I found stolen skin :(

I know you know content creation is rarely an instant pay off. If money is your only motivation (and I don't think it is), then release new stuff only after you make your quota on the last release. Let people know this so there is incentive to buy from you. Theft will never completely stop sales, just slow it down. If, on the other hand, certain other things motivate you (which I think they do), like the challenge of bettering your work and improving your skills, or the satisfaction of sharing your work with friends, then don't let the parasites stop you. Post pics in the gallery section if you don't want to sell the stuff. If you DO want to sell the stuff, simply sell it, and sell it for what it's worth. Don't let the black market and the parasites influence your self worth or your skin's true value. There are PLENTY of good people left who will buy it who REALLY APPRECIATE IT. Those are the ones that realize they are supporting the real source of the creativity.

There is a tangible and physical difference between what you sell and what a parasite sells. For one thing, ripped skins go through at least one other iteration of lossy JPEG compression. They are inferior skins. Secondly, if you save your transaction history you can provide a certificate of authenticity to anyone that needs one. This adds value to your work. What's a parasite to say? - "Yes, you have purchased <cough> AUTHENTIC Jolie Femme skin!". If your name is out there, I think not. Thirdly, if you securely watermark your textures you can prove you are the source beyond any reasonable doubt.

Who is Johnny? I hope you aren't referring to that SL boyfriend I once had.

Anyway I did some research on web design and music rates as the number one annoyance for users followed by popups and a bunch of other stuff.

hehe Susie, the benefits of a classical education ..


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Nobody knows where my Johnny has gone
Judy left the same time
Why was he holding her hand
When he's supposed to be mine

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

Playin' my records, keep dancin' all night
Leave me alone for a while
'Till Johnny's dancin' with me
I've got no reason to smile

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

Judy and Johnny just walked through the door
Like a queen with her king
Oh what a birthday surprise
Judy's wearin' his ring

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

------------------------------------------------

'Cause now it's Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
'Cause Johnny's come back to me.

Oh, when Judy left with Johnny at my party
And came back wearing his ring
I sat down and cried my eyes out,
Now that was a foolish thing!

'Cause now it's Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
'Cause Johnny's come back to me.

Well, it hurt me so to see them dance together,
I felt like making a scene.
Then my tears just fell like raindrops
'Cause Judy's smile was so mean.

But now it's Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
'Cause Johnny's come back to me.

Oh, one night I saw them kissin' at a party,
So I kissed some other guy.
Johnny jumped up and he hit him,
'Cause he still loved me, that's why.

So now it's Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
'Cause Johnny's come back to me.

Yay, now it's Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry,
Judy's turn to cry...

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I emailed the person, just to see what they would say.

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bom, eu tava pensando em distribuir freebie todas skins rac, fnky, the gl, theabyss etccc

mas voltei atraz, mas estou disposto vender 15mil cada TGA
---
Good, I tava considering distributing freebie all skins rac, fnky, the gl, theabyss etccc

Atraz but I returned, but I am willing sell 15mil each TGA
---

Now they want 15 mil per TGA... so wish thieves like this could be tracked down!

wow .. so they are basically trying to sell the stolen textures so that others can also help in the blatant IP theft.

LL should definitely do something about people like this. (if true of course)

I just dont see it happeneing.

More like blackmail so they -won't- release them freebie I would think.

for L$15,000,000 i think some skin creators will make a custom skin and shape for you with exlusive right and throw a store skin in for free lmao

he won't release them freebie. he's still selling them.

He keeps moving his store around. I was at the new one today, but it was being griefed with screaming pictures, so I had to leave.

they generally dont become freebies until the thief is shut down by LL.

then amazingly those skins become freebies.

I sent a rather poignant IM to the creator of the Abyss skins yesterday voicing my displeasure that the same Premium skin pack that I payed 4800 for is available for 2200 by this low life. It's not that I paid 4800... I love my abyss skin packs.. it's the fact that this sorry excuse for an Avi is allowed to get away with it. Will LL IP ban him... that will not stop him... all he would have to do would be to change service providers and he is back in business.. if he has the .tga files on his system...

This is the kind of thing we were all Yelling about when LL decided to go free.. Why is it that people will spend X amount for wow.. and then whine about 9.95 for an SL account? I mean all you have to do now is camp for a month and then steal.. gee if this is the life that we all want in SL... bring back user pay please!!!!!!!!!!!!!

has anyone ever heard of someone being banned for having to take down content for sale because of a DMCA?

