Dawn of thieves’

He wrote:

The LL will remove the stolen building and ban the thief - but only if copybot used or any other exploit on the built-in permission system.
But they can't and won't do anything with the manual copies:

“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.” (Linden Labs)

The problem here is that it is indeed not forbidden to copy non-trademarked stuff, as far as I am aware. So if I see a great house, I can buy it, and copy it prim by prim. If it is mod, there are even scripts that make EXACT copies, textures and all. Sad but true.

On the other hand it is not so much different from RL is it? You have some good ratings on XStreet, create very nice stuff, I think in the end the copier will not beat you. Still, it is a sad thing these things happen. Inspiration is good. Actual copycat behavior sucks.

Dang, Oriolus....I guess it's kind of hard to bop into your workshop all perky when you have that happen. That's a real bummer.

I've had that happen in RL for years....even after cocktails at a friend's (friend?) house....my concept is lying on their desk a week later, slightly tweaked......about the same amount of tweaking as you point out.....not much.

But....the people who see it copied...remind me:

1) they don't offer what you offer....they can't back it up...although they have the concept, they will never touch your marketing or customer service

2) they are lazy (obviously)....although it does require some effort to copy.....either way, they will never keep up with you

3) it will inspire you to keep doing something new....that idea will be old in a few months anyway....and it will motivate you to stay a few steps ahead

4) the ideas they took that will survive as classics....will be yours forever....they will not survive forever with the other person.....because they won't survive in the business

5) it's so obvious, that the people who see it, will bust them out for sure.....eventually....and their reputation will be tarnished or destroyed

6) the skills you learn getting past this will make a man out of you (love that one)....(this could include legal action).....and prepare you for the next one....(if you're good....there will always be one)

7) they are not stealing your creativity, or your flair.....they are just stealing the image....you will always own the creativity/talent....and you can do amazing things with that

Karma, Baby!

You're bringing those design skills in from RL....aren't you? (of course)......you already know all this.....don't you?

But yeah....looking at those images.....that really sucks.

It was wise, Mickey! Thank you very much!
Especially for this one:



http://forums.secondlife.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

We should have them, this is true. But do we have them?

We barely have the tools to efficiently shoot ourselves in the foot.

I'm afraid of asking LL for better tools, because they're likely to give us a gun that we can ONLY use to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Doesn't hurt to have some chicken soup between nasty emails and attorney visits....(because that will be all you can afford).....but in RL, I always saved that 2K or more on attorneys, (not to mention mental energy).....and applied that to aggressive marketing, and blew them out of the water.....problem solved.

Imaginary Property rights are nothing but a form of fraud and theft, the sooner we realize this and scrap them, the better off we will be.


http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

http://mises.org/story/3631

http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

http://www.reason.com/news/show/27635.html

http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html

Just a few articles to spur some thought.

Google "design patent" and "trade dress" to see other ways companies can protect the appearance of their products.

In general, copyright applies to "the work of an author". The term "author" is used very generically, including artists, graphic designers, sculptors, etc. For a work to be copyright able, the work has to be fixed in some medium, so there are no copyrights for unrecorded, unscripted performances.

I'd be surprised if copyrights are not used in various ways to protect vehicle body design along with other means.

However, when I worked at Ford Scientific Research Lab back in the late 70's & early 80's, I found it interesting that anyone could wander into and through the engineering buildings. However, to get into the building where they worked on body design, you had to pass 3 clearance levels and be escorted by armed guards. OK, I exaggerate a little, but they took security *very* seriously at Body, and not so much in any of the engineering buildings, back then. They protected this stuff with every tool they could, because (at least, they thought) that's what mattered most to the buying public. No doubt it also applied to Marketing, but I never got anywhere near that stuff.

Of course, they were keeping it secret to keep GM from taking countermeasures or beating them to the punch with ideas; they didn't worry that GM would simply copy their designs. But I bet that if some car company produced a knock-off, they would have had the means to fight it.

Yes, I realize that you could get a fiberglass knockoff of a Ferrari body to put on a VW chassis, back in the days. I suspect that Ferarri figured it wasn't worth their while to go after them -- it was quite obvious that it wasn't actually a Ferrari, even with your eyes closed!

Yes, but it's important to distinguish the patents from copyright.

With copyright, the default rule is that when you create a work, you own the rights to copy the work.

With patent, the default rule is not that you create the item, you own the rights to copy the item. The rest of the world may legally reproduce the item unless/until you take additional (expensive) steps.

If someone in Second Life is copying copyrighted objects, then they are breaking the law. If they are copying objects that could be patented, but aren't, then they are not breaking the law.

I always wondered why worth destroying your public image and reputation by stealing buildings, textures,whole sim designs or anything else from others... The essence of the Second Life is the endless space for your fantasy and creativity. The ideas are free to everyone. The prims as well... I can't understand why would anyone steal those free things. If you don't have own imagination, why want to be a creator?

the people stealing obviously don't care about image or reputation or about being a content creator..i wouldn't call them a content creator..

the fact is they are not gonna feel guilty or worry about ethics..
if they are here only for the money then thats all they are gonna worry about..

they are not creators they are fly by night hit and run shops trying to skim as much as they can before it starts to cost them anything ..then they move on to another scam or alt or whatever..the fact is the thieves have more rights than the creators..just like the crooks have more rights than the victims in rl..

