Limiting theft by limiting creation

But, but, it DOES practically matter. Haven't you been listening to what we're telling you?

It matters to the WEARER, and it matters to the OTHERS the WEARER encounters and interacts with.

I mean, if it doesn't practically matter, why aren't we still using IRC to sit around and chat? What is all this graphical GUI stuff for anyway?

YOU asked ME if the appearance of my avatar mattered. I answered in the affirmative. You proceeded to argue that the appearance of YOUR avatar didn't matter or that it only mattered to me because of my leet ferret skillz. The appearance of your avatar is your business. My leet ferret skillz are my business, but just about everyone I know is at least as leet so either I'm running with some gang of superpals or I'm not so special after all.

YOU asked ME if the appearance of my avatar mattered. I answered in the affirmative. You proceeded to argue that the appearance of YOUR avatar didn't matter or that it only mattered to me because of my leet ferret skillz. The appearance of your avatar is your business. My leet ferret skillz are my business, but just about everyone I know is at least as leet so either I'm running with some gang of superpals or I'm not so special after all.

I'm glad I'm amusing you, but the gunpowder ran out of the heels of my boots.

I honestly wish that you were willing and able to take part in the kind of free-form role-playing that killed vaudeville, but it seems you find the victim game tastier.

No, my argument is that it is not possible for EVERYONE to have the experience you did because if one person is the centre of attention in a group then others are not. You are claiming that I don't have a skill, but I am not yet sure that what you're referring to _is_ a skill at all, and isn't just the consequence of having a particular social position.



Another well-known trick: "if you're complaining, you obviously only want to complain".

It matters to some extent, maybe people prefer it - but it doesn't matter _enough_ to be worth spending real money on. If I can get a freebie dragon avatar I will, but I'm not going to pay US$10 for one if I could be treated like a dragon just by using a default av and asking nicely.

Wacky hijinks don't require the person who starts them to remain the cenbter of attention, nor does it require that the same person be the catalyst every time.

I don't know if you have the skill or not. You seem to think it doesn't exist, so at the very least you haven't tried to use it.

I have a particular social position even when I'm not Argent Stonecutter (or Argent anything). That's a peculiar kind of position.

A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnesty, the Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.

I'm not going to pay $10.00 for a pizza if I can get one by using a winning smile and asking nicely.

But do they have any system to guarantee that everyone gets a turn? If they don't, then, as I mentioned to Talarus, the tens of thousands of people involved in SL will drown anything but a formal system. And then, getting value from your av - if that's the value you want - will depend on being one of the few - maybe, the mere hundreds - who get into an informal system.



I don't think ti exists. I think it comes down to you having a high position in the social group, and as a result people being tolerant of that kind of thing from you. For example, you are generally accepted when you post ferret pictures in threads on this forum, but that's because you're popular on this forum. It's not because you post the pictures in a certain skilful way.



Right. But it's far more likely that you can get what you want in SL socially by asking nicely than it is that you can get a pizza - and if you _can't_ get what you want socially in SL that way, it's _very_very_ unlikely that a new av will make any difference.

There probably isn't a way to "prevent" content theft, because it's been available to anyone willing to stoop that low from day one, because of LL's choice in using OpenGL. Now add in open source viewer and what emerges is a real problem. Both the 3D API AND the receiving end of all things SL are vulnerable to manipulation, and thus manipulation for theft. Unless LL ditches OpenGL, rewrites most of their stuff, and goes back to closed source status there *can't* be anything like prevention. Best they can do now is try to mitigate the damage and *deter* the theft, but LL is in an unfriendly situation with it all. Everyone knows free accounts are almost always the avenue for theft, but it's nearly a sure thing that applying some "blanket rule" mentality to any solution is a big fail waiting to happen. There isn't one solution that doesn't in turn penalize a much, much larger segment of honest residents because of it, for one reason or another. I don't see much forethought in the idea of leashing or restricting some of the creation segment when that creation is entirely critical to SL's economy. Very much the case of lopping off the arm to cure a hangnail IMO, and even then it wouldn't be cured.. only bandaged for a while. Unless LL has a killer card up their sleeve, I'd have to say that creators get used to the idea that LL's statements about permissions and IP protections are NOT absolute, and are in fact just like the leaky sieve they represent.

It's called civilization, the social contract, society, all kinds of names, but it's got tens of thousands of years of development.

The tens of thousands of people in SL *are* such a system.

I can create a new avatar with no relationship whatsoever to Argent Stonecutter and do the same thing.

Ferret pictures are inherently cool. You do have to know when to post ferret pictures and when not to post ferret pictures, but if you speak softly and carry a cute ferret you'll get a lot further than if you don't have a ferret.