I was under the impression the penalty was just no longer being able to sell the offending material.

I'd really be interested in knowing though.

The site worked perfectly for me in Firefox...

I voted for both Jiras and add my voice for LL to ban this person and all his alts. Thieves are should not be welcome here.

The freebie situation is getting to be a real problem too...

She changed it after people complained.

I understand, that this theft of skins (and textures in general) is bad for the creatores of such skins. But until LL improves their system and the speed they need to take actions against such thieves, there is not much we can do other then boykot and warn other people not to buy stolen items.

The other thing, that wasn't meant in this thread is: What is the motivation of such people? There are only two possible anwsers which comes to my mind:

a) Money
b) Grief

As for a) the temptation to steal a skin or clothe seems to be focused on items, which promise high profit/income. Thus i noticed, that often the well known and expensive brands are the ones which are being stolen or full-perm freebies/items. Freebie items being sold for money, doesn't seem to be a serious threat, since they usally don't sell well (since they are already available for free and only complete newbs would be possible victims).

More serious, are thefts of items, which are priced high, like the Abyss Skins mentioned in this thread. The Abyss skins usally sells for 1400L$ and that guy sells them for 700-800L$ (basicly for half price) and even if he sells one, the profit is compared to selling freebies for a few L$ pretty high.

One way to make the latter kind of item theaft less desirebale (well, it wouldn't eliminate it completly but most probably reduce it pretty much) would be to lower the price, so they will be worth less for the thief (and his profit from this theft will be lowered too). For example, if the skins were worth 150-350L$, the thief would have to sell them for much lower, to "attract" people (as low as 50-200 L$), which of course lowers profit and low profit would also mean, he wouldn't be able to pay much in classifieds and less people would find it (and instead go to the original creatores shop), since the difference in price may only be marginal.

As for 2), there isn't much you can do. This people would usally try to ruin you/your name/business buy spreading fullperm freebies from your products. So unless, linden removes all products spread by this way, there is nothing you can really do about it, than to try to sue that person in real.



As another idea: Wouldn't it be possible for someone to create a website on which the legit/well known cloth/accessories/skin shops as well as with links to freebie and ask the owners of the starter islands to offer it to new players starting SL? This way they would have a reference to some well known skin/cloth/freebie locations and wouldn't accidently get stolen goods they found by ingame search?

The page could be somewhat like yahoo (with many different categories) and maintained buy a few (reputable/trustworthy) residents?

Bad idea. How many times must this cycle repeat itself before all items are worth nothing? A thief is going to have a much harder time making a name for themselves. If they get well known the risk of their theft being found out gets larger and larger. These are fly by night operations that by their nature can't hope to truly compete with the creator they've stolen from. If you're the victim of theft, file the appropriate notices to have the content removed. Do not lower your prices. If you do you only aid the thieves in destroying the market.

I hope I dont start seeing RaC skins everywhere I go I would hate to retire my RaC skin and have to start the arduous task of skin shopping again

It doesn't need to repeat itself endlessly until it's not worth. If the originals have a reasonable price (like is said, 150-350L$ which is the approx. price most of the skins/clothtes are), people would less like tend to try to sell stollen goods. And even more important, people would less tend to buy this.

You have also to think about, that not only newbies (who don't know that the stuff is being stolen) go there and buy that stolen goods, but also people who know that it's stolen. Latter go there, cause it is cheaper or are thinking that the original ones are too expensive. You have to consider that 1400L$ for a skin is ~5$ for a bunch of pixels.

I know, that when i first started SL like a year ago or so, i found the B@REROSE shop, which had a huge choise on clothes and some skins too was well as other stuff, for pretty reasonable prices (150-350L$). And that was the first place, i gone to buy some clotthes when i exchanged somm USD for Lindens.

I can speak for myself, that i'd think more then twice, before buying a skin for 1400L$ altough i have to admit, they are made pretty well. Maybe sometime in the future i'd consider buy one of this "premium" skins, when i start earning some L$ in SL without pumping USD ins ^^

/me mumbles that she paid L4000 for each RaC skin pack she has and she has 5 of them.

This skin thief is selling the same skins for just under L1000, so I could see a newbie wanting to take advantage of that. I have to admit that for one split second the thought occurred to me, too, but then I slapped myself silly and remembered that I'd much rather support the actual creator of the skins, which in my personal opinion (for what it's worth), are some of the best skins in SL. I would much rather pay her for her hard work, then give this thief a single dime no matter how much that would save me in the long run.

