Dawn of thieves’

“We are not in the business of copyright enforcement. The communities within Second Life should have the tools and freedoms to decide how and when they deal with potentially infringing content.” (LL)

The facts are the following. You can copy virtually anything from any creator’s products, and you won’t be punished at all, if you didn’t use a CopyBot or any other third party software designed for stealing content.

The thief’s side:
Just get a nice house from a creator with a good reputation and style. Rez it on a platform in a sandbox, spend 10-20 minutes there, and copy the building prim by prim – even a newbie can do this quickly in minutes. Put some freebie textures it (yes, your library is full of them), link your prims together and voila, here is your first product. The prims are yours, the textures are freebies, that 10-20 minutes work was yours, so you are the creator. It’s time to sell your house, upload it to XStreet as well, no one cares… Oh wait! The original creator will spot it sooner or later. Yes, he will write some outrageous things, he will ask you to remove your copy of his work, but never mind: the law is on your side. Remember: every prim was your own work. No copybot used. So the XStreet staff will remove his stupid discussion posts, before they can harm your new and nice house-business – because that so-called creator just wants to destroy it… Punish him! Steal all of his designs! Nothing can stop you.

The creator’s side:
As you surely know, creating is not only rezzing prims. We do 70-80% of our work offline. Building up an own world. - Working out a style. - Browsing our memories, using personal likes and feelings. - Using RL experiences or profession. - Making sketches, thinking, thinking, thinking… The rest is quite easy. Rez some prims, resize them and build up your small dream. The result can be good or bad, depending on your talent or capability – but it’s essence is your fantasy. NOT the prim – the prims are the same in everyone’s hands.
But never forget: no one will save your plans, your design and your fantasy. Yes, you are alone.
(I am a book illustrator in my real life. Stealing my work never was a technical question there: even if you copy my drawing with a scanner or with a copier paper using your own hand, the thievery is thievery, and the law will punish you. You can’t say that the paper and the ink was yours, so the drawing is your own work, and you will sell it for money. But the SL is not the reality.)

What can you do then?
NEVER give away anything with modify right. It’s extremely easy to copy, if everyone can browse the object’s details.
BE UNIQUE as much as possible:
- Don’t use standard prims: it’s not too easy stealing a sculpt without violating the ToS.
- Never buy ready-made sculpt packs
- Never use purchased textures (everyone can buy them, you can’t be unique enough with using them)
- Always use custom, unique scripts. It’s impossible to steal them.
- Make everything yourself. Don’t forget: you are a creator, not an assembly worker. The difference starts here. You can make professional textures and sculpties with your skills. You have to.

Once again: There is no other way. LL can’t save your intellectual property, your dream, plans, blueprints or style. You have to save yourself.

Yeah, that's all very well but what about builders such as myself who are good at design but hopeless at textures? Sure, I could take the time to learn the requisite Photoshop skillz, but my time's already taken up with wrestling Cubase down to the floor. So I use generic, freebie or 'builder pack' textures.

Okay here's my thoughts on this.. I have to weave around a bit to get in on topic, so bear with me please ... or just skip to the last paragraph.

For a couple of years now I've been doing animations. I'm a small little boutique, not competing with anyone really, people buy my stuff because it's unusual, not because they want to have standardl animations.

Now for a couple of years, I was pricing myself comparable to other animators, ~300 for something with two avatars that would take me the a few days working on and off to create and do photoshoots for ads for. Seemed fair at the time. And I was making a tidy bit of profit.

Fast forward to this past winter/spring/summer.. and the economy goes into the toilet, along with my sales. Whoa, wait, I think. Why aren't people buying my stuff like they used to? That's when reality hit me. SL is not important, in a real sense, sure people make it a focus of their relaxation time, but when push comes to shove and it's time to decide whether to eat or play, just about everyone is going to cut their SL spending to the bone and get some dinner.

This made me realize.. you know what.. 300 lindens is a $1.10. For someone to buy all my animations they would have to spend about $50 of real money.. That's a noticable amount... on what?? On a cartoon animation that really doesn't matter that much.