If you show up in a Ken avatar and say "I'm a dragon", and you're not someone like Robin Williams, John Cleese, or Peter Sellers... you're not going to get your pizza. And if you're Peter Sellers, shame on you for faking your death.

It mattered enough to *me* to spend "real money" (and time) on it. To the tune of a couple hundred dollars in "real money" alone. That doesn't even remotely touch the value of the time I have put into the avatars and the community of which I am part at the Isle.

Granted, not everyone is going to spend the same amount; many will spend much less; a few will spend even more; some will spend nothing at all.

Also granted that, to some, it does not and will never matter. I won't argue that point at all. However, it *DOES* matter to a LOT of people.

If it didn't matter _enough_ to be worth spending real money on, the Isle, the Fantasy Continent, FurNation, Luskwood, Coonspiracy, and probably a thousand other regions would never have come into existence. Almost all of those places pay their tier from sales of avatars and accessories and/or provide venues for precisely the kind of interactions we're talking about.



You can! That's the beauty of it. You don't have to spend anything. You don't even have to WEAR a Dragon avatar, if it is in your heart, and you can express it without one, you don't NEED to wear one.

If that is what makes you happiest, then that is what you should do. If you find that something else makes you happiest, then you should do it instead.

I mean, that's the whole point in all of this, isn't it?

It depends with whom you're associating. Yes, there are drama/attention whores, but they exist everywhere; no group has a monopoly on them. Most of the groups I have encountered are very friendly and welcoming, and we do everything we can to provide that kind of environment at the Isle.

You'd be surprised how easy it is when dealing with people who just are here to enjoy themselves and share the experience. No one is trying to "one up" everyone else. If they do, the rest quickly find someone else to be around, and shun the person who isn't "playing along".

That said, formality has its place. Some people need structure; I won't argue that. Most people don't, though. It's all about just relaxing, being "social", and enjoying spending time with your fellow beings. It does require some rather peculiar virtues, though. Patience. Tolerance. Understanding. Compassion. If you have even the smallest amount of any of those, you'll do just fine.



I have one of the highest positions in the Isle social group. I am like #3 in the social hierarchy. It doesn't mean anything more than I have a MAJOR tail load of responsibility, and some amount of authority to see that responsibility through. Outside of that, a few kindly offer a bit of deference now and then; I don't expect it, but am happy to reciprocate in whatever way is most appropriate to bring them happiness for bringing it to me.



I can't speak for whether or not Argent is "popular" on this forum. I am sure he will answer that himself. He's a "frequent" poster, to be sure. I just worry that he spends too much time in the forums, and not enough time in-world anymore. Draco knows, I seem to. <.<

However, I have to say that, yeah, while it doesn't take any particular skill to post a picture in the forum, it DOES take skill to find the right one and post it at the right time. That takes a nontrivial amount of wit, and some mad Google skillz.



I've had people friend me just for the avatar I am wearing. I've had people friend me for just being me, hanging around and having fun. The avatar isn't required for that, but it doesn't appear to hurt, either.

DirectX is subject to the same problems as OpenGL. There are similar tools available for it that are available for OpenGL.



Open source viewers aren't the bogeyman here. Copying tools PREDATE the open sourcing of the viewer, and would have matured the same way as the open source viewer has in terms of it being used for infringement.



That wouldn't change a thing in any significant way.



There *can't* be anything like prevention, period, no matter what LL wants to do. Prevention is an unattainable goal. The cost of "prevention" goes up on an exponential scale, and the closer you get to even "effective" prevention, the cost becomes too infeasible to bother.



That's the best they could ever do. That's the best ANYBODY can do.



Anything that LL does to address the problem HAS to be a "blanket rule", applied to EVERYONE. Otherwise, it does exactly what many people fear, and either create multiple classes of people unfairly, or fail to work at all.



There are, but any solution will require someone to give up something. The trick is in making it something that is painless (or as near to it as possible), and affects the fewest people, while maximizing the effectiveness of any deterrent against infringement.

You said it yourself; people using "free accounts" (though I think the problem is "unverified accounts", free or not) have no accountability for their actions. They aren't on the hook for anything. If people have some "skin" in the game, they are LESS LIKELY to misbehave.

The only solution is to place people into a situation where being responsible for their actions is a requirement, and effectively banishing those who refuse to fulfill that requirement. Otherwise, there's no point in bothering. If people cannot be made to answer for their misbehavior, they have no incentive to stop.

Linden Lab is a service, and they have every right to require their customers to do whatever LL thinks is prudent to protect LL's interests, including supporting their customers' legal rights. Not only because it is the RIGHT thing to do, it also happens to be the LAW.