Bwahahahaha

Considering how many hours go into making a decent skin, that is NOT a reasonable price. Creators shouldn't feel like they have to devalue their work because LL can't (or won't) get a handle on this issue.

One good thing this thief did is make me want to go and check out the Abyss skins, which I had never seen before. I went to Abyss this morning and snatched up some demos, and I think I might have to add another line besides RaC to my skin collection. Abyss skins are very nice, too, without being a hugely drastic change from my look when I wear my RaC skins, so it would still be Sunni, just maybe a more dramatic version then with my RaC skins. And if I do by an Abyss skin, it will be straight from Abyss, not from the thief who is also selling them. And I keep finding this particular thief everyday and letting him have it if he is present when I find his store. He's moved several times, and I think that this is causing him more problems than he counted on. I could be wrong, though, and he might just be enjoying the drama of it all. Until LL steps up and take some kind of control, this will continue. I don't have any suggestions on what they could do, but I think that recieving several AR's on the same resident should result in banning for something like this. LL knows how alts belong to, and could ban them all.

A modified viewer might be able to simply create a new skin with the existing texture UUIDs from the original skin in which case you'd end up with a flawless full-permission copy at the click of a button (would apply to any clothing layer in that case actually).

(I'm assuming that it mindlessly accepts UUIDs from the viewer without checking if you actually have that texture in inventory)

I can imagine that effort. I'm not that good in graphic design, but i'm not that bad in scripting. When i got some free time, i try to use it to develop a security system service for items/objects, which will allow creators/vendors to have bit more controll about their products.

It's much work to do (lsl and php) and the work is progressing pretty slowly (especially since a friend who wanted to work with me on that service, is pretty busy in real and can't help me with it as much as i'd like it). Once it's done, i'm planing to provide that service for a pretty fair fee. Right, i wasn't going to sell it as a whole. I'm planing to offer that service for as low as 10-30L$/month, so that basicly most people could afford to use that service (basicly i'm hoping that the service itself and this low price will attract enough people to make use of that service, that it get profitable enough).

Of course, it's up to the creator to deceide if he wanna offer his product to the majority of users (read: low prices, high sales) or to make it more exclusive (high prices, low sales).

Since, there are no production costs involed in creating Second Life objects (discarding the 10L$ fee for uploading the textures/sounds/animations), i personaly tend for the first method (low prices, high sales), so that even Joe Avarage can afford it.

SL is not my first game, where the ingame currency has actual monetary value and can be exchanged to USD and vice versa. Before that (and still up today) i also playing Entropia Universe (=EU; which was initially called Project Entropia).
In EU i learned that many people (especially the new and older ones) have hesitation spending money in a virtual world. They thing it's pretty strange to spend 10, 100 or even thousands of dollars for an item, which is only consists of pixel on a remote server. There are weapons and armors in EU which are worth wup to 5-10k USD.

And i bet, there are also people in SL, which have the same fears of spending high amounts of dollars for an objects out of pixels. If you'd make a global pool and ask every resident on EU to participate in it, i'm sure it would confirm that like 40-60% of all residents aren't going to spend much money in SL (i.e exchange real money for Lindens) then another 35% at least, would (or are) spending money in SL, but keep it as low as 9-20 USD/month max. And the rest (5-20%) are either spending more then 20$/month or have a busines in SL running, which has enough money so they can even cash out.

OK, math problem!

According to what I found online, median salary for a graphics designer is around $44,000/year. If we assume 50 weeks at 40 hours per, that makes their hourly wage about $22.00. Guestimate the initial creation of a skin at 100 hours and that gives you a $2,200 value for the work. If L$ are selling at 266L/USD, to break even at 750L/skin, the creator needs to sell 780 skins. If we average the 100-350L price indicated as 'reasonable' to 225L, the creator would need to sell slightly more than 2600.

This doesn't factor in any additions to the skin line that the creator makes later, such as new makeups and skin tones. Or, for that matter, the creator's expenses to even be able to in SL, such as tier or rental fees.

I find it rather bizarre the way people assign value to things. Most people won't blink at spending $5 on a large latte, which will be theirs to enjoy for the whole half an hour it takes them to drink it. A $1500L skin is about $1 more than that cup of coffee and is theirs to enjoy wearing for as long as they stay in SL... usually measured in months or years.