Now in the past when we were all a bit more flush, sure, $50 might be noticeable, but it was within most people's discretionary budget for fun. That's changed. People watch their pockets a whole lot more.

So here's what I did, I cut all my prices by 90%. Now my animations cost ~0.10. I'm in just about everyone's comfort zone again, my sales are back up, my profits are better that they have been in almost a year, and I don't feel so elitist about my "art". I make cartoon accessories so I can have cartoon money to spend on other people's cartoon accessories. I'm not curing cancer here. Course, when the economy rebounds and we are all back in our hummers slurping our $10 starbucks, I will adjust accordingly

Finally, the topic of this thread and the big plus I see.. I'm so frigging cheap now, why would someone bother to rip my stuff off.. lol.. for the time and effort it takes to steal it.. shoot, it's easier just to pay me a fifty cents and have your five copies of whichever animation you like. So my point, I guess, is this (I don't know the OP or their pricing structure, so this is more just a general idea).. just make it a more economical use of someone's time to just buy your stuff. I know that uploads cost, but, I realized I don't have to recoup my entire cost on the first sale.

Patasha

If something is no-mod it's gotta be priced at "impulse buy" levels or it's gotta be something so good that I absolutely gotta have it... and even there it's gotta be cheap.

Making it no-mod will cut copyright infringement by, oh, maybe 10 percent. It'll cut your income by much more than you'll lose. Now I know a lot of people in SL are in business for the egoboo, so the money doesn't matter as much, but it still seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Of course you know in "browsing your memories" you are stealing ideas from others. Because later on you say that you own the copies of your images that are stored in my brain. Or does that not count to other people's work?

So according to you if I build the same thing with diffrent textures it's not enough diffrence......what if I add a prim? What if I change the cailing hieght? What if I use all the same prims and textures but I add a slight color? At what point is it enough diffrence to be mine to sell? What if I add full bright or take it away? Where is the threshhold for no longer being just stealing your work? I mean walmart sells shoes that look just like adudas but with two stripes....is that copyright infringement?

I would have thought that if you had two identical prim houses, but one with freeby textues, the other with quality made-to-fit textures - well, the difference is surely obvious.

If I am trying to remember how was my grandmother's house look... Or if I am trying to build up a typical Central-European peasant's house from the 19th century - I am not a thief.

BUT:

If I am browsing my memory for *your* creations to copy one of them - I am a pathetic, lazy parasite.
If I rez a copy of your creations to copy it prim by prim - I am a thief, in all meanings.

Just try to imagine my feelings when i see one of my products, my grandmother's house at the XStreet - on the name of an unscrupulous thief as the creator. You will feel the difference.

The whole of SL seems to have gone on copyright overdrive.We don't need any more frigging rules. I think this place needs to loosen up and get on with the fun.

My opinion,for what it,s worth,If we go down the corporate path it will be a short one.I for one will looking for new horizons.

What about the guy that created your Grandmother's house?

About the exclusive use of custom textures:

Over time, I've become more affectionate toward common purchased textures and even the library freebies. I like to keep a large percentage of my home build using these - in sizes no larger than 512 ... why? Because they are so common they REZ for everybody!

I noticed this first when I built a couple of bridges on my property and textured them quickly with the atoll set. I also had one of Ingrid Ingersoll's wonderful homes, this one small and having only about 6 simple textures - I had stripped away the pool etc. that had unique textures. Everybody who visited complimented me on the build, and I realized after I brought an alt there that they weren't just being nice. The land was gorgeous, and the build rezzed instantly. The instant rez was so unusual that the place made a great first impression.

Recently, a friend of mine put up a really gorgeous sim, which is getting good press. It has a few wonderful stores there as well, very steampunky. On my laptop, I cannot go there - the overwhelming preponderance of big custom textures just kills it. On my 8800GT, things are fine.