"IP protections" are transient and illusory. No one can "protect" their IP in any preventative way. They CAN use the provisions of the law to go after those who refuse to respect their IP, and they are going to have to learn to do that, no matter if it is Linden Lab hosting their IP, or There, or Blue Mars, or ANYone else. That's simply the way it works for EVERYone.

Now, if Linden Lab wants to go the extra mile and take care of some of the infringing bastards on their own, more power to 'em. However, they are under NO legal obligation to go after infringement on a content creator's behalf. In fact, without the content creator's express written permission, they really can't. They CAN remove infringing materials from their service, and HAVE to, when informed by the IP owner of them, according to the law, but that's as far as their basic legal responsibility goes.

He's been slacking on this. Timing is off.

Maybe he has a cold or something.

Ever seen a sneezing, runny-nose ferret? It's not a pretty sight, let me tell you. :-/

Sorry. I thought it was always ferret time.

Cute.

It's ferret time when that vein starts raging out of your forehead, and you reach for the blood pressure pills. I saw the vein pop out.

But this is going to throw off Yumi's theory....since your comedic timing is off....you're going to have to start over.

Back to level one.

awwwww...that is the cutest one ever!

Not really "Fair" to pull that one out.

That's why they aren't called "Fairrets".

LL cannot implement it, but patent law can do what you want. Software is patentable, and scripts are software. You can go and patent sex beds, then prevent anyone from making them. Whether that's fair or not is a different question.

Public outrage. I've seen this in art communities. You become a popular and good artist, then you pick a fight with someone else, and denounce that person for ripping your art off. Much public screaming ensues, with no one actually checking the facts. If a popular content creator comes to you and say they've been ripped off by Avatar X, will you believe them, or first demand physical proof? Public opinion is a nasty thing.

DMCA's HAVE to be honoured, regardless of merit. LL is not required or allowed to check the merit of it, IIRC. So if I send a DMCA for all your content, it gets taken down. Now you get to explain to your customers why, while you file a DMCA put-back notice. Eventually your customers gets their stuff back, with you now branded a thief amongst a group of the population.



Fair enough. I concede this, and remember it when content creators talk about their rights to their creations as well.

Hopefully not for much longer. :-/



Not likely, there is a bit of prior art already.



Actually, no, there's no legal imperative for service provider to follow a DMCA. It is not a court order. However, if a service provider ignores or fails to respect a DMCA notice, they may be risking being named in any related suit for contributory/vicarious infringement, effectively losing their "safe harbor" status.

According to the law, to maintain their "safe harbor" status, they must "expeditiously" take down the content (or have it removed by the alleged infringing party). There is no requirement that the content has to be taken down before the allegedly infringing party is notified. In fact, it is even possible that said party could file a counter notification before the content is actually removed. Unfortunately, even if they file a counter-notification, the content is supposed to be removed for a minimum of 10 days (one of the more stupid parts of the DMCA, IMO) while they wait for the complaining party to go through the motions to file for a court order to affirm the take-down, and then the two of them get to go to court and slug it out.

Basically, someone could abuse the process to take someone's content offline for 10 days. The good part is that the targeted party can then not only get them in trouble for perjury, but can sue for damages from the false notice.

In some cases, ISPs may decide that the DMCA notice is spurious or otherwise flawed, and be willing to go to bat for their customers, ignoring the notice. It is rare, but it does happen from time to time.

Complete agreed.




Yes, but prior art doesn't seem to matter to the USPTO. Or the patent is written so broad as to be "a method for using the right button on a mouse to get a dropdown menu". So much abuse possible here.



Ah, I see, point taken. Well, still can disrupt you for 10 days, which can be pretty bad. And bad publicity is always bad, as people will find it years later and throw it at you out of context. Yeah, open for abuse, in my opinion. Was there any court cases for false DMCA notices yet? I've searched before and couldn't find anything yet.

Here we go again, attacking open-source software. These vulnerabilities you speak of exist on closed-source systems as well, using closed-source DirectX and closed-source game platforms. If closed-source equalled immunity to hacking, then Windows would be the most secure OS on the planet, games wouldn't need such dubious technologies such as Punkbuster, and so on. By contrast, one of the largest open-source projects on the planet IS virtually invulnerable to attack - despite everyone and their brother having access to the source code whenever they want it.

Unless you know of a way to get the 3D modelling and texture information from LL's server to your monitor without giving ANY of that information to your computer, then the whole closed-source vs. open-source argument is rather moot.

Yeah, well. Go Bilski! Go Bilski!



I don't know of any. The ones I know of which were resisted by ISPs were bogus and never challenged by the complaining party.

We have two things working in our favor, though. Perjury can easily mean JAIL TIME. Yeah, sucks to be you if you intentionally lie under oath about my content being yours, and I happen to have my lawyer mention it to the solicitor in your jurisdiction. The other thing is that the DMCA is primarily just in the US. There are some sticking points with respect to protecting foreign content, and honoring DMCA take-down requests from foreign entities. The "super sekrit" ACTA treaty that was just leaked is intended to start harmonizing the copyright laws of many countries on the Berne Convention on Copyrights to our own, but I am not sure how well it is going to go over, since many countries think US Copyright/Patent law is already way over the top (and it is).

The upshot is, if you are not a US citizen, or work for a US corporation, Copyright issues might be a bit sticky.

Wow! This thread is 32 pages long as I write this, so there's no way I'll get through it all to see if this perspective has already been voiced a million times. Still...

First off, if older, established residents and creators push hard to limit new accounts, you will absolutely and probably immediately choke to death the flow of new residents into Second Life. I know this, because I'm new here (May 2009). I'm still young enough to remember that

a) Second Life has some really weird reputations out there, so new people trying it out are somewhat sketchy.

The night I finally decided to download the SL Viewer for the first time and set up an account, security was a very real concern for me. I had googled Second Life, as I'm sure you have, and I had read all the good and all the BAD press out there.

The good press got me to secondlife.com in the first place. The bad press - which included stories about flying penises griefing whole sims and content theft and all the standard criticism you find from people who think virtual worlds are just weird - that bad press made me lock up my credit card.

Seriously. The first $150 USD (real dollars, not Lindens) I spent buying Lindens were spent using a Visa gift card I purchased at my bank just for that purpose. I was not at all about to put my credit information in the hands of people who somehow were associated with huge flying penises! I trust Linden Labs now, of course, but only after a few months of reliable service.

The point is that if you force immediate registering of credit/payment info on new residents, you will turn away legitimate newbies like I was.

Also, don't forget what I just mentioned about using gift cards...

b) Limiting creation to paying accounts will kill all the joy for new residents and shoot the whole Second Life universe in all those ugly Linden feet

Why are you here? Why did you start? What motivated you to spend all those hundreds of hours learning Second Life building and scripting skills? Really, think about it for a second. And just so you know, I have met some older SL residents who were around in the days when everything was much cruder, harder, and there were very few libraries and tools to help new creators learn.

The point is that a content creator today, one who learned skills and mastered various SL arts - well, he or she started somewhere as a newbie. With a free account. With the ability to create things and transfer them to others. It was that freedom, the freedom to create, the freedom to even build a business inworld doing it, that motivated YOU to learn what you learned.

It wasn't easy. It took you forever. You probably made some ugly things or wonky scripts that screwed lots of things up. You tried and failed and persevered.

If you now come back and deny that same freedom to others, to new people, well, you will end up in a world full of long-term residents, all of whom are either too busy to shop at your store or who don't need to because they make their own tools, scrip their own HUDS, animate their own avatars, paint their own textures, and design their own clothes.

That's the evolution of things...newbies spend much more, because they need to. They have nothing, and it takes an investment to get up and running. Old residents are much pickier about their lindens.

c) Theft, while sad, especially for you very talented creators, is sort of a fact of life to any business online and especially business that revolves around digital content.

Think about it. The hour a magazine hits a news stand, someone has already scanned it and distributed it somewhere. The same's true with DVDs, software, or music. Even art, real world paintings and prints, have to deal with this. That's why so many artists put huge ugly watermarks across photos of their paintings and only serve up low resolution pictures.

The sad, but unavoidable, truth is that no matter what you do, there will be some unethical person out there who would happily steal your hard work and either use it for free or sell it to others. Sad, yes. True, yes.

The point is that instead of throwing out the virtual baby with the pixel bathwater, rejoice in the fact that there are so many legitimate users buying your creations! Shake your fist at your monitor and curse the low down snaky sneaks who ripped off your latest dress or scripted object.

But above all, pause and remember that there are thousands of new users, new residents, out there...they have never even heard of Second Life yet. Make your plans, and create your anti-theft policies with them in mind.

Six months ago or so, I was one of them. I've lost track now of how many real US Dollars I've spent purchasing Lindens that I went on to spend in your stores, but it's well past the $200USD/$50,000L mark at this point. So how many of "me" do you want to turn away so you can prevent a handful of nasty content thieves from stealing your latest prim hair?

All you creators, designers, builders, and script-masters have my genuine appreciation and admiration! I love you all and constantly ooh and aah over your latest work. I buy a lot of it, and I wish I could buy more. I do wish you the best and hope your businesses flourish. I certainly hope Linden Labs comes up with better safeguards to protect your hard work. But I hope, in the desire to protect yourselves, you do not end up pushing to break the beauty that is Second Life.

~Sierra Pixelmaid