts sounds to me . Both are equally ridiculous and no store owner is giving away their entire inventory for free on the vain hope that they'll attract more people who are decent enough to pay you its fair value even though they don't have to.

The "charge everyone and those who won't pay don't get it" is the de facto sales model for stores in SL because it's the only model that really works.

Exactly!

What is the motivation for anyone to spend money if they know that to get what they really wanted, there'll have to be a contest, and statistically they probably will not win? Especially if there's the perception - as there is in SL - that those who need to spend real money have already lost?

People who "move on to something else" will typically not invest so much in that something else.

You've been lucky, then.

Some "unsatisfied" customers start out "abusive" on first contact.

Some "unsatisfied" customers were never really customers to begin with; they essentially want your stuff for free, or want to scam you out of your L$.

Yes, even with as little as I have sold direct to the "general public", I have encountered all of the above.

I recommend people who can't be happy without being #1 avoid ANY kind of multi-player game. Stick to Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda where everyone can win if they keep playing long enough. Stay off the Internet completely, their fragile egos won't survive it.

If they get one of my products for free, I'm out something that has a near-zero marginal cost of production. I haven't run into someone who needed their money back who didn't show up in my transaction history yet. I guess I have been lucky. Or else I'm too cute for them to go through with the scam.

Is it? In this context? I don't see it, myself. Anonymity vs governments, maybe, but not vs private institutions in which you VOLUNTARILY participate.



That's true, to an extent. There is no worldwide certification authority for identity. It is also why many services block certain countries from even connecting, because crime is so rampant; there's no accountability, and no stopping the thugs at all in those places, so all that can be done is to just block them totally.



Mass, unstoppable copyright infringement also goes against LL's business model when they are either sued out of existence for not upholding their legal obligations to help curb it, or enough creators quit bothering and can't afford (or just stop) paying tier, marginalizing SL itself.



I'm for just disallowing transfer for unverifieds. They can still create, modify, whatever, they just can't sell or give away what they create until they attach some RL identification to their account. That puts a serious cramp in the people using throwaway alts to set up their "warez" shops. Yeah, I know, they can always just put XML definitions for objects into a notecard and pass them around to other warez kiddies, but it would stop the "clueless noob buying knockoffs" problem, which is not insignificant in its own right. In addition, LL could very easily detect the XML formatting used for such (full-text indexing 4tw) and ban people for doing it.

The vast majority of residents don't create much or even bother to sell/give it away. Most are just consumers, and won't even care that they can't transfer stuff they get. However, having the ability to rez/edit is necessary for many products, so I can't see going any farther than no-transfer.

I don't even buy the "second class citizen" argument in this case. It doesn't cost ANYone ANYthing to acquire the privilege to transfer/sell. No fees, no tests, not anything. Just give them what they need in order to attach your RL legal existence to your creations (and to ban your RL legal existence from their service if you infringe copyright or break any other of their rules grievously enough to warrant expulsion). Second- (or lesser-) class citizens have a significant barrier of some kind to overcome that (potentially) many cannot. This simply isn't the case here.

As for anonymity, there's no guarantee, let alone right, of anonymity on a private service. Technically, it isn't even very hard to pierce the veil of anonymity anyway. If they have a legal grievance against you, they can subpoena IP address records, or at the very minimum, report your IP address, dates and times connected, to your ISP, and you might get a very nasty surprise, depending on how seriously your ISP / government takes the case. As such, the anonymity argument doesn't hold much weight, at least for me.