Consider your customers!
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Seems to me that the idea of SL being a virtual environment based on RL with a thriving economy and all that is at odds with the ease of which pure capitalism is undermined by thievery and giveaways.

So are we having a creative, free-for all, let's build things for fun sort of place, or are we trying to run a mall? It seems that we can't have both given current rules and their enforcement.

Apparently you won't be punished even for using CopyBot, despite LL's protestations to the contrary.

Case in point: I reported a person selling copybot copies of my products. Two days later, nothing has happened to him, but I get the banhammer with no explanation. How they can even pretend that's fair with a straight face is completely beyond me. I've only logged in twice in the last 60 days, once to verify a report that someone was copying my stuff, and once to report it. Hardly ban-worthy, I should think.

Apparently, content theft is simply not a priority at Linden Lab.

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I agree, prims are the same in everyone's hand...but I can't create sculpties ( and I personally don't like them )...BUT I use my own textures, I have created them myself ( for 99,9% of my items ) - AND nearly all my items are yes modify - true, everyone may be able to copy the prims, and use freebie textures - but then it's not the same item...
and many customers won't buy no mod furniture, that's my experience

Yes. When there are negative comments about structures (on XStreet), the vast majority of them fall into the category 'this is no-modify.' Many people simply won't give a chance to no-mod products.

This is also true for products other than structures; it's just that "Copy/Modify" is pretty much standard (and expected!) for structures.

How many prims are your builds? People aren't going to bother copying things prim by prim if they are above a certain amount of prims, it will take them too long and they won't be able to use all the same textures or get the same look.

Where there is a will there is a way. It's that simple.

The lack of legitimate copyright enforcement is unfortunate, but there it is.

We should build if moved, sell if so desired and then let it go.

QFT!

And this:

So do you spend your money for objects, while the objects are free to everyone (with full perms)? If you buy a book, you pay for the paper? I don't think so. If you buy something, you pay for the work, experience, time and fantasy invested in it.
Real money for real things, even in SL.

Well, not really... But stop publishing it on your name. Here is the difference.

I'm only a small scale creator in SL so I'm not likely to get too bothered if anything of mine is copied - that's not to say I'd be happy about it though. But I think people who become serious creators just have to live with the fact their stuff migh get ripped off. If people copy stuff the long way - by making something from scratch based on an existing design, then I think it's fair enough. I built my half-timbered home from scratch - including most of the textures, after visiting a half-timbered pub in SL - I didn''t copy the design, but it did inspire me.

Would you pay 300 dollars for a book that has no collectible value though? I was charging way to much for what people are willing to spend in SL. SL is transitory, when someone buys one of my animations they can only use it in SL. They can't take it with them offline to the beach and sit and watch it. They can't load it up on a computer on an airplane (yet) and play it while ignoring the inflight movie... My mistake was I was over-valuing what I do in SL, I was considering myself some highfalutin' artist or something when, really, com'on, the only art in SL is art from RL that people import. Some day, hopefully not too soon, SL will shut down, and all this stuff that's been created for it will just go poof, it has no more long term value than the posts I leave in these forums, and I've decided to adjust my prices accordingly.

Patasha

Absolutely. The fewer textures you can use in a build and the more common those textures are across all builds, the better. Choose a very few, very special, high-impact uses for your own (or commissioned) custom textures, but otherwise get creative with the textures in wide circulation. (Tip: the Bay City content pack has some textures that are readily reusable in a wide array of applications, just by tinkering with repeats. I only wish they'd been executed with slightly more care about the edges.)

This is also a reason to make your own stuff, so you can reuse those textures across the entire view space.

It is also a reason never to buy anything no-mod that you'll place in your build. If you can't replace its textures with something already native to the build, you and every visitor will have to load that creator's texture palette every time your build is rezzed. Screw that.

Oh yes. And why would you pay in the theater, movie, an so on, if you can't bring home the actor? Why people pay for concerts, tours, courses or services?...
Anyway, I can't imagine an overpaid creator in SL. We are working for dimes/hours. Even if we are doing our real life jobs/professions.