LL could come down on them harder if they wanted to..they just don't want to..they are just gonna do as little as they have to..

Right

Yes; they aren't even doing anything unethical.

It's also important to distinguish between civil and criminal infractions.

Copying content using copybot or circumventing copy protections is criminal, according to DMCA. (I disagree with a number of provisions of that law, but I have no problem with this case.)

Copying content "by hand" is a civil infraction, and up to the owner of the IP rights to enforce.

Of course, taking screen shots of textures is a DMCA violation, because it's specifically thwarting copy protection mechanisms and making machine copies of (implicitly) copyrighted data.

Luckily for us, copyright society the following peoples who inspired pretty much everyone didn't think about copyrighting their work:

Jules Verne
Van Gogh
Shakespear
Victor Hugo
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Mozart
... ande many more artists, inventors, painters, writers, photographs, Musicians who form the complete heritage of our culture and social background.

Now just imagine if all those great peoples copyrighted and patented everything they created?

Yep, you couldn't draw a friggin streetlamp or a submarine without being in violation of a Patent or a copyright.

They did, most of them. Copyright is a LIMITED monopoly for a LIMITED time. At least it was until "Steamboat Willie" was published.

Modern copyright law is, literally, a real Mickey Mouse idea.

Today copyright is potentially eternal, wich is what i'm getting at, we are a copyright society that refuses to give a single inch of the rug to anybody and want to keep it our exclusive property until we don't want it anymore (wich means about "never" because there is always potentially more money to be made from owning an useless thing than when not owning it, hell who know maybe in 2050 someone will want a copy of "back to the future", would suck if we couldn't monetize it again after holding on the copyrights for more than 60 years)

Copyright is all about putting a toll booth on imaginary things, and unsurprisingly it's a sector where peoples tend to become insanely rich, which tend to prove that it probably work too well.

Ideas and concepts aren't invented in a vacuum, we knowingly and unknowingly build them up on top of the knowledge and heritage of all humanity, our ancesters gave it to us for free, it's only normal that, if any exclusivity there is, it only last a handful of years before our contribution is added to the pool of humanity's knowledges so that other peoples may build upon it .

I never wanted to add my real life drawings, illustrations to the common pool to copy them by anyone and sell them on their own names for other publishers. Oh yes, I know: the paper is not my own invention. As well the ink, the line, the colours the human body and the delineation of it. My language is not my invention. Therefore I am not the owner of my own drawings/poems/novels? They are free to copy and sell by everyone? Nice to know, let's dip from the pool of the humanity's knowledge and start to publish Harry Potters and Garfiled comics on your own name. Just change the names and the figures a bit. Everyone can be a writer or an artist without working for it...
But hey what about the plagiarism?

Stop making things then if you can't stand the idea that at some point someone will copy, denature enhance, extend, plagiarize your work.


If you write poems you inspire yourself from every poems you ever studied, liked, or hated.
Your drawing style is inspired by other artists, and styles, like it or not, we all copy a bit of old in order to build something new upon it.


Thinking we can own idea is as futile as wanting to own the wind or an emotion. And yes at some point peoples should be able to copy and build upon your own work. And not everything is about money.


You only see the money part, nobody would care who did what if it isn't for "who gets the mony?!", artistic creation is something that exist since the dawn of humanity and will most likely outlive the concept of money.

Copies are the most sincere form of flattery

After seventeen years or thirty years or fifty years? Do you expect Second Life to be around that long?

The keyword here is "we build them up". I have some talent which help me making original and unique things from my fantasy. I have studied ~20 years to learn, how to make nice and professional drawings or 3D models. I spend several days for thinking and making drafts and sketches. The rest is quite easy: log in to the SL and rezz some prims (10% of our work) to finalize my creation.

But the thief does nothing, everything what I did is already in the "pool of knowledge" - so he starts at the rezzing phase. Thank you, but I never wanted slaves or assembly workers to finish my work. I can do it on my own. And I never offered my works or plans for untalented people to make money from it. I never wanted parasites on my back.

BTW: stealing other's designs it is pure thievery. No one was forced to be a content creator. Use your own talents and creativity, if you have any. If not, you still have millions of other possibilities, from the free sex places or discos to the most detailed role playing games.
Your imagination, your world.

I've plenty of creativity and ideas to not worry about someone copying me thank you.
How hard is it to accept that at some point, your ideas and creation will belong to the heritage of every human being? ideally after a couple of years?

It is pure communism. (Oh yes, I know quite well what is it - I live in East Europe and I am a really old RL avatar) You have some talents? Oh, that sucks, because you have to work and create. Lucky me, I have enough to copy you. Don't forget, comrade: everything what you did is the property of the people's republic. The pool of the common knowledge and stock.
Your grain and your brain.

I won't even answer to the "zomg communism" trollbait.

If you really want your ideas to belong to you, you really shouldn't share them or materialize them, just keep them in a corner of your head, because once you do share it, pfffft!, the cat is out of the bag, jumping from person to person like a swarm of